Just reaching out to see if this is everyone's experience or if something is seriously wrong on my end. Converting a 720p 20 second sdr video to hdr using Hyperion is giving me a speed of 0.1 fps w/ an estimated processing time of 4h 16m. I can confirm the model's actually running - my Mac's warm to the touch and the fans have kicked in.

https://preview.redd.it/unty83frt72h1.png?width=1694&format=png&auto=webp&s=1cbe8bf5ddd5d5fcf001ec0ff9e35ac9ebb009c3

Not quite perfect, but much better than before

Just wanted to pop on and say thank you for the tech support. I was having problems with my Mac on the latest and greatest version, and with some online hand-holding, it's sorted out! Yeah!

I just gotta say. I had our family tapes ripped in 2010 to DVD PAL format (they're from Eastern Europe), and enhanced pieces of them thru every generation of Topaz technology.

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There was a leap from typical Topaz Artemis/Proteus with Rhea, but it still did monster faces.

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There was a leap from Rhea to SL Mini, which eliminated monster faces, but faces at medium distance looked like they've been thru an Instagram beauty filter.

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SL Precise is a vast improvement on SL Mini, I can see the difference. My grandma sitting some distance from the camera, no longer looks 20 years old, she looks age-appropriate while accurately reconstructing her facial features.

This is literally the most amount of detail that's ever been squeezed out of these VHS tapes, and I think we've now ran into a wall because there's really no way to squeeze any more information!

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In short, Starlight Precise is absolute PEAK of VHS restoration technology, assuming you didn't do something stupid like restore them into low resolution like VideoCD (352x240).

Hi all, I understand the Starlight 2.5 is more meant for higher resolution media than old home movies, but which one would be best? Looking to improve the image of movies taken from the 80’s and 90’s. Thanks

Two of Topaz Video's most advanced models—Starlight Precise 2.5 and Hyperion 2—are officially available for local processing on Mac and AMD machines (alongside NVIDIA).

What’s New?

• Starlight Precise 2.5 (Upscaling & Detail Recovery)
  • Designed to bring out natural, realistic details when upscaling videos to 4K.
  • This next-gen iteration offers a giant leap in video output quality, delivering significantly more detailed faces, textures, and text than previous versions.
• Hyperion 2 (Advanced SDR to HDR)
  • Brings generative AI and other 8-bit assets up to pro-grade HDR outputs.
  • The higher dynamic range drastically reduces color banding and provides crucial visual information when you are color grading or adding effects.

https://preview.redd.it/5qaj399fnl1h1.jpg?width=1297&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=caf17d82641b7240e4b7d413ae2642d6b4602875

System Requirements for Local Processing

Because these are heavyweight models, you will want to make sure your hardware is up to the task:

Platform	Minimum Specs	Recommended Specs
Mac (Apple Silicon Supported)	16GB RAM	24GB RAM
AMD	12GB VRAM	32GB VRAM
NVIDIA	16GB VRAM	24GB VRAM

Hello. I’m using ComfyUI Cloud, and I mainly use Topaz Video Upscaling there. Since this morning, Topaz has not been working properly, and it also seems like my credits are not being consumed. Rendering jobs that normally take around 15 minutes are now running for over an hour and then shutting down midway. I’m still using the same workflow and nodes as before, so I’m wondering if anyone knows the possible cause or reason for this issue. Or could there currently be a server issue related to Topaz? I’m curious, but I couldn’t find anywhere else to ask, so I’m posting here.

Greetings and salutations. My subscription renewed a couple days ago and now I’m having issues. When I went to use the app today it is asking me to login, no big deal, I haven’t used it in a while. When I try though I keep getting “Password/token rejected. Please try logging in again.”

At first I suspected my firewall was blocking the connection but that was not the case. Okay, I’ll contact support. Nope, can’t do that either. “Sorry, you have been blocked”. Does anyone have any ideas? Thanks in advance.

Solved: As it turns out PFSense was refusing the connection, possibly due to geo blocking. I ended up adding the VPN to my upscaling rig and the issue resolved. 😎 Thanks to everyone who took the time to help.

system:
AMD Ryzen 5 5600 6-Core Processor (3.50 GHz)
NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3060 Ti (8 GB)
Ram: 32 gb

In version 1.2, Starlight Mini was around 6 GB and rendering at 0.2 fps. With version 1.6, the size has decreased to 3 GB, and although I'm using the exact same settings and video, the render speed has dropped to 0.1 fps. I don't understand why the performance decreased instead of improving; usually, updates enhance performance or at least keep it stable. Does anyone have any insight into this situation?

This bug renders Topaz 1.5 (UPDATE: and 1.6, and 1.4!) basically useless. One would think something this big wouldn't get past QA?

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And yes, "prefer NO sysmem fallback" setting is active in Nvidia control panel.

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And yes, I heard the workaround is to extract the partial clip beforehand, which is a PITA to do without reencoding or being imprecise. That's not really a solution.

I have the opportunity to reactivate a legacy plan for Topaz Studio until today, but the email is pretty sparse when it comes to details about what I am actually getting. Is there a link that explains this in more detail? And what will happen to my Gigapixel and Topaz Photo, which I owned older versions of?

Hi, I have this old music video of my fathers old hobby band. The Quality is pretty terrible. What is the best way to achieve that. The file I have is 1080p, 5:04 minutes long and 409mb large, mov. I unfortunatly do not have a pc

I've only ever used Starlight Mini. Has great results, but it's slow and it has a sort of hazy dreamy look to it.

I'm debating if it's worth subscribing for the precise model.

Is it any faster? How much faster?

Does it handle faces better? Especially smaller faces in the background?

I have a 5070ti 16gb card, and I'm only interested in running locally.

I’m trying to understand whether this is expected behavior, a config issue, or an RTX 50-series optimization problem in Topaz Video 1.5.0.

System

• GPU: NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5090, 32 GB VRAM
• Driver: 596.36
• CUDA reported by NVIDIA-SMI: 13.2
• OS: Windows 11 25H2
• Source: 1080p MKV
• Output: 3840×2160
• Tested models: Proteus / prob-4, Artemis / amq-13
• Tested output encoders: H.264 NVENC, HEVC Main10 NVENC, AV1 NVENC

Issue

During 1080p → 4K enhancement/upscale, the RTX 5090 appears heavily underutilized.

Preview mode in this build only shows percentage complete, not FPS, so I used NVIDIA-SMI as the main diagnostic signal. During a 30-second preview, GPU SM utilization mostly sits around 25–40% during the active processing phase, with occasional short spikes higher. NVENC and NVDEC usage remain very low.

Example from nvidia-smi dmon -s u during a 30-second preview:

# gpu     sm    mem    enc    dec    jpg    ofa
# Idx      %      %      %      %      %      %
    0     85     14      0     11      0      0
    0     33      6      0     10      0      0
    0     41      7      0      0      0      0
    0     39      7      4      0      0      0
    0     24      4      0      0      0      0
    0     32      5      4      2      0      0
    0     29     10      5      0      0      0
    0     27     10      6     11      0      0
    0     30     11      6      0      0      0
    0     28     10      7      0      0      0
    0     29     10      6      0      0      0
    0     28     10      6      0      0      0
    0     34     12      6     14      0      0

The early 85% SM spike shows the card can be loaded by the workload, but steady-state active processing settles much lower, usually around 25–40%. Encoder utilization is typically only around 0–7%, so NVENC does not appear to be the main bottleneck.

FFmpeg / Topaz command example

Topaz launches its bundled FFmpeg with the custom tvai_up filter. Example from a HEVC Main10 NVENC preview:

"C:\Program Files\Topaz Labs LLC\Topaz Video\ffmpeg" -hide_banner -nostdin -y -nostats
-t 3.019683251259194
-ss 1948.806
-i "C:/Users/adamm/Downloads/test_t00.mkv"
-flush_packets 1
-sws_flags spline+accurate_rnd+full_chroma_int
-filter_complex tvai_up=model=prob-4:scale=0:w=3840:h=2160:preblur=0:noise=0:details=0:halo=0:blur=0:compression=0:estimate=8:blend=0.2:device=0:vram=0.9:instances=0,scale=w=3840:h=2160:flags=lanczos:threads=0
-fflags +flush_packets
-c:v hevc_nvenc
-profile:v main10
-pix_fmt p010le
-b_ref_mode disabled
-tag:v hvc1
-g 30
-preset p5
-tune hq
-rc constqp
-qp 17
-rc-lookahead 20
-spatial_aq 1
-aq-strength 15
-b:v 0
-an
-fps_mode:v passthrough

This confirms that:

tvai_up is targeting GPU device 0
vram=0.9 is being passed
instances=0 is being passed
HEVC output is using hevc_nvenc

What I already tested

Topaz originally used NVENC -preset p7. I modified video-encoders.json so the NVIDIA NVENC profiles use -preset p5 instead.

Topaz honored the change. The FFmpeg command now shows:

-preset p5

instead of:

-preset p7

However, this did not materially fix GPU underutilization. NVENC usage remains low, so the output encoder does not appear to be the limiting factor.

I also tested with grain disabled to reduce encoder and post-processing load. The GPU still did not reach sustained high utilization.

Bundled FFmpeg NVIDIA capability check

Topaz’s bundled FFmpeg exposes the expected NVIDIA encoders:

av1_nvenc
h264_nvenc
hevc_nvenc

It also exposes NVIDIA/CUDA decode and hardware acceleration paths:

av1_cuvid
h264_cuvid
hevc_cuvid
cuda
dxva2
d3d11va
d3d12va

So this does not look like a missing FFmpeg/NVIDIA codec support issue.

Suspicious part

The command uses NVENC for output and sends tvai_up to GPU device 0, but the input side does not appear to explicitly request hardware decode. The command starts with a normal input:

-i "source.mkv"

I do not see pre-input decode flags like:

-hwaccel cuda
-hwaccel d3d11va
-hwaccel_output_format cuda
-c:v h264_cuvid
-c:v hevc_cuvid

That may or may not matter for this workload, but it is worth asking because decode usage is inconsistent and generally low.

The bigger suspicion is the tvai_up scheduling / inference pipeline:

device=0:vram=0.9:instances=0

I assume instances=0 means automatic model instance selection. If so, auto may be choosing too conservatively for a 5090, leaving the card underfed.

Performing similar type of work (upscaling + tone mapping) in different Software, like DaVinci Resolve Studio does allow me to utilize 90% of cards resources (and in result less time).

Questions for Topaz developers

1. Is sustained 25–40% SM utilization expected on an RTX 5090 during 1080p → 4K Proteus/Artemis enhancement?
2. What exactly does instances=0 mean in the tvai_up filter?
3. Is there a supported way to manually tune the tvai_up instance count, worker count, frame queue depth, or pipeline depth?
4. Does vram=0.9 only control VRAM allocation limit, or does it influence processing parallelism?
5. Is Topaz expected to use NVDEC / CUDA / D3D11VA decode automatically, or is CPU/software decode intentional?
6. Are there hidden config options for RTX 40/50-series cards to improve GPU occupancy?
7. Is there a known RTX 50-series / Blackwell optimization issue in Topaz Video 1.5.0 and older?
8. Would a full export behave materially differently from preview mode, or does preview use the same tvai_up pipeline?

Based on the data, NVENC does not appear to be the bottleneck. The card is being used, but the RTX 5090 is not being fed enough sustained AI work. This looks more like a tvai_up inference scheduling / pipeline utilization issue than an encoder issue.

Thanks in advance,

-Adam

Very impresive. This one really puts a workout on the gpu. Everyone wanting to really tax their GPU here's your model. I get memory junction temps I have never seen and I have a very big undervolt on. Also much faster than stralight mini. Although I think I prefer if the sharpness was a little mellowed like SLM I like it alot.

I remember Topaz Video AI being great. Not the fasted but very stable in results. I was able even to run enhancement + HDR in a single pass from 1080>4K.

Today, with newer version of the app (Topaz Video version 1.x) combining presets results in a crash (unrecoverable error). Even running them separately never completes on both PC and Mac.

Specs:

Mac:
M5 Pro + 48G of RAM

PC:
AMD 9950X3D, 64G RAM + RTX 5090

What is your experience with these newer versions?