What Exactly Is This Video Enhancing AI?

GIGO – QUALITY IS KING

In my case, I use a Neural Net-trained application called Topaz Labs Video Enhance AI. The application has been loaded with several AI models that can be applied to source materials of various quality with varying results.

Almost as a case-in-point of why “Artificial Intelligence” is a misleading term, the classic programming adage GIGO – Garbage In, Garbage Out – really applies here. The application itself is not actually intelligent. It can’t look at a piece of footage like we can and think, “oh, that’s a ball. I imagine if it were bigger, the curve around the edge would look like this and the light would fall across it like that”. It’s still software, and software is stupid. It can only do what it’s been specifically programmed to do – it’s just that in this case, it hasn’t been entirely programmed by people.

The result is that you’ll always get better upscale results from higher-quality source footage. Lucky for us that Wing Commander IV’s FMV was all filmed on high-grade 35mm film, under professional lighting and, crucially, eventually released as DVD video. While the resolution of the DVD footage isn’t up to modern standards, the quality and visual fidelity of the footage is relatively high. So GIGO doesn’t apply – our low resolution footage is quite high quality.