Site duplicate rules as applied to AI enhancement
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I'm seeing quite a few more AI enhanced videos uploaded here, and I wondered how the site rules regarding duplicate content will apply? Per item 2 in the rules, a second enhanced and/or upscaled video would likely be considered a duplicate, as it likely "has the same format and similar size."
The problem, though, is that there may be considerable differences between two enhanced versions. If we don't allow duplicates, then a really awful enhanced version, uploaded first, might be the only version allowed. But if we allow duplicates, then we could see a dozen different enhanced versions with limited ability for the rest of us to determine which of them to download, not to mention the site clutter.
As far as I know, this isn't a problem yet, and it may not be one for months, if ever. Just wondering if the rules might change as video enhancing tools become cheaper and more widely used.
Related: I wouldn't mind having a rating system specifically for the quality of the video rip/enhancement. I've seen quite a few videos where I wanted to give the content 5 stars, but the rip or enhancement 1 star, and vice versa. Just something to think about.
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It's bogus ...
AI enhanced upscaled, They're doing it wrong ...
I just ignored those, it looks like 3D animated due to jumping to high from the source ...
incorrect resolution ex: 1232x960 [1280x720], aspect ratio 4:3 [fix] blank bar on side corner and cannot be stretched out on full screen ...
In addition large amount of data and a memory hog ... -
@john32123666 The vast majority of upscaled content that is being shared on here ranges from pretty poor to downright terrible. It's at epidemic levels these days and since Topaz made their software more basic and cheaper there are users with no experience thinking they are suddenly digital video experts. I blame how Topaz are advertising their software, as some kind of magic solution than can turn anything to HD or 4K, when in reality it can do nothing of the sort. Most of what I have seen on here has been destroyed by the software (by the person using the software in fact) and it looks like anime or an oil painting.
I've been working with digital video for almost two decades and started using AI enhancement as a part of my workflow for some restoration jobs about 2 years ago. It's a fantastic tool when used correctly, but unfortunately I rarely see it used correctly here, I stopped sharing my own AI enhanced videos some time ago because I was embarrassed to be associated with the "AI Enhanced" label. I assume most users see that and scroll on by.
Lately when I see a bad AI enhanced video, I try and get the original version seeding again (if I can find it), because in most cases the original is considerably better. -
@drekkin AI enhancement is quite useful to restore old VHS tapes that lose their magnetic integrity over time. OLD VHS recordings have washed out colors, and lack sharpness and contrast. The AI software restores a lot of that. Also, VHS recordings were often recorded in long play mode because back then, VHS tapes cost a FORTUNE! The AI software can make videos that looked bad to begin with much better.
There is also the problem of platforms such as Facebook and Youtube automatically reducing quality to make files smaller and save bandwidth. AI software can restore a lot of what was lost.
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@lololulu19 No, no, no, no, no. AI models have no function to restore colour. They use learned algorithms to remove noise and interpolate pixels to improve fidelity - that is all. With a poor quality source video, like a VHS transfer, they just cannot differentiate between noise and picture and will remove detail and enhance noise.
Anyone who wants to restore old VHS tapes will need a professional grade cassette player to digitise the tapes and should be using conventional software to stabilise the picture and balance the colour, and to fix VHS issues like signal noise, haloing, ringing etc. As a final step AI software can be used, but in most cases VHS picture quality is too low res for AI processing to be effective and the processed video comes out either looking like anime, or like an oil painting left out in the rain. -
@drekkin Maybe I was using different software.. but I have used software that can change the sharpness, contrast, saturation, hue, brightness, resolution, bitrate, etc.
The trick is.. use as few tools as possible, because every tool has a side effect on the overall quality.
I agree with you that very few people convert videos properly. What they manage doing mostly is to drastically increase the file size without any increase in quality!
I stopped spending hours taking old videos and giving them new life because almost everything I upload gets taken down within minutes. I wonder how many other uploaders are having their uploads nuked before they ever see the light of day. I have mentioned dozens of times.. that if some video really has a legitimate DMCA status (they don't), that the video taken down should still be listed in the DEAD section, so that uploaders don't waste everyone's time by trying to upload forbidden files over and over again. Pornolab does this. For instance, if I was to post the video "Bill Gates & Mark Zuckerburg Share a Double-Ended Dildo".. and that video got taken down, the LISTING should still be there - grayed out or otherwise not downloadable - so other people don't also attempt to upload the same forbidden file. -
@lololulu19 said in Site duplicate rules as applied to AI enhancement:
I have mentioned dozens of times..
Yes, you certainly have. I'm curious why. Nothing's going to change.
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So 90% of the AI "enhanced" videos posted here are, to put it charitably, not very good (but see Sturgeon's Law), that still leaves open the question of posting multiple upscaled versions of the same video and whether the site's rules will (or should) allow it.
Personally, I have uploaded a few videos that I used AI tools on. I like to think that I did a reasonable job and I'm pretty happy with them even now. But something like 90% of the videos I've played around with, I wasn't able to come up with an enhanced version that I liked. And the ones I posted here each took quite a few tries to get right.
For now, anyway, I think I'm going to stick to doing minor cleanup on some older videos, without trying to upscale them, and will mostly keep them to myself. Given my lack of expertise, the current state of the tools, and the amount of time it takes to do even a basic cleanup, it's too much work for too little reward to do more than that.
Alas, my dreams of pristine 1080p versions of the old classics have vanished, destroyed by the harsh light of reality. Those vendors sure know how to make enticing demo videos, don't they?
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I would assume that the site administrators don't place a DMCA-removed video in the dead section because a) it would still be on the site, b) it would be trivially easy to revive it, and c) there currently is no way to tell the difference between "DMCA removed; don't revive this" and "Nobody is currently seeding this but you are free to do so."
There actually is a highly cynical fourth reason, but I'll refrain from pointing that one out.
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@NF16 I don't know how you got yourself into this matter coming from the thread's subject but... DMCA-removed torrents just get removed from the tracker system, the page and torrent itself still exists but they cannot be reached by regular members, if you can see a dead torrent it sure is just a regular dead torrent. Additionally there is a DMCA category that only mods can see, so you can be sure that no one will bump and freeleech a reported torrent by mistake.
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Another site that I look in on occasionally has a policy that upscaled videos are prohibited. I suspect the reason is pretty simple: that most such videos suck and they don't want the hassle of wading through the 99% that suck to find the 1% that are okay.
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Lovely ... someone posted a 1971 SD video upscaled to 4K. Good grief.
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@NF16 said in Site duplicate rules as applied to AI enhancement:
1971 SD video upscaled to 4K
I saw that listed. I notice that the "upscaled" version file is the same size as the original, which seems odd.
From the sample still images, it looks like there's an improvement in quality, but video can be different. I wish upscalers would include short samples of the same material from the original video and and upscaled version to allow comparison. 30 seconds would be enough.
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@NF16 If we\re looking at the same post, it's probably the worst example of an upscaled video on this site so far. You can see from the preview images that the poster is using terrible quality source videos that are too low res and too noisy to waste time and effort on, and they are upscaling them way, way beyond what would be possible even with a very good quality source video.
Perhaps they are using a very small, or low res screen to work on and are not seeing the results of their work in full resolution. Because I am at a loss to understand how they can look at their finished video and think it looks good, and indeed good enough to share with other people. -
@drekkin The one I saw was posted today, and is now "unregistered." I downloaded the upscaled version and it's watchable, although I don't have the original to compare. The original was shot on film, with evident dust, fibres, and scratches. That probably plays havoc with software.
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@eobox91103 The quality of transfers from film to digital varies drastically. Original film, with the right equipment, can be digitised nowadays in 4K, and major Hollywood studios have the means to re-digitise their old films where the old reels still exist and have been stored properly. The problem is that digitising film is an expensive process and it's no longer financially viable for any porn producer to re-digitise old movies given the minimal return that they would make on them. So most of what we have was digitised back in the 1980s for VHS, and the same versions were used for DVD. There's a few movies which were re-digitised in the 1990s for DVD but these are pretty rare.
AI software can be used to enhance movies recorded on film, if they were professionally digitised in good quality, and if the software is used sparingly. There will always be film grain on anything recorded on film, and the problem most people upscaling make it trying to remove that grain, which takes all the detail from the video too. -
@drekkin Interesting point. I think trying to enhance something scraped off VHS would be a real problem.
Digitising from large format film can indeed produce good results. There are lots of older films that have been re-scanned with good results--even "Wizard of Oz" from 1939 looks good. But as you say, it's an expensive process, and not cost-effective for 1970's porn to be done that way.
I appreciate the good intentions of people re-processing older porn films. It doesn't always produce the best results, but it's nice that someone would go to the trouble and then share with others.
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@drekkin : I saw two of them today, if I recall correctly, one of which was 480p and one of which was 360p (!), both of which were claimed to have been upscaled to 4K. I didn't bother to download either. (I can't find the 360p one in a search just now, so either I imagined it or someone got smart and removed it.)
Seriously, what are these people thinking? A 480p video has roughly 300K pixels. A 4K video has around 8.3 million pixels, which means that the enhancement process has to add 8 million pixels to the original 300K. How can any tool, no matter how sophisticated, do that well, particularly if the original was a fuzzy 1970s video?
Oh, well... I've done enough ranting about this. Either this will become a problem, in which case the site admins will take care of it, or it will remain a fringe activity and I'll just ignore those videos.
I do admit to being amused by the ones that say "AI Enhanced by Me" or "AI Enhanced by Myself." Because that matters?
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@NF16 You weren't imagining it, I saw one which was a highly compressed 360p file upscaled to "4K", complete with melting faces and anime backgrounds. I guess the person who is making these videos doesn't understand the technical side of what they are doing, and they are just using the presets in Topaz VEAI and expecting the result to be what the preset promised, and not actually looking at the result. When I was testing the recommendations were not to upscale beyond 150% or one step above the source video, two steps in the case of a high res source video. That limitation definitely isn't being communicated to end users of the software.
To answer your initial question, the duplicate rules are sufficiently vague to allow upscaled versions. It's really not clear what they are referring to when they say "format".
I would take it to mean the file container, like mp4 o4 mkv, but they are allowing users to share amateur re-encodes of videos that are already shared in the same resolution and in the same format, because they have used a different codec (which is madness to anyone who understand how video encoding works), so it seems to be interpreted pretty broadly. In the same way "size" could refer to the file size, or the resolution, and again there are multiple versions of the same video, in the same format, with similar file sizes, but different resolutions, and these are allowed. So I would assume that any upscaled version has been sufficiently altered from the original for it to be considered a different video. Then again it may just depend on which mod gets the duplicate report and how they interpret the rules.
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Another site that I look in on occasionally has a policy that upscaled videos are prohibited.
Supposed too ...
as this ruin and spoiled the work from the studios ...
Unless the source enhancement/upscaling coming from the studio itself ...
