And its our fault too. Its easy to see shareholders as rich fatcats telling the CEO to "Put MTX in it and make it slow and grindy!", but if any of us have IRAs or retirement accounts, we are the shareholders too. We want the nest egg we set aside to grow, and that leads to the same problem.
Where is the best place for Debrid users to find 4k content since private trackers are a no go for us?
At first when I saw the title, I thought this was done to stop people who VPN swap stores. The article however paints a different picture: Developers do not want Lira or Pesos since they are too unstable. Doesn't make sense to price a game at X Argentine Peso if next month X is now 30% less valuable. If you have too much inflation, no one wants your currency. Even the Argentine government or presidential candidates said something along the lines of wanting to swap to the USD too.
I am back. So the program for deinterlacing is called Hybrid. Steps to download and use are on this external forum thread here.
Here is the setting for my Sabrina Profile in text form. I did forget to add in scaling that my final output is 1440x1080. I only gave the percentages there.
How much RAM do you need for Topaz? I have access to a 2080 ti 11GB and a 6900 XT, but both systems only have 16GB of RAM.
Before I built this machine, I had 32gb of RAM. You should be fine with 16gb as it isn't that RAM heavy. Just close out anything not Topaz. Topaz is going to 100% your machine (like it does mine) anyways so you do not need anything else up. On that note, I recommend upscaling over night. A 1080p-4k upscale can easily take my machine 7-11 hours to do. You shouldn't have that long since you are only trying to bring something to 1080p, but still be aware your computer may be occupied for a couple of hours.
Are there any specific profiles for Topaz you can share? (I assume it supports something like that?)
Yes there are profiles, but they are better for keeping things persistent between series (like I have a Sabrina profile just for Sabrina) rather than a one size fit all. I do have one I found to upscale BRs to 4k with only slight adjustments. I will post in a follow up comment once I get off work. In general though you want to make slight adjustments, render a few seconds of video, review it, then make more adjustments. When you like it, apply that to different scenes in the same movie (I recommend testing dark/night scenes for sure since those a tricky for AI) to make sure it works, then do the actual upscale.
I will also throw in my Sabrina preset since I managed to use it to upscale some other DvDs with minor tweaking as well. It should provide a good starting place for your DvDs.
Is there something equivalent to Topaz on Linux?
I do not know Linux, sorry :(
The amount of commercial AI upscaling software is rather limited (at least when I started searching this May) and focused towards a Windows and maybe Mac audience. That being said, I know there are AI upscaling software on Github so I would not be surprised if someone ported something like Waifu2x (an open source AI trained to upscale anime) to Linux. As to their quality, I do not know. All I can vouch for is that of the commercial software, Topaz was the best when I bought it in June.
How do I get a DVDRip to look clean without any further compression? By default MakeMKV results in files with these annoying lines, which only disappear after passing it through Handbrake (deinterlace/decomb).
I do have a program to deinterlace (remove the annoying lines) which I will also provide you the name of when I give you my profiles. Topaz can also do decent deinterlacing, but my program is better (and also free).
Will I have better results only upscaling to 720p or does the output resolution not matter in terms of AI artifacts?
It is going to depend on how clear your source is. If your input has a lot of compression artifacts, then that means more guesswork for the AI, and more chances for Topaz to guess wrong. Upscaling to 720p is going to be a lot more successful in general since its borderline HD, but if you have a good source and don't mind the occasional weirdness really only noticeable if you know what to look for, then 1080p is doable for even something like 360p.
One thing I like to do (to the anger of many film purists) is add my own film grain in post. There is something about film grain that helps our brains not notice small errors in the upscaling process. Holy Grain is a very good film grain in 1080 and 4k. Sadly I never found a torrent of it so I ended up spending the cash to buy it myself.
I do a lot of AI upscaling, specifically 1080p to 2160p with Topaz VEAI, and its quite good. That said, it isn't magic. It requires a really good source before hand (avoid anything with film grain or has been compressed) and you do not want to make a giant leap. The key idea is the more you tell the AI to fill in the gaps, the more you will get AI shenanigans. If you have a good clean BR rip, then the AI can bring it up to 4k quite easily.
what is the definitive best way to upscale to 1080p in 2023?
1080p to 4k is quite easy, but getting something to 1080p is massive mountain to overcome. Like I said above, you want to leave as little to the AI as possible. Bringing something sub-HD to HD means entrusting the AI with a lot since there isn't much detail to begin with. My best efforts have been 720p-1080p upscales, but I have had some good results with upscaling the 1990s Sabrina live action series and off the top of my head that is 480p. If you look really hard on those upscales, you can see some strangeness like how words in the back ground are just gibberish or maybe a hand doesn't move exactly right, but it is a vast upgrade over the terrible DvD release with its low resolution and interlacing.
If you are going to upscale, I recommend Topaz VEAI. Its really easy to learn (I went from having no video editing experience to being able to do some competent upscales in three months), its a lifetime license with a year of upgrades, and frankly its the best on the market. The only drawback is like any AI, you need a hefty rig. I am rocking a 3080ti, i9 processor, and 128gb of RAM. Its also very time consuming. My hefty rig can do the upscaling part in about 45 minutes, but even taking the mild tweaking in DaVinci out of the equation, encoding that same episode is going to take a good 11 hours unless you want a 200gb episode on your Hard Drive. (Please do not trust Topaz to encode for you, its a good upscaler but its better to let Handbrake do your encodes). Throw in the deinterlacing I do before I even run it through Topaz, and it can take me 24 hours of work spread out over a week to get an episode done.
If you have any specific questions, I will be happy to answer them.
I wonder if AI could do a number on those watermarks. Have a program like Topaz upscale it a bit and add some noise and grain. That should be enough to destroy however they identify it visually.
Yeah, the mod is trying to strawman the issue. The people are concerned not that the upload wasn't caught instantly, but the fact that the uploader has not been punished.
A user named VitaminX uploaded bitcoin miner attached to an installed for BG3. The admins removed the upload after community protests went viral, but VitaminX is for some reason not banned.
Is the site compromised? Was VitaminX splitting the profits with a rogue admin?
The NFT is not an image. The NFT is the token on the block chain. You can copy an image all you want, but thats not pirating an NFT. NFTs are inherently unpirateable.
A human being with really good/photographic memory can do the same.
The guy said " Private property is a scam, and intellectual property even more so". I think The table comment was a response to the private property part, not intellectual property.
The few copies I found are either 480p rips or no seeders. The best copy is on GRC's digital store (and now on my PC recording it) I hate to say.
Movie is too niche on public trackers. The one 1080p copy I found being seeded looks like it was Handbraked with a CR of 42 on very fast settings. Just compressed to high heaven.
Dungeons and Dragons (2000). Digging up any copies is tough since you get flooded with the '23 reimagining.
May you please translate ELI5 this for me? I have a full attic of DvDs and VHS tapes I need to backup and your method sounds promising.
Thank you very much! That is what I will do then.
Yes, screen capture with an HDMI splitter and capture card.
and grab the video from something like 1337x in a decrypted format.
This was extremely tempting to do, but this is a bit of a niche movie and the only copy I can find on public trackers (the cons of being a debrid user) with any seeds is one of absolutely abysmal quality. Like my 480p DvD version on my shelf is better than that 1080p torrent.
They use PlayReady DRM so a browser extension might be able to pull the decryption key during playback. One could download that same stream from that playback season then use ffmpeg with the pulled key to decrypt.
I will look into this. Thank you :)
Btw can the said movie be played in a browser via say the GRC site? It may be an easier target.
Yes, the movie can be played via browser on the GRC website. I think you gave me an idea, and I want to run it by you to see your thoughts on it. Now I have the hardware to do a WebRip from GRC's website, but avoided that for this movie since I wanted to have the higher bitrate of a WebDL. You got me thinking though, what if I do a "webrip" but done from the GRC app? Since bandwith isn't a factor (I believe) because the 7gb movie is right on my computer, would I not get WebDL quality?
Ages ago I bought a movie off of a certain company's video streaming service. We will call them GRC for short since I do not want to draw the attention of their bots. I downloaded the movie onto my PC via the GRC Windows 11 app, but rather than a simple .mkv like I hoped, I found a folder with 5 different files. Two of them are .mp4s whose names end with audio_5 and video_12 respectively. Two of the files are something called .MPD files. One of them is something called a .DFXP File.
Does anyone know how I turn this mess into something I can play off a Plex or Jellyfin server? The *_video_12.mp4 is 110% encrypted since nothing plays when I run it through VLC.
Edit 1: I am doing my own research as well. An old thread a few years back claimed Aimersoft could break the encryption, but when I tried to use it the program just crapped out on me. If anyone is reading this and doesn't know the answer, you can help out by upvoting the thread. The more eyes that are on here, the higher the odds we can break this DRM together. Thank you :)
Edit 2: I believe the encryption can be removed with ffmpeg, but I will need to get the WV encryption keys first. Does anyone know how to do this?
Final Edit: From my readings in this thread, and research elsewhere, this sort of project looks to be best done in the hands of pros. Intercepting these keys requires a certain degree of skill I do not have. So to answer the thread's titular question: "Bypass it all together." Get a capture card, HDMI splitter, and just record the movie.
Some episodes were even pirated by more people than who legally streamed on HBO
At first this article reads like your typical anti-piracy screed. It rants about how 10x more people watched GoT illegally (confusing them with lost sales) and ends with how downloading movies can get your credit card stolen.
The middle of the article however, destroys the author's case.
>Time Warner (owning company of HBO) CEO Alan Bewkes stated in 2013 how becoming the most illegally streamed show in history was “better than an Emmy” and that torrenting ultimately led to more paid subscriptions.
>“We’ve been dealing with this for 20, 30 years—people sharing subs, running wires down the backs of apartment buildings. Our experience is that it leads to more paying subs. I think you’re right that Game of Thrones is the most pirated show in the world and that’s better than an Emmy.”
The CEO of Time Warner, who knows more about the finances of his own show than ForeverGeek writer Tom Llewellyn, championed piracy and said that it brought them more subscribers rather than nearly destroying the show as the article claims.
Needless to say, Tom forwent a rebuttal in favor of writing how you can get malware from downloading it...
Anti-Piracy Propaganda: 0 Truth: 1
Irdeto – the company that acquired Denuvo back in 2018 – has traditionally been quiet about any criticism thrown at its DRM software, but that's about to...
Everyone calling out Denuvo for being a laggy mess, rejoice! Denuvo is being hurt bad the bad PR enough to launch a full on propaganda war. One such weapon in their arsenal: Giving "trusted" outlets access to both the unDRM and the DRM copies of the game.
Now for anyone who knows game's journalism, you do not bite the hand that feeds you. Your income revolves around being one of the first to the punch when it comes to a review and the only way to be first is to ensure studios like you enough to give you early access copies.
Does anyone here think these outlets are going to say that Denuvo is slow? Not if they ever want that kind of access again! "Trusted" is right. "Trusted" to be in Denuvo's pocket.
After a lengthy $10,000,000 lawsuit, TorGuard has conceded to movie studios and is now banning BitTorrent traffic and is now keeping logs on American users and servers.
A bill that will compel service providers to block IPTV providers, no matter how they are involved, will soon become law in Italy.
In response to plenty of Italians opting to pirate Football (Soccer) matches, and so deny the government taxes on overpriced stadium food, drinks, and the like, the Italian government is making it so they can "order service providers, including network access providers, to disable access to content distributed illegally online, by 'blocking the resolution of domain names using the domain name system (DNS) and blocking the routing of network traffic to IP addresses uniquely intended for illicit activities.'"