They could have easily crammed the Steam Deck full of stuff to make it hard to use for piracy - locking down everything, making it usable only to play games you legitimately own, force you to go through who knows what hoops in order to play games on it. That’s what Nintendo or Apple or most other companies do....
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.
I use a seedbox to run qBittorrent with Jackett, and have a bunch of sources on there. I know there are other methods, but that works for me and I’m comfortable with it....
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 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.
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.
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.
I’ve seen a few throughout my life at friend’s houses as a kid during the age of Limewire. Typically they were pretty good quality even though you’d see the odd person get up from their seat or hardcoded subtitles. Lately I’ve been curious about the history behind them and how they came to be....
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.
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....
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.
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.
Hi guys, first of all, I fully support Piracy. But Im writing a piece on my blog about what I might considere as “Ethical Piracy” and I would like to hear your concepts of it....
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.
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...
I think you might be onto something. VLC can open the .mpd files, it has an encrypted black screen but it shows me the movie’s 1h47m runtime on the time slider, so the .mpds and the .mp4s are for sure connected. Handbrake however doesn’t know what to do with the .mpds, and whenever I try and put the .mp4s into Handbrake it just shows me grey fuzz on the previews.
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.
There seems to be a sub-group of salty dogs that sail without protection. They are often US saying they get lots of letters from ISP but nothing comes of it, lately. I’m one to hedge on the side of caution and will be continuing to use VPN but just wondering how much this is just a loud minority and how much truth is to it?
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....
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....
Still sucks when the game you want has it and you have to try and find a inferior way to scratch the itch with a different game. As a paying customer for 100% of my library, you guys get the better edition. It may still have Denuvo on it, but at least you didn’t pay for it.
I feel like the Steam Deck is the best proof of Gabe Newell's quote that "piracy is a service issue."
They could have easily crammed the Steam Deck full of stuff to make it hard to use for piracy - locking down everything, making it usable only to play games you legitimately own, force you to go through who knows what hoops in order to play games on it. That’s what Nintendo or Apple or most other companies do....
Have 4K TV show torrents entirely disappeared from public trackers?
I use a seedbox to run qBittorrent with Jackett, and have a bunch of sources on there. I know there are other methods, but that works for me and I’m comfortable with it....
Steam: New Pricing Needed For Argentina and Turkey by November 20th (steamcommunity.com)
I suspect piracy will become increasingly popular in these countries
What is the current state of the art of upscaling DVD-only releases?
I know this technically doesn’t really qualify as !piracy, but I figured if anybody on Lemmy would know, it’s you guys....
What's the history behind cam rips of movies and where have they typically came from?
I’ve seen a few throughout my life at friend’s houses as a kid during the age of Limewire. Typically they were pretty good quality even though you’d see the odd person get up from their seat or hardcoded subtitles. Lately I’ve been curious about the history behind them and how they came to be....
Is 1337 no longer safe?
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....
Japan Decides That Copyright Doesn't Apply to AI Training (technomancers.ai)
should you pirate an image or an nft
probably a stupid question but is it worth the hassle just for a webp image unless it is to piss of a company or a person then i see a reason why
What would you considered "Ethical Piracy"
Hi guys, first of all, I fully support Piracy. But Im writing a piece on my blog about what I might considere as “Ethical Piracy” and I would like to hear your concepts of it....
Do you store all your media? And how?
For a piracy-oriented community I’m surprised this isn’t discussed as much....
How do I strip "Giant River Company" encryption from purchased movie?
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...
VPN or Not?
There seems to be a sub-group of salty dogs that sail without protection. They are often US saying they get lots of letters from ISP but nothing comes of it, lately. I’m one to hedge on the side of caution and will be continuing to use VPN but just wondering how much this is just a loud minority and how much truth is to it?
Game of Thrones was nearly "destroyed" by pirates illegally streaming HBO content (www.forevergeek.com)
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....
Denuvo is looking to push pro-DRM propaganda (www.techspot.com)
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....