I recently had a request on Fiverr to try to shaper up an out-of-focus video. I thought I might be able to do it using Topaz Labs Video Enhance AI. After several attempts, I concluded that this was not the right tool for the job. While it did have the ability to sharpen video, even on the highest settings it was not sufficient.

Instead, Ida at Topaz Labs support suggested converting the video in to individual images and processing them through their Topaz Labs Sharpen AI product. After a number of attempts to convert the video to individual images, I ended up using the open source FFmpeg program.

Convert movie to images

Using the option “-i” to specify the input video file, and “-vf” for the video filter with the options “fps” for how many frames per second to process and finally the output filename format.

For fps, if you want to capture every frame of the video, set this to the frames per second of the video file. In this example, the original video was 25 frames per section:

ffmpeg.exe -i VIDEO.MP4 -vf fps=25 out%d.png

For the output filename, you can use C printf-style variables such as %d so it knows where to place the number in the filename. Above, that would produce “out1.png”, “out2.png”, and so on.

Once you have all the frame images, they can be imported in to Sharpen AI and processed. This will produce new output filenames adding “-SharpenAI-Focus” or similar to the filename. You can then reassemble those individual images back in to a movie.

Convert images to movie

The option “-framerate” is used to generate that many frames per second in the new movie file. It should match the -fps value used above.

“-i” is used to tell FFmpeg what filenames to look for. It will also use the C printf-style parameters. Since Sharpen AI takes “out1.png” and creates a new file called “out1-SharpenAI-Focus.png” (when using the focus mode), I needed to match that filename.

The first video I created would not play, and I found setting “-pix_fmt” would make a playable MP4 file.

ffmpeg.exe -framerate 25 -i out%d-SharpenAI-Focus.png -pix_fmt yuv420p NEWVIDEO.MP4

There are other options that can be used to set quality levels, so I may revise this article in the future when I use this technique the next time.

Until then…