Noiseman Sound Insect - Enhanced 1080p [AV1]

This is a re-encode of the 1080p Amazon web-DL, further processed with Topaz Video Enhance AI (VEAI) for anti-aliasing, compression artifact removal, and detail enhancement. Download the "Comparisons" folder to A-B the difference. It also includes English subtitles and the DVD's 5.1 audio track. My goal was to produce a currently-best-possible version of this personal-fave anime short, and to experiment with AV1 "grain synthesis". I aimed to clean up the image rather than alter it. For the initial enhancement, I produced a pass with light processing (anti-aliasing, compression artifact removal, and light denoising), and a second, more aggressive pass with detail recovery and sharpening. I then blended the two results together. As I worked on this, a major new version of VEAI unexpectedly arrived, so I performed the two passes again with the updated models, which produced a mixed improvement. The final result is a blend of all four passes. I then wrote a custom film grain profile that, to my eyes, matched the original. Even though Noiseman is an apparent digital production, the Amazon web-DL shows film grain in keyframes, providing a reference. AV1 is able to synthesize grain on playback, which is vastly preferrable to subjecting the grain to video compression. The result is an uncannily high-fidelity film grain for otherwise compressed video, which helps to mask subtle artifacts and "gel" the final product. Enjoy.