Hi, I need a video upscaling solution to enhance some old family videos. As much as I’d love to use a FOSS program, I can’t find anything that comes close to Topaz Video AI.
I purchased the license and I’ve been battling with the application for a week trying to get it running on Linux. I’ve tried Wine, Bottles, Lutris, ProtonGE and tinkering with prefixes.
I’ve read on the Topaz community forums that people have got it working previously on Linux, but I’ve been unable to replicate their setup.
On the forums they said it takes a performance hit on Linux, but I’m willing to deal with that to avoid Windows. In the end I may have to purchase a copy of Windows for the first time in over decade to run this app, but I’m not going to give up without a good effort.
Does anyone have any experience with this application or know of a similar application working on Linux? I’m also willing to run older versions of the client just to use it, anything but a Windows install please!
Thank you!
I don’t know about dual boot. Maybe windows has to be installed first. Never tried it.
Tho I know that it is possible during the drive choice, in the windows install, to select an empty space, then clic on the create partition, and there creating a sufficiently big enough partition for windows will create 3 partitions : The boot, reserved and windows. Then just select the main windows partition, and it will auto detect the boot and reserved partition.
However that is happening on an empty drive. I do not know what can happen on a drive where there is already an OS.
Windows 11 can be used, however a oobe command needs to be input at install, without Internet, to not have to use an online account. Tho windows may ask later to connect with an online account.
For an alternative, windows may also be used in a VM. There may also be a way to pass through all the main gpu if needed, and switch between Linux / windows. But I didn’t really use it. So I don’t know where it is or what are the steps.
If the Linux os needs to be used, but the gpu also has to be in the vm, there is a way to split it. Tho the last time I checked (4+ months ago) the project was incompatible with amd due to some kernel/driver stuff. I sadly lost the link to it…
The simplest and dumbest way of getting a Windows VM up and running on Linux is to install VirtualBox and then download one of Microsoft’s own Windows VM developer images. Dead simple. Disadvantages: They’re time-limited, it’s Windows 11, and I don’t know if the Guest Extensions that will allow video acceleration are pre-installed.