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Detailed comparisons of Real-ESRGAN anime video models against other popular anime upscaling solutions.

AnimeVideo-v3 Updates

Released on April 24, 2022, RealESRGAN-AnimeVideo-v3 includes significant improvements:
  • Better naturalness: More natural-looking results that preserve the original art style
  • Fewer artifacts: Reduced visual artifacts and anomalies in upscaled output
  • More faithful to original colors: Better color preservation and accuracy
  • Better texture restoration: Improved detail and texture recovery
  • Better background restoration: Enhanced background detail and clarity

Compared Methods

RealESRGAN-AnimeVideo-v3 is compared against the following anime upscaling methods:

waifu2x

Real-CUGAN

RealESRGAN-AnimeVideo-v3

  • Our latest anime video upscaling model
  • Achieves better results with faster inference speed

Visual Comparisons

You may need to zoom in or click images to compare fine details. The images shown are resized and cropped patches from the original outputs.Full resolution inputs and outputs are available on Google Drive.

More Natural Results and Better Background Restoration

RealESRGAN-AnimeVideo-v3 produces more natural-looking results with superior background detail recovery compared to waifu2x and Real-CUGAN.
Inputwaifu2xReal-CUGANRealESRGAN
AnimeVideo-v3
Inputwaifu2xReal-CUGANRealESRGAN
Inputwaifu2xReal-CUGANRealESRGAN
Inputwaifu2xReal-CUGANRealESRGAN

Fewer Artifacts and Better Detailed Textures

RealESRGAN-AnimeVideo-v3 produces cleaner results with fewer artifacts and better preservation of fine textures and details.
Inputwaifu2xReal-CUGANRealESRGAN
AnimeVideo-v3
Inputwaifu2xReal-CUGANRealESRGAN
Inputwaifu2xReal-CUGANRealESRGAN
Inputwaifu2xReal-CUGANRealESRGAN
Inputwaifu2xReal-CUGANRealESRGAN

Additional Comparisons

More examples demonstrating RealESRGAN-AnimeVideo-v3’s superior performance across various anime content types.
Inputwaifu2xReal-CUGANRealESRGAN
AnimeVideo-v3
Inputwaifu2xReal-CUGANRealESRGAN
Inputwaifu2xReal-CUGANRealESRGAN
Inputwaifu2xReal-CUGANRealESRGAN
Inputwaifu2xReal-CUGANRealESRGAN

Performance Benchmarks

PyTorch Implementation

Inference speed comparison on NVIDIA V100 GPU. Times represent model inference only and exclude I/O operations.
All measurements are frames per second (fps) for model inference time only. I/O time is not included.
GPUInput Resolutionwaifu2xReal-CUGANRealESRGAN-AnimeVideo-v3
V1001921 x 1080 (Full HD)-3.4 fps10.0 fps
V1001280 x 720 (HD)-7.2 fps22.6 fps
V100640 x 480 (SD)-24.4 fps65.9 fps

Key Takeaways

  • Full HD (1080p): RealESRGAN-AnimeVideo-v3 is ~3x faster than Real-CUGAN
  • HD (720p): RealESRGAN-AnimeVideo-v3 is ~3x faster than Real-CUGAN
  • SD (480p): RealESRGAN-AnimeVideo-v3 is ~2.7x faster than Real-CUGAN
RealESRGAN-AnimeVideo-v3 achieves superior visual quality while maintaining significantly faster inference speeds across all resolutions.

ncnn Implementation

Benchmarks for the ncnn (Neural Compute) implementation are planned for future releases. The ncnn version provides:
  • Optimized CPU inference
  • Vulkan GPU acceleration support
  • Mobile device compatibility
  • Lower memory footprint

Download Full Resolution Samples

For detailed examination of the quality differences, download the full resolution input and output images from the Google Drive folder.

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