IME Engine (Intelligent Media Enhancement Engine)

IME Engine is a high-performance Windows desktop application designed to restore and upscale older video formats entirely offline on your local GPU.

Perfect for processing DVDs, VOB sequences, VHS/analog captures, compressed clips, and legacy MP4 files. IME Engine preserves the original frame rate, duration, audio track, and aspect ratio (pillarboxing 4:3 sources instead of stretching them) to keep your media historically accurate.

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✨ Key Features

• 🔒 100% Offline & Private: Your videos never leave your machine. No accounts, no subscriptions, and zero cloud processing.
• ⚡ Local GPU Acceleration: Utilizes your NVIDIA, AMD, or Intel DirectX 12 graphics card via DirectML for maximum performance.
• 🛡️ Smart Process Isolation: Uses an isolated worker process for FFmpeg and AI model inference. If a worker hits a snag, the user interface stays responsive and active.
• 📊 Live Preview & Metrics: Monitor upscaling in real-time with an active frame preview, progress bar, speed (FPS), Estimated Time of Arrival (ETA), worker logs, and VRAM usage.
• ⏸️ Total Control: Pause, resume, or cancel jobs safely with automatic cleanup of incomplete files.
• 📼 VOB Sequence Detection: Automatically detects VOB sequences and applies deinterlacing, deblocking, and mild denoise filters before upscaling.

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🚀 Getting Started

1. Download & Install

1. Go to the Releases page and download the latest '.exe' installer.
2. Run the installer to install the app on your Windows PC.
3. Open the app immediately via the created shortcut.

2. Basic Workflow

1. Load Video: Drag and drop or browse to select your source video (supports MP4, VOB, MKV, AVI, MOV, WebM, MPEG, MTS, and more).
2. Select Output Resolution: Choose between Auto, 720p, or 1080p.
3. Choose Your GPU: Select which graphics card you want to process the video on from the dropdown menu.
4. Choose a Restoration Profile:
   • IME Engine Faithful: The stable option. Best for maintaining original details, temporal stability, and reducing noise.
   • IME Engine Detail: The advanced option. Adds a RealESRGAN detail layer with adjustable profiles (Fast, Medium, High) to reconstruct high-frequency details.
5. Enhance: Click Start and watch the real-time preview and progress metrics.

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🔍 Troubleshooting & Support

If you run into issues such as:

• DirectML AI runtime missing
• can't open file '...app.asar...': No such file or directory
• FFmpeg missing or FFprobe missing

Please refer to our comprehensive Troubleshooting Guide for quick and easy fixes.

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🛠️ Developer Setup & Building from Source

If you want to contribute or build the application from source code:

Prerequisites

• Windows 10 or 11
• Node.js (v16+)
• Python (v3.10+)
• A DirectX 12 capable GPU and driver

Installation

1. Clone the repository:

   git clone https://github.com/yourusername/ime-upscaler.git
   cd "ime-upscaler"

2. Install Node dependencies:

   npm install

3. Set up the Python virtual environment and dependencies:

   python -m venv .venv
   .\.venv\Scripts\activate
   pip install -r requirements-worker.txt

Running the App locally

To start the Electron development window:

npm run dev

Preparing Local AI Models

The models utilized are already pre-downlaoded. No preparation is needed.

Running Tests

Verify both JavaScript and Python worker modules:

npm run check
npm run check:worker
npm test
.\.venv\Scripts\python.exe -m unittest discover -s test\integration

Packaging a New Installer

To build a production setup executable (dist/IME-Engine-X.Y.Z-Setup.exe):

npm run dist

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📄 License & Attribution

Copyright 2026 neonatro.

IME Engine is distributed under the MIT License.

Third-party dependencies (NanoVSR, RealESRGAN, ONNX Runtime/DirectML, and FFmpeg) operate under their respective licenses. Please see THIRD_PARTY_NOTICES.md for full details. If you distribute custom builds of this application, you must include notices for any bundled binaries or weights.