I just researched 10 different AI upscalers today and tested Real-ESRGAN, Nomos2, and Topaz. Here's what I found. -Topaz is the best overall. Better at not over-smoothing out skin/faces, while still adding enough detail to backgrounds/objects. Good compromise overall. It seems to know not to make blurry things sharp, not to remove detail from faces, and knows what exactly to add more detail to. -Real-ESRGAN is better than Topaz for making everything sharper including objects and backgrounds, except makes skin and faces super smooth that ruins the entire video and makes it unusable unless you want all actors to look like they have crazy Instagram filters on. I used the method of running the exe + the .param and .bin model files using Python to make it run 5 times faster than using the .pth checkpoint file with PyTorch. Using PyTorch/.pth file has a strength setting though, where you could decrease it from 1.0 to less to tone down the smoothness. -Instead of going that route, I switched to Nomos2 using the .pth checkpoint model file with PyTorch. It kept the skin/faces still very detailed and only make it about 10% smoother -- about 1 small notch worse than Topaz. Sharpness/details for background/objects were between Topaz and Real-ESRGAN except Topaz added more detail to hair. It fixed up some of the detail when you zoom all of the way in but isn't quite as smooth/detailed as Real-ESRGAN. It messed up detail with ears by making it more pixily, one small part with hair by adding more grid-like lines, and made an object that was blurry too detailed where it looked weird. All 3 also make the backgrounds and objects that are supposed to be blurry/have bokeh more detailed. Real-ESRGAN did this the most, Nomos2 did 2nd most, and Topaz did it least. This is super annoying from a filmmaking perspective, since distant objects are supposed to be blurry. I would rate them: Topaz 9/10 Nomos2 8/10 Original 6.5/10 Real-ESRGAN 4.5/10 Topaz's API is pretty expensive and Nomos2 is free, so I'm going with Nomos2. When playing back all the Topaz, Namos2, and original videos, all 3 look good to use. Sometimes the 720p original video looks better since I like certain parts to be blurry, but the upscaled ones look sharper when zoomed in or watched on a large TV. Nomos also converted it from 720p to 5k and increased the file size by 2.88x. Topax converted it from 720p to 2k (wouldn't allow 5k) and increased the file size by 2.09x. More on reddit.com

If you mean by free software, sure there are options. But you'll spend a lot of time to do that, anyways. u can try https://github.com/xinntao/Real-ESRGAN or similar tools More on reddit.com

I'm the guy that wrote https://free.upscaler.video . I get why you're looking for a free upscaler tool, but as an explanation, AI Upscaling requires AI, and that usually requires GPUs, and because of the AI boom, GPUs are at a premium and crazy expensive. Add on top of that the fact that video takes a lot of processing power - if you've ever tried rendering a 1 hour video with Adobe Premeire Pro you'd understand. I would guess that a regular person who just wants a video upscaled would be looking at demos of AI upscaling that are super high quality. To obtain that level of quality, you need to do a lot of AI processing and you either need a GPU yourself and then use something like Topaz, or (2) You can use a cloud service, upload your video and get it upscaled. If I wanted to run a cloud service to upscale a 1080p movie to 4k, it'd cost me several dollars in server costs just for that one video. My free upscaling tool gets ~20,000 visitors a month, and while I don't track information about the videos (you can see exactly what I am tracking, I shared the source code here: https://github.com/sb2702/free-ai-video-upscaler/ ). , if each person had an hour long 1080p video, I'd be spending $1M per year out of pocket just so that people can have a free upscaling tool. The idea behind free.upscaler.video was that if you can accept lower upscaling quality, you don't need a GPU, and it'll still do something (it's noticeable for like gaming videos or cartoons) but because it's happening on your computer, it's fast and it's free and I don't ask anyone to sign in. The downside is, the quality isn't very good compared to like Topaz. But again, if I wanted to give good upscaling quality for free, why would I spend hundreds of thousands in my own pocket for nothing. I have a family, and I'm also running my own startup and this was like a side project for me. I'm also likely one of the few people that's actually spent time on low-level AI upscaling processing to make it faster/cheaper/usable without a GPU, but that same skillset has far more valuable applications ( https://medium.com/vectorly/building-a-more-efficient-background-segmentation-model-than-google-74ecd17392d5 ) and I sold my last company during the pandemic because we had ultra-efficient AI software that we were selling to video conferencing companies ( https://medium.com/vectorly/how-vectorly-joined-hopin-93dffdb1acc4 ). There was literally no incentive for me to create free.upscaler.video , I did it to be nice / give back / because I knew people were looking for free upscaling software. I've thought about building a paid service alternative to free.upscaler.video that would cover the server rendering costs enough to get someone fast, good-quality no-frills upscaling, but like it'd have to be a paid service, a free + no-nonsense + good quality system would be uneconomical. As a user you don't normally view it like this because there are plenty of AI tools out there that are free and also use a lot of GPU processing, but it's not dissimilar to the compute needed for say crypto mining. If you wouldn't expect there to be free tools that just give you free crypto, no questions asked, then you can understand the economics of why there aren't that many simple, no-nonsense free AI upscaling tools even though you might feel like there should be. It's in the same category of compute as crypto-mining, but because we're so used to free AI tools, you don't view it in the same category. ----------------- Update - July 27 ----------------------- I don't know why I never checked the logs on this, but apparently the vast majority of uploads on free.upscaler.video are very short videos (under 60 seconds), I assumed most people were uploading like 30 minute or 60 minute videos. None of that changes how expensive large AI networks are computationally, to get better results you'd likey need to wait 10x the duration of your video at the minimum, but the user experience definitely depends on whether you are waiting 2 minutes for a 10 second video, vs 10 hours for a 1 hour video. Sorry if this sounds stupid or obvious, it' s precisely because I don't ask anyone to log in, and don't track anything besides the video metadata (Resolution, length) that I have no idea why people are upscaling or what people are upscaling, I don't have servers that upscale, it's all being done on your computer. My guess is that a lot of that is AI generated footage, and I can 100% understand the desire to upscale that from 720p to 4K. Because those videos are so incredibly short, I think maybe I can build some AI networks that are 100x bigger, and yeah most computers would struggle with that / it'd be pretty slow, but for people with very short videos (the majority) that is probably fine? I will train some much bigger networks and release them in free.upscaler.video , and in the open source repository that powers it https://github.com/sb2702/websr/ More on reddit.com

An AI upscale won't match a native 4K release, a good upscaler can enhance sharpness, details, and reduce compression artifacts. Recommended AI Upscaling Software: Topaz Video AI – One of the best AI upscalers available. It uses machine learning to upscale videos while preserving details. It’s a bit pricey but delivers excellent results. Winxvideo AI – A solid option that is easy to use and can upscale videos to 4K. It's a budget-friendly option. AVCLabs Video Enhancer AI – AI-based upscaler that improves sharpness and reduces noise. It’s a good mid-tier option. DVDFab Video Enhancer AI – Specializes in upscaling DVD and Blu-ray content while using AI to refine details. Neural.love – An online AI upscaler that can improve video resolution, though it might not be the best for long movies. More on reddit.com