I’m looking to upscale a lot of video. I know Handbrake has an upscaler, but apparently that’s a bad one. I’ve been using Video2x, but even with an RTX 3080 and Ryzen 9 5900x (I’m not sure which it uses), it takes like a day and a half to upscale a 10-minute video, and I was wondering if there were faster ways to do it? Even at lower resolutions Video2x makes it look very well done. With all this ai stuff being exponentially developed, there’s no doubt other consumer-grade software for it now, right?

Edit: I haven’t tried Topaz, apparently that’s the best, but I’ve tried the free trial of other suggestions, and I find Video2x to be by far the best option anyway. If I don’t like the speed I can switch to a faster algorithm. It’s all open source and free, so consumer upscalers really need to up their game.

This is Interstellar on 4K - YouTube

The quality of this video is just something else and i wanted to know is there is any way i could upscale videos for free.

I am looking to upscale a 240p video into 480p or higher

What should I use?

I'm building a quick, free, no-nonsense tool for upscaling videos with AI right in the browser. There's no software to install, and no registration or sign up required - just input a video, and all the upscaling work is down on your own computer by the browser:

https://free.upscaler.video/

Demo here: https://youtu.be/wUuFJpo8Hfo

It's 100% open source, you can see the source code yourself: https://github.com/sb2702/free-ai-video-upscaler

I couldn't charge if I wanted to, as anyone can take the source code and host it themselves.

It right now does a better on Animated content than "Real Life" video but I'm working on porting more powerful AI models into the tool.

I built it because from previous experience as a casual user who just wants to upscale a few videos you have around, it's surprisingly frustrating. There are paid tools like Topaz Labs which are excellent but also overkill for non-professional work, or open source projects like Video2X which require a bunch of setup & config.

Some new advances in the latest browsers (like Webcodecs and WebGPU) now allow websites to do much more powerful stuff than in the past, so I wouldn't suprised if more, powerful video-editing tools come out soon that are also free & browser based.

Topaz seems to be the best overall (but paid), and I have heard good things about FFmpeg, but does anyone with more experience have any other/better recommendations?

Looking to blow up some videos to higher resolutions, but don't have the budget to pay for any Topaz Labs product, nor do I want to sail the high seas for one.

Any suggestions?

TLDR; What settings should I actually use to properly upscale a CG animated video?

I have two sample videos with two different resolutions, a video that has 720x480p. I tried up scaling it to 1280x720p using Topaz Video AI v3 however, I ended up having black screens or borders on the edges as a result. Is there a way to solve this issue?

Below are the comparison samples of the issues I've experienced.

The same content but one that is downloaded somewhere off the internet.

Working on a surprise birthday gift for my grandfather... we have lots of photos around the same time to work with.

Hi guys, sorry if it's a repetitive question, but i'm looking for a software to upscale the quality and frame rate of videos. I know there is options like topaz video enhancer or flowframes, but i wan't to be sure before spend money for one.

I'll be frank, I've been trying to find a decent free video enhancer for weeks to upscale some old 360/480p videos I have on an old flash drive. But I can't seem to find any that works (or one I can fully understand it's features).

I tried looking things up online, but it's either the high praised programs you need to pay for (Which things are very tight atm) or "free" programs that don't do a thing unless you pay for the full version.

I know there are programs like video2x and I tried those, but despite following a guide I didn't get the best results either.

Anyone know a good free video enhancer that can boost the quality to 1080P or at least a very cheap one?

I’m trying to upscale an old movie to 4K. The quality as it stands is good, but I want to go higher. I don’t want an AI system, because it makes the scenes look unattractive and mushy. I’m looking for a legit, honest to God video upscaler. I mean pixel by pixel, no tricks upscale. Does anyone know of a program or technique I can use to do this?

I've just been kicking the tyres on a new video upscaler called Unsqueeze. I've been using Topaz AI for ages and while it generally does a good job, it's expensive and hideously slow, so the opportunity to try out a new app was rather tempting, especially as the full version is a mere £5.99.

The results were frankly astonishing! I started with a SD video around 30 minutes in length and upscaled to 1080p. What would take Topaz around four hours to chew through only took three minutes—that is NOT a typo! The result was excellent.

I ran into a small problem when it didn't pass through the audio track but I contacted the dev and he said it only affected certain videos and was already working on a fix for the next version. Also, anything 4K or above produces ProRes rather than H264 for 1080p. He's also going to add more fine-grained controls for output bit rate and codec in the near future. It also supports batch processing.

Unlike Topaz, which is CPU-bound, Unsqueeze exclusively leverages the GPU, Neural Engine and Metal API to produce its incredible speed. I'm not easily impressed but I was truly blown away by the sheer blazing performance on my M1 mini—and it didn't stuff the CPU one iota, unlike Topaz.

Anyone who has a need for upscaling video could do no worse than giving Unsqueeze a go—I think you'll be impressed.

Disclaimer: I have zero affiliation with the developer.

Based on my research, it seems like Topaz is the best video upscaler currently. Topaz has been around for several years now. I am wondering why there hasn't been a newcomer yet with better quality.

Is your experience the same with video upscaler software, and what is the best OS video upscaler software?