I’ve been digging into AI video upscalers lately and noticed the market is starting to split into different categories. Curious what others here are using and how they compare.

From what I’ve seen, most tools fall into three main camps:

Real-time upscaling – things like Nvidia RTX Video Super Resolution or AMD Fluid Motion Frames, focused on smoother playback and instant enhancement during streaming or local playback.

Creative upscaling – tools that add interpretive detail or even imagine” missing data, like Topaz Video AI’s Astra models (often used by content creators to give an artistic or cinematic touch).

Precise / restoration-focused upscaling – more traditional AI models aiming for faithful detail recovery, this catagory seems to be the most popular one?
Examples like the old Topaz Video AI, Nero AI Video Upscaler, AVC Labs Video Enhancer AI, VideoProc Converter AI, etc.

And (not sure if it should be a catagory) Open-source / community upscalers – options like SeedVR2, Cupscale (ESRGAN-based), and Waifu2x variants (especially popular for anime).

In your experience, which one actually works best right now? Is Topaz still the top choice, or are newer tools catching up?

And where do you think this technology is going? More toward real-time enhancement (playback/streaming), or high-quality offline processing for creators and archivists?

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

What should I use?

Hey everyone, I'm looking for recommendations on the best free AI video upscaling tools out there. Ideally something that works well with low-res or older videos and can upscale to at least 1080p or 4K with decent quality.

Bonus if:

It runs locally (but cloud-based is fine too)

Supports batch processing

Doesn’t add watermarks

Works on Windows/Linux

I’ve tried a couple, but most seem to have limitations unless you pay. Curious to hear what’s worked best for you all!

Thanks in advance!

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?

What is a good video upscaler, I ask this because I have a movie i want to upscale because of it being 360p. Any recommendations?

Hey, i'm looking for a good Alternative to apps like Topaz AI. I only want to upscale my 1080p Videos to 4k with Ai. I've seen some people on the internet using CapCut for this as a free tool, but CapCut doesn't work for me, because I always get a error message telling me that something went wrong. So are there any other Free AI tools to Upscale Videos?

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

Hi all, I’m wanting to upscale my Blu Ray collection to 4K. I’ve tried finding and simply purchasing titles in 4K but some have never been released in anything higher than BR 1080p.

Happy to pay a reasonable amount for software if it’s a better product. Also aware that the quality is not likely to be at the same level of true 4K releases but just looking to improve on full HD as much as possible.

I was going to try VideoProc but not sure if it is any good? Some recommendations would be appreciated.

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?

Hi, I've been playing around with Wan and I2v mainly and the only gripe is the outcome Videos have super poor quality. I Google a bit and found TopazAI often so I tried it. Every upscaler except the Starlight Mini one is crap. The Starlight Mini does an Exceptional Job, but the outcome Video clearly is missing sharpness and looks like someone smeared Vaseline on it...

So what upscalers are you using? I would be fine to double my 480x640 vids in size if the quality loss would not be visible. For frame Interpolation, I found that topaz does a good job boosting the video from let's say 12fps or 15fps to 60.

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.

What I want to know is, is there a way to do LOCAL AI upscaling of video, either using a Mac with Apple silicon or Windows? Preferably I would like to know if there is any free or low cost software that would work well for this purpose on a Mac.

Failing that, if I absolutely have to use Windows, would it be helpful to have something like Gigabyte NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4060 Windforce Overclocked Dual Fan 8GB GDDR6 PCIe 4.0 Graphics Card, in other words would that or a similar card be good enough to do it, or would there be a better way to go about this or different hardware I should consider? And in that case, is there any free or inexpensive software that runs on Windows and is highly recommended for this purpose?

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.

Are there any open source options for this? I've managed to grab the whole of Voyager (I have the DVDs already) that someone has AI upscaled. I'd like to do the same with the TV series Bottom but unsure how to go. I see DVDFab claim they can do it but that's paid for software. Was looking for an opensource alternative if possible.

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.

Here's my latest music video upscale from 480i to 4k progressive. I decided to make a small guide, since it took me a long time to find settings that worked with low quality originals.

I hope this is useful for you who struggle to get good results with Video AI. I'd also appreciate feedback if you think I'm doing something wrong, or you have any tips to do this even better.

Original official video of Sentenced - No One There: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mGtrNZwqpCY

My upscaled version: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FOf82qs8yiU

This one in particular required a lot of manual work because of the darkness, but I think I still managed to get decent results.

These instructions are in no way objectively what could be considered the best method. It's just something that has worked for me upscaling DVD or lower quality music videos to 4k.

Step 1: Deinterlace and Frame Interpolation

Import the 480i interlaced footage into Video AI.

Use the Dione TV model to deinterlace the footage. This removes combing artifacts and enables smoother motion.

Enable frame interpolation in Dione to increase the frame rate to 60fps (this is somewhat controversy, I like the end result but some people definitely prefer 30fps). 60 fps makes the motion smoother but also subtly improves image quality in my opinion.

Export the cleaned and interpolated video. This version is now deinterlaced and plays at 60fps.

Step 2: Upscale with Proteus

Re-import the interpolated output into Topaz Video AI.

Select the Proteus model and set the upscale factor to 2x only.

Avoid 4x upscaling for 480p sources as it tends to introduce excessive AI artifacts.

Begin fine-tuning the Proteus settings. Prepare to use a lot of time on this, especially if the footage is low quality like in my example.

Focus on the following sliders: Fix Compression, Improve Detail, Sharpen, Reduce Noise, and Anti-Alias/Deblur. Start with conservative values (around 5) and adjust gradually. Create multiple short test clips (2–5 seconds) to preview how changes affect the result. Zoom in to inspect details and prevent the “overcooked AI” look.

Finalize the best settings through trial and error, ensuring a balance between sharpness and natural appearance. This is somewhat of a subjective process. Some people might enjoy sharper image while others like the original look.

For best results, consider processing each scene separately with custom settings.

Step 3: Scene Editing and Blending in DaVinci Resolve

Import both the Dione (interpolated) and Proteus (upscaled) versions into DaVinci Resolve (free version is just fine for this).

Use scene detection to automatically split the video into clips based on visual changes.

Manually refine the scene cuts as needed — expect to spend time on this step. In this case, around 85 individual scenes were created.

Use the Transform module to crop and reframe shots for better composition.

Use the Composite module with opacity blending to mix elements from both the Dione and Proteus versions.

In more complex scenes, use power windows in the Color module to selectively mask and blend the best parts of each version.

Perform color grading to fix any balance issues and ensure visual consistency across scenes.

Step 4: Final Upscaling to 4K

Used DaVinci Resolve’s internal upscaling tools to scale the output up to full 4K (2160p).

Resolve’s built-in scaler tends to produce cleaner results with fewer artifacts than other tools I've tried.