AI Video Upscaling: How To Easily AI Upscale Video To 1080P And 4K

 Is there any useful tool for AI video upscaling? I’m trying to find a tool for AI video upscaling so as to upscale some old, really, really low-res films to high resolution, like 1080p, or 4K. I have used some online tools to upscale low-res videos before, but with little success.

Although there are many kinds of AI video upscaling tools in the market, such as AI-based video upscaling software, AI video upscaling extension, online AI video upscaling, and non-AI video upscaling software, the truth turns out that the AI video upscaling software work much better than non-AI software and online AI video upscaler. What's more, the AI video upscaling tool is easy to use and delivers the best output results with more video details enhanced. Here we go.

What Is AI Video Upscaling?

What is video upscaling? As a simple example, if you watch HD movies in 720p/1080p on a 4K screen, the image has to be stretched to match the TV’s pixels. In this stretched process, upscaling is done by the streaming device (smart TV or streaming media player). However, the upscaling algorithms used by streaming devices are too basic to deliver the high-definition content for 4K TVs. It simply fills out all the pixels of the higher resolution display, the video contents and details can not be significantly improved by basic/traditional upscaling algorithms.

AI video upscaling is different. Given a low-resolution video, the deep learning AI model can predict a high resolution with high accuracy. It can not only upscale the resolution to fill out all the missing pixels, but also produce incredible sharpness and enhance details that no traditional upscaling tools can achieve. AI video upscaling has been used on some smart TVs like Samsung, Sony, LG, and Panasonic, as well as the AI-based video&photo enhancer. In this article, we will mainly talk about how to AI upscale video by the dedicated AI upscaling software (desktop, extension and online).

How Does AI Video Upscaling Work?

With AI algorithms built into the AI video upscaling software, they can upscale and enhance lower-resolution videos, like upscaling SD to full HD, HD to 4K or 8K. The AI algorithms can intelligently populate all the extra pixels and produce stunning visuals. The AI technology from AI video upscaling software process a video by using an artificial neural network, which simulates the human brain to steadily build a stronger understanding of video characteristics.

AI video upscaling software equipped with machine learning-based AI upscaling to analyze and enhance the content rather than stretching it to fill the pixels. AI upscaling populates the additional pixels and improves the resolution. By AI upscaling old videos, documentaries, old films, animes, or TV shows, you can get the enhanced, sharpened visuals that are incredibly crisp and rich.

What Is The Best AI-Enhanced Upscaler And How To Easily AI Upscaling Video?

With AI video upscaling started to be popular in both the entertainment and commercial video industry, the individuals may need to upscale old and low-res films for watching on the 4K/8K displays for clear visual effects, while the enterprises need to upscale and enhance all forms of digital video including CCTV systems, cell phones and dashcam videos used as evidence. In the following part, we will show you how to easily AI upscale videos with the best AI upscaler.

1. AVCLabs Video Enhancer AI

AVCLabs Video Enhancer AI is an AI-based AI video upscaling software that uses a neural network to upscale video from 480P to 1080P, 720P to 4K, or up to 8K, with super-resolution upscaling and multi-stream enhancement. Super Resolution can recover a high-resolution video from a given low-resolution material and create extra pixel data to fill in the missing gaps. Multi-stream enhancement uses the multi-frame convolutional neural network to enhance the video quality, remove motion artifacts, stabilize video shake, remove overlay noise and grain to get more natural results that classical programming cannot easily achieve.

How To Easily AI Upscale Video With AVCLabs Video Enhancer AI

Step 1: Add source videos to AVClabs

Before downloading AVCLabs Video Enhancer AI on your computer, please check the system and hardware requirements of the program.

Launch AVCLabs Video Enhancer AI, then click the "Browse" button to import your source footage from the local drive.

Step 2: Choose AI model, output resolution and output setting

In the upper-right panel of the application, you can choose "Upscale" or "Multi-frame Enhance" as the AI Model.

Unfold the output preset and adjust the output to 720p, 1080p, 2K, QXGA, Quad HD, WQXGA, UHD, 4K, or 8K.

Then choose the output format as MP4(H.264), AVI(Uncompressed). AVI(Uncompressed) will result in massive file size because it will be preserving all visual details.

For the portraits, you can enable "Face Refinement" to detect and enhance portraits details. If you want to use the Face Refinement feature, please make sure that your computer has 4GB or higher GPU memory.

You can also trim the footage to preserve the part you want and save the processing time.

Step 3: Start AI upscaling video

Click the "Start Processing" button to render your video. The program will start processing frames of your source video and assembling the upscaled video. After the conversion is completed, you can open the file folder to check the AI upscaled video.

2. Waifu2x Extension GUI

Waifu2x Extension GUI is a free and open-source AI upscaling software for video, image, gif, and animated image. Like AVCLabs Video Enhancer AI, the video upscaling is also processed by deep convolutional neural networks. The AI algorithms and AI engines like Waifu2x, Real-ESRGAN, Waifu2x-caffee, Waifu2x-ncnn-vulkan, etc. are built-in the program by default.

You just need to download the 7Z from GitHub and then extract files on your Windows x64. Run Waifu2x Extension GUI-Start and you will see the sophisticated interface in which you can customize the Engine settings, Video settings, Image settings, Additional settings. Before starting, you will need to do the compatibility test to identify your computer’s supported algorithms and engines, otherwise, you can not choose the preset properly. The free version supports upscaling the videos by 2x with super-resolution, generating extra frames and interpolating them between the original frames to smooth video playing.  

3. Neural Love

Neural Love develops online AI-powered video enhancement tools that can upscale, colorize, and sharpen old movies, boosting FPS to 60 with additional frames, and creating slow motion. It is also good at enhancing details in faces.

The free trial version allows you to AI upscaling video to 720P, and you need to pay $1.49 to download the demo. If you want to process a full video, you need to pay $4.99 for one video or upgrade to the Pro version. The Pro version allows you to upscale video to 4K, boost FPS to 60, restore facial details, and colorize.

This is the demo video processed by Neural Love. We choose 720P as the upscaling resolution.

Conclusion:

Here we introduce the main three kinds of AI video upscaling tools, including AI video upscaling software, AI video upscaling extension, and online AI video upscaling. AVCLabs Video Enhancer AI is an AI video upscaling software that uses multi-frame super-resolution to upscale video with the best video quality kept. By completing a side-by-side comparison of the results by AVCLabs Video Enhancer AI to those of all other existing tools, You will find that the result by AVCLabs Video Enhancer AI is the clearest. Although it does not support all types of manual control settings, it provides the best presets that you can use to upscale videos 100% automatically, with the clearest visual effect. What's more, it supports facial refinement to intelligently detect and enhance facial details, including eyes, eyebrows, lip, skin, hair, beard, wrinkle, and more.

Waifu2x Extension GUI is best for AI upscaling and enhancing anime videos and images, and video frame interpolation. It supports flexible multi-thread settings that allow you to adjust the number of threads freely while providing a complete set of settings for each engine.

Neural Love is good as an online AI video upscaling tool. It processes the video at a fast speed with a satisfactory result. If you do not want to install the AI video upscaling software or extension, an online AI video upscaler is a not bad choice.