In Depth: Upscaling Video (Updated 8 Feb 2024)

Why would you want to upscale your footage?

There are two common reasons to upscale:

• You work with old video footage that’s in the standard format
• You don’t have a camera that can shoot 4K and want your video to be 4K (or other sizes)

Video Resolution

When I started my career in video post-production, “standard definition” was, in fact, the standard. Now there are so many resolutions. I originally wrote this article about 7 years ago, when a cinematographer friend of mine asked me to upscale footage for his reel from the 1990s to HD. In that article, I focusing upscaling 720×480 (480i) into 1920×1080 (1080p) footage.

For one thing, video standards have changed in just a few short years. 4K Ultra High Definition (4K UHD) is now a standard feature in over 60% of the televisions sold in North America. That number is increasing rapidly over the last few months as people can’t go out for entertainment during the pandemic. For example, if you’re watching an old standard-definition television show on a 4K UHD screen, it will look a bit stretched and blurry.

But, upscaling is not just for old footage. Some people are shooting at 1080p and upscaling their renders to 4K for YouTube. Why would they do that?

• They may not have a camera that is capable of shooting 4K.
• Editing 4K footage can be slow.
• 4K footage takes up a ton of space on your drives!

Luckily, upscaling technology has seen major improvements over the past few years, especially in the area of Artificial Intelligence (AI). We’ll dive into AI and I’ll also discuss upscaling video in Adobe products, Resolve, with AI, and using a few plug-ins with upscaling technology.

Please note: This article is not a review of products, but more of a guide to the upscaling options available.

Artificial Intelligence (AI) in Upscaling

A majority of the upscaling tools on the market today use AI. Some of the upscale players include:

• Gigapixel AI from Topaz Labs is probably the most well-known.
• Winxvideo AI – 4K video and image upscaler.
• DeepAI Super Resolution for images.
• PIXOP Super Resolution, an online uprez technology using Machine Learning and Amazon Web Services.
• iSize – Check out their website for some interesting technical diagrams.
• The NVIDIA SHIELD TV, which brings real-time AI upscaling right to the television

There are several others, as well. This will be an area that will explode over the next few years, like NVIDIA OptiX technology which is used for AI-enhanced noise reduction in Arnold Render GPU, cebas finalRender, e-on Software, Redshift, Corona Renderer, and more. You’ll certainly see AI-enhanced upscaling in the apps you currently use over the next year or two.

The videos below are from 1911 and 1896. To point out, they scaled the footage to 4K, 60fps. To explain, the enlargement was done with Gigapixel AI. The algorithm for adding frames is called Depth-Aware Video Frame Interpolation (DAIN), powered by neural networks.

A Trip Through New York City in 1911

“Arrival of a Train at La Ciotat” (The Lumiere Brothers, 1896)

Deep Space 9 Upscale Project

There’s a project out there called Deep Space Nine Upscale Project (DS9UP) to upscale Star Trek: Deep Space 9 from the DVD source to 4K. Joel Hruska writes about his experiences using Topaz Video Enhance AI, DaVinci Resolve, and AviSynth to uprez the show. Truly, the project is pretty interesting. He talks about his challenges and what he’s learned during the project. Take a look at the comparisons below.

Upscaling with Adobe Tools

Adobe has a feature called Detail-preserving upscale. Below, check out tutorials for After Effects, Premiere Pro, and Photoshop.

How to Upscale Video (with the best results) in After Effects

In this livestream from Adobe, Jason Levine shows the preferred method for upscaling video content in After Effects. To elaborate, he uses an effect called Detail Preserving Upscale. It’s similar to ‘preserve details’ in Photoshop. In fact, using this process instead of simply scaling the layer in a comp, gives better-looking results. In addition, there’s more control over detail and noise.

Upscaling in Premiere Pro

How to Upscale Video to 4K or Downscale to 1080P Easily. This tutorial by Farrah Penn certainly explains it pretty clearly.

Tutorials for Upscaling in DaVinci Resolve

Upscale 1080p Footage to 4k with Davinci Resolve Superscale!!

Jay Lippman has become my go-to guy for Resolve tutorials. In this video, he uses DaVinci Resolve’s Superscale.

SUPER SCALE in DaVinci Resolve | Upscale 1080p to 4K | EASY Tutorial

Eric at Travel9to5 gives this quick tutorial on Superscale. He explains, “The superscale function in Davinci Resolve upscales 1080p footage to 4k super easy and allows you to convert 1080p to 4k. This is a quick hack to upscale your old clips and videos and make them 4k resolution. If you have 4k footage you can even upscale 4k to 8k video!”

Upscaling in Magix Vegas

Naiwik Tech explains how to use Smart Upscale in Vegas to upscale 1080p to 4K.