---
title: 'The Best AI Tools to Upscale Video Quality!'
source: 'https://youtube.com/watch?v=Ak1WaL99wq8'
video_id: 'Ak1WaL99wq8'
date: 2026-06-14
duration_sec: 527
---

# The Best AI Tools to Upscale Video Quality!

> Source: [The Best AI Tools to Upscale Video Quality!](https://youtube.com/watch?v=Ak1WaL99wq8)

## Summary

This video compares several AI tools for upscaling video footage from 720p to 4K, testing CapCut, Krea, Runway, and Topaz Video AI. The host demonstrates each tool's performance and highlights the best options for retaining detail.

### Key Points

- **Problem with simple scaling** [0:00] — Simply scaling up footage loses detail; AI tools can upscale while preserving quality.
- **Test footage** [0:28] — Using a 720p scene with establishing, medium, and close-up shots to upscale to 4K.
- **CapCut upscaling** [0:48] — CapCut (desktop/online) allows exporting at higher resolutions like 4K with high quality MOV format, but results are not great; details remain low quality.
- **Krea upscaling** [2:19] — Krea online platform limits clips to 5 seconds and max upscale factor of 1.5x; frame rate options limited (30/60/120 fps). Results worse than simple scaling.
- **Runway upscaling** [3:35] — Runway can upscale AI-generated clips to 4K via actions menu. Produces good detail and sharpness, but only works for clips generated within Runway.
- **Topaz Video AI** [5:10] — Topaz offers cloud and local versions; supports any video type. Has presets, custom resolution, multiple AI models (Proteus default, Thea model intense). Provides natural upscaling without over-sharpening.
- **Comparison summary** [7:29] — Runway and Topaz are in a league of their own; Topaz preserves cinematic quality better than Runway.

### Conclusion

For best results, use Topaz Video AI for its flexibility and natural upscaling, or Runway if your footage is generated within it. CapCut and Krea are less effective.

## Transcript

if you need to upres your footage and
simply scale it up chances are it's not
going to look great thankfully there are
quite a few AI video tools out there
that allow you to upres your video
footage and retain those details in this
video I'm going to talk about a few of
the options available to you and we'll
compare each one to figure out the best
option for you as a video creator let's
get to it for our example we will use
this scene here the entire scene is in
about 720p so pretty small resolution
but we want to upscale it to 4K so you
can see here we have a wide variety of
shots an establishing shot medium shot
and then a closeup let's see how the
tools do so the first tool that I think
you should know about is called cap cut
while a lot of people know that cap cut
can be on your phone you may not realize
that cap cut actually can work on a
desktop computer and the best part is
you can actually use the software online
as well cap cut is super easy to use all
you have to do is go to the upload
button and upload your file I have ours
already uploaded right here we'll just
double click on it and when you're ready
to export it in a higher resolution you
don't have to apply any effect or
anything like that all you have to do is
go to export download and then you can
select the resolution that you want to
export it as so for our example we will
scroll down to 4K and we'll change the
quality from recommended quality to high
quality you want maximum quality from
your export and for the format we're
going to select mov that's a less
compressed format so you'll get maximum
resolution and when you're ready go
ahead and click export so here's a
comparison of the original and then the
cap cut version on the left I went ahead
and zoomed in so you can see the
differences between the two clips and as
you can see even though we exported the
cap cut clip in 4k it's not doing a
great job at getting us really nice
details it still feels pretty low
quality so generally speaking the uprer
inside of cap cut is not my favorite the
next tool we're going to take a look at
is Korea Korea is an online platform
that has a lot of really helpful AI
tools including having the ability to
upres footage to use Korea to upres your
footage just go to the website and
scroll down and click on the enhance
button and you can simply drag and drop
your video clips into the timeline I
should note that video clips are limited
to 5 Seconds long so you will have to
upload your individual Clips one at a
time we'll go ahead and drag and drop
that into Kaa and on the right here
you'll see we have upscaling Factor so
we're going to go ahead and select 1.5
unfortunately that is the current
limitation of using Kaa you can't go
beyond 1.5 and then for frame rate
you'll also see we only have 30 frames
per second 60 frames per second and 120
but our core video footage is in 24
frames per second so that's not ideal if
you're working in a film making context
so when you're ready go ahead and click
enhance so here's the result here we
have Korea on the left and the original
footage on the right and honestly I
think Korea did a worse job than simply
scaling up the footage so when it comes
to enhancing footage I don't think that
Korea does a great job the next tool
that we're going to talk about is the
uprising feature available directly
inside of Runway so after you've created
a video clip using Runway you actually
now have the ability to upscale the
video to 4K all you have to do is go
down to the actions menu and select
upscale to 4K it takes just a couple of
minutes and then you can download the
video footage directly to your computer
here's a before and after with runway on
the left and the original on the right
and you would see that Runway did a
really good job there's tons of extra
detail and Fidelity in the upred footage
especially if we take a look here at
that first establishing shot the walls
look really good obviously there's some
strange stair stepping here on this this
building but that was just really deep
in the original video footage so it's
doing the best it can there there's a
lot more resolution in this detail here
on the building and then moving on to
the shot of the soldier you can see we
have a lot of pixelation going on in the
helmet whereas over here it's much more
smooth sharp around the edges and it
just generally looks better and then
finally if we look at this shot here
much more detail in the hair the uh skin
has a lot more detail versus the
original it's just kind of just very
blurry and doesn't look that great the
big downside to using Runway is of
course the fact that you have to use
Runway to generate the video footage so
if you didn't generate the AI footage
directly inside of Runway it's honestly
not that helpful and that brings us to
our final way to upres your footage this
is my favorite way to upres footage and
it has a ton of customizable options to
allow you to get maximum quality from
the tool and I am of course talking
about topaz video AI topaz video has a
version that works in the cloud and
basically you can pay for credits but
they also have a version that works
directly on your computer you basically
download the application to your machine
and you can upres the video locally so
you buy one license of the software and
then you basically just have access to
it forever so in order to use topaz all
you have to do is drag and drop your
video clip here so we have our clip
loaded into topaz and you can select
your output they have tons of presets
here and then you also have the ability
to set a custom resolution if you have a
specific aspect ratio or resolution that
you're going for and under the AI model
section you have the ability to select
all sorts of AI models depending on what
type of video footage you inputed the
Proteus model which is the default model
tends to work the best but you do have a
lot of other good options here I really
like working with the Thea model but it
can be pretty intense on your computer
now you also have the ability to change
the frameware R you can change the frame
interpolation and basically Slow Down
the video footage if you wanted to and
those features work really well but for
our example we're just going to export
it as it is so here's a quick comparison
from topaz again topaz on the left
original on the right and you can see we
have a ton of resolution here it looks
really really nice especially this last
shot here you can see there's a lot of
detail in the hair there's a lot of
detail in the skin and it just looks
much more sharp than the original
footage which has a ton of resolution
issues so the cool thing about using
topad is the fact that you can bring in
any type of video clip it doesn't have
to be a clip that was generated in a
specific tool whether you shot a wedding
and you're looking to upres it or if you
legitimately are trying to go through an
old archive and upres footage to use in
a documentary you have the ability to
upres using all sorts of really awesome
features using topaz so let's take take
a quick look at a comparison here we
have Korea in the top left cap cut top
right runway in the bottom left and then
topaz in the bottom right and you can
see that very clearly Runway and topaz
are kind of In A League of Their Own the
resolution just looks so much better
there's tons of fidelity there and the
cool thing about topaz specifically is I
feel like it doesn't over sharpen the
footage inside of Runway sometimes it
can feel like it's adding a little too
much sharpness at the cost of cinematic
qual quality whereas with topaz it still
understands lens Dynamics and is able to
upres the footage in a more natural way
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