Experiments in video upscaling with Nero AI

This is probably a niche - but also common need in the tech world. At least for old-timers like me, capturing video back in the dawn of smartphones and, even before, with VHS tape capture (for example from camcorders) in the 1990s. What we've ended up with, in 2025, passed down from our old computers and, quite probably, the computers before those, on CDRs and old hard disks, a number of low resolution videos that look hopelessly out of place in the modern world.

So, typically, there would be a family video captured at 288p. (240p and 320p are also common.) The 'p' is how we talk about lines of horizontal pixels in a video, and for comparison 'modern' (i.e. post 2000) DVD is 480p in the USA and 576p in the UK. While genuinely modern video content online in 2025 is almost all 1080p or above (e.g. 4K, at 1440p). Quite a jump.

So what the heck do we do with all our old (e.g.) 288p home videos? I mean, they're priceless in that - usually - there's no way to recapture them from the original sources. Finding the original camcorder tapes from 1995 and a working player thirty years later is beyond most of us. Yes, there are firms that specialise in this sort of thing, but that costs a lot of money if there's more than one tape to digitise. And if they're simply phone-shot videos from 2004 to about 2009 then they are what they are - that was the resolution of video capture in that period. 

Deleting the files as useless is going too far though - you can still watch them and have the memories flooding back. But what if the viewing experience wasn't so painful? Could modern AI help enhance these old videos, filling in gaps, smoothing jagged pixellations, and so on?

This is where AI 'upscaling' comes in. Now, there are web sites with powerful servers behind them that offer video upscaling, but there are always catches - either watermarks on the finished video or having to pay for upscaling credits, which can get expensive for multiple videos. Nero AI Video Upscaler runs on your Windows PC and, beyond the 50 Euros purchase price (for a year's license), you shouldn't need to dip into your wallet again.

A lot, then, depends on how many old video clips you're trying to upsample - and also on how well the technology works. I've got hundreds of old private phone-shot and camcorder captured videos from twenty years ago, but because they're, well, private, I can't share them here (my family and friends). So I'm testing the Nero tool here with some more public videos from that era.

First of all, an old Fleetwood Mac clip, ripped from YouTube circa 2010. There's just enough to the UI of Video Upscaler - simply pick your source file (e.g. an MP4 video) and there are some options in a right hand panel, thankfully self-explanatory.

The AI model is best left on 'Realistic' for 99% of uses, the encoding at H.264 for maximum compatibility with other people, and the resolution change set to '2x', since trying to AI invent detail beyond that point make it more likely that the result will have to many artefacts or look 'uncanny'. Importantly, the tool also 'reduces noise and grain', so it's not just the resolution will be improved by a pass through the tool.

Of note is that, if needed, the tool includes a video trimmer, so if you only want to process part of a source video, either to save processing time or for artistic reasons, then that can be useful too.

On the top, below, is a screen-grabbed frame from the video at original 288p resolution, increased to blog size for easy comparison, and below it is a frame from the upscaled 576p version:

The improvement is very noticeable, although there's the caveat that AI works best on things it recognises - so human faces, sharp edged things like mic stands and shelves, etc. The vertical resolution is doubled, and I'd guesstimate that the 'quality' is - actually - doubled as well. The video is cleaner and more watchable.

But you'll be dissatisfied with simple screenshots, so let's try something video-wise that I can embed. Here's a noisy (picture-wise) gig video (of me with a band, playing a Neil Young cover) at 480p from 2005 or so. Captured on a camcorder and then to a 480p USB capture stick. 480p is low by today's standards, plus the digital noise and general fuzziness is hard to deal with. 

(In each case, for the video embeds, you need to start playback and then click to go full-screen, so that you can see the obvious differences)

Let's try it in Nero AI Video Upscaler. I opted for 720p, i.e. not quite 2x, since I wanted to keep 'made up' artefacts down and give the software a better chance to clean up the frames as it went.

Now, examining video frames one by one and enhancing them is extremely compute-intensive. Built into the tool's interface is an 'Optimised for NVIDIA' flag, meaning that this is designed to be used on a powerful PC with high end GPU. Which is fine, except that only gaming PCs are usually thus equipped. However, I did have a recent, new Surface Laptop 5 to hand, and this provided a realistic gauge on how long videos take to process.

The four minute test video above took around an hour on the Surface. Which didn't seem too bad, given what's needed, data-wise. On a gaming PC, this would have been down under ten minutes. While on my old Surface Go, from around 2018, the same job was estimated to take 18 hours!! So it's all relative. 

For an important personal video, to take it into 2025, I'd be happy with an hour on a 'normal' PC.

I've been looking here at taking content up to 480p further, but AI Video Upscaler will work to clean up and improve more modern content as well. Thinking again of my private family videos, I have a lot shot on Nokia 'nSeries' phones at 720p around 2010 and 2011. These will work very well at 1080p with a little AI magic. 

I'm hesitant to go further and recommend 1080p video from, say, 2015 onwards, being taken up to 4K because a) 1080p is almost certainly 'good enough', and b) anyone with a 4K display wants to watch genuine 4K content and is going to be fussy about very high quality, down to the last pixel.

(Of course, 720p to 1080p will take even longer on standard PCs, so if you have many such clips for upscaling then I'd recommend a PC upgrade to something with a beefy NVIDIA GPU.)

At heart a simple Windows application, with a single screen UI, but with enough compatibility and flexibility to handle almost anything you throw at it, I can recommend Nero AI Video Upscaler without reservation.

Even as I write this, I'm thinking "Oh yes, I could use it for THAT. And THAT. And so on...!

PS. If you like my work then think about buying me a beer at paypal.me/stevelitchfield - thanks!