# Video and film

Upscale footage to 4K, repair faces in old video, create slow motion, and generate short clips from a description.

## Models for this work

| Model | Best for | Quality | Speed | From |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| [Real-ESRGAN](https://gpuvault.io/model/real-esrgan/) | Rescuing footage and images that are too small or too soft to use | Very good | Fast | $0.45/hr |
| [RIFE](https://gpuvault.io/model/rife/) | Smoothing motion and creating slow motion from ordinary footage | Very good | Very fast | $0.45/hr |
| [CodeFormer](https://gpuvault.io/model/codeformer/) | Faces, after any other restoration step | Excellent | Moderate | $0.45/hr |
| [LTX-Video](https://gpuvault.io/model/ltx-video/) | Short generated clips where speed matters more than polish | Good | Very fast | $0.89/hr |
| [Wan 2.1](https://gpuvault.io/model/wan-2-1/) | Finished generated video, once the idea is already proven | Excellent | Slow | $2.25/hr |

## What do you need to do?

- **Upscale to 4K** — Small or soft footage made sharp and large. https://gpuvault.io/model/real-esrgan/
- **Repair faces** — Fix the thing upscaling gets wrong. https://gpuvault.io/model/codeformer/
- **Slow motion** — Clean slow motion from normal footage. https://gpuvault.io/model/rife/
- **Smooth the frame rate** — Phone video that plays properly in a timeline. https://gpuvault.io/model/rife/
- **Generate a clip** — Short video from a description or a still. https://gpuvault.io/model/ltx-video/
- **Batch a whole archive** — Four hundred clips as one job. https://gpuvault.io/model/real-esrgan/

## Questions people ask

### How long does it take to upscale an hour of video?

About three hours of GPU time on an RTX 4090, which costs roughly $1.35. Real-ESRGAN processes a 4K frame in about 3 seconds, and an hour of footage at 24 frames per second is 86,400 frames. You do not sit and watch it: a batch job runs on its own and emails you when it is done, then shuts the GPU off.

### What format should I upload?

Whatever your camera or editor produced. ProRes, H.264, H.265, DNxHD, and image sequences all work, and we return the same container you sent unless you ask for something else. For long jobs, upload the highest quality version you have rather than a compressed export. Upscaling amplifies compression artifacts, so a clean source is worth more than any setting you can change.

### Will the result actually look good, or will it look artificial?

It depends on the footage and how hard you push it. Wide shots, landscapes, and graphics upscale almost invisibly. Faces close to camera are where it goes wrong, because the model invents detail and skin is where invented detail reads as plastic. The fix is to run CodeFormer after upscaling, at a conservative strength. Run one clip through before you commit an archive, and compare.

### Can I use generated video commercially?

It depends on the model, and the licenses differ sharply here. Wan 2.1 is Apache 2.0, so it is clear for commercial work. LTX-Video has its own open weights license that permits commercial use. CodeFormer is research-only and cannot be used on paid client work, which is why we show the license on every model page. Real-ESRGAN and RIFE are both permissive and safe for client deliverables.

### How much footage can I process at once?

There is no practical limit on a batch job. People routinely run four hundred clips or several hours of footage in a single job. Files go to object storage rather than onto the GPU, so job size is not constrained by the machine. The one thing to watch is your spend cap: a very large job may exceed it and pause, so raise it before you start rather than partway through.

### What if the job fails halfway through?

You keep everything that finished and you are not charged for what did not. Batch jobs write each output as it completes rather than at the end, so a failure at file 380 of 400 leaves you 379 usable files and a clear message about what broke on the last one. Restarting picks up from where it stopped rather than redoing the work.

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*Source: https://gpuvault.io/working-on/video-and-film/ — GPUVault, GPU rental by the minute.*