Upscale Old Videos to 4K

Why this matters

Home movies and archive footage carry grain, low light, and motion blur. Naive scaling magnifies all of it; model-based upscaling separates detail from noise.

With denoise + upscale + optional frame smoothing, old footage can hold up on a 65-inch screen.

How it works

Submit the file with denoise set; the API cleans grain, upscales to your target, and sharpens — one job, three stages.

Submit a job with an input URL (S3, GCS or HTTPS), poll the job URL, and download the rendered output. No GPU, no queues, no ffmpeg builds to babysit.

Code

import requests, time

API = "https://api.mlslabs.io/v1/super-resolution/jobs"
headers = {"X-API-Key": "YOUR_API_KEY"}
payload = {"input": "s3://bucket/archive/", "scale": 4, "model": "real-esrgan-x4", "denoise": "medium"}

resp = requests.post(API, json=payload, headers=headers)
job = resp.json()
while job["status"] not in ("succeeded", "failed"):
    time.sleep(3)
    job = requests.get(job["url"], headers=headers).json()

print("Output:", job["output_url"])

Pro tips

• Keep the original tape/disc — digital restoration is additive, not a replacement.
• Stabilize badly shaky footage before upscaling.
• Upscale to 4K even if delivery is 1080p — the headroom survives re-encodes.

Try the archive restore flow in Postman.