How to upscale video to 1080p or 4K on a Mac

Checked against the tools' own documentation on November 9, 2026. Local Upscale Studio is in development.

Making a video bigger is easy. Making it look better at the bigger size is the hard part. This guide covers when 4K is worth it, when 1080p is the better target, how to pick a codec, and how to do it on a Mac with free tools or an AI upscaler.

What upscaling to 4K can and can't do

A 4K frame (3840×2160) has four times the pixels of 1080p and nine times the pixels of 720p. Upscaling has to fill those new pixels somehow.

• Ordinary resizing (ffmpeg, HandBrake, any video editor) blends the pixels that are already there. The picture gets bigger but no sharper. It is honest, quick and free.
• AI upscaling predicts the detail a sharper version would have. It can clean up compression blocks, noise and soft edges. Some of what you see is a guess, especially on faces, small text and fine patterns.
• Neither can recover detail that was never recorded. A badly focused shot stays badly focused.

Your TV or monitor already scales whatever you play to fill the screen. Upscaling the file is worth it when you can do that better than the screen would, or when something downstream needs a certain size, such as an editing timeline or an upload.

1080p or 4K?

• From standard definition (480p, 576p, tape, DVD), aim for 1080p. That is already a 2.25× enlargement. Going to 4K doubles that again with invented detail, makes files far larger and takes far longer. Our home video guide covers tape and DVD footage in detail.
• From 720p, 1080p is the safe target. 4K is a 3× enlargement; try a short clip at both and compare on the screen you will watch on.
• From 1080p, 4K is a 2× step. This is where 4K upscaling makes most sense, for a 4K timeline or a 4K screen.
• For phones and laptops, 1080p is plenty. The extra pixels of 4K mostly matter on large screens.

Scale factors

Keep the original shape. A 4:3 video at 1080p is 1440×1080, with black bars at the sides on a widescreen TV. Stretching it to 1920×1080 distorts it.

Many AI models work at a fixed factor, usually 2× or 4×. The upscaler runs the model, then resizes the result to the exact size you asked for. That is normal and you don't need to plan around it.

Choose a codec before you start

• HEVC (H.265) is the best choice for most finished 1080p and 4K files. At the same quality it is usually much smaller than H.264, and recent Macs, iPhones and iPads play it.
• H.264 plays on almost anything, including old devices and some websites. Files are bigger at the same quality.
• ProRes is for editing and for keeping a master copy. Quality is very high and files are very large, often many times the size of an HEVC file. Use it if the upscaled video goes into Final Cut Pro or another editor before export.

For HandBrake's software encoders, its documentation suggests a constant quality of RF 20–24 for 1080p and RF 22–28 for 4K. Lower numbers mean higher quality and bigger files. 4K files are larger than 1080p at the same setting because there are four times as many pixels to describe.

Free method 1: ffmpeg

ffmpeg is free and runs in Terminal. Install it with Homebrew: brew install ffmpeg. Its lanczos resizing keeps edges crisper than the default. This is ordinary resizing, not AI.

To make a 16:9 video 1080p, as HEVC, keeping the audio unchanged:

ffmpeg -i input.mp4 -vf "scale=1920:1080:flags=lanczos" -c:v libx265 -crf 22 -preset medium -tag:v hvc1 -c:a copy output-1080p.mp4

To make it 4K with the Mac's hardware HEVC encoder, which is much faster than libx265:

ffmpeg -i input.mp4 -vf "scale=3840:2160:flags=lanczos" -c:v hevc_videotoolbox -q:v 65 -tag:v hvc1 -c:a copy output-4k.mp4

To make a 4K ProRes 422 HQ master for editing:

ffmpeg -i input.mp4 -vf "scale=3840:2160:flags=lanczos" -c:v prores_videotoolbox -profile:v hq -c:a pcm_s16le master-4k.mov

• For a source that isn't 16:9, use scale=-2:1080 or scale=-2:2160. ffmpeg then works out a width that keeps the shape.
• With -crf and -q:v, a lower -crf or a higher -q:v gives higher quality and a bigger file.
• -tag:v hvc1 labels the HEVC stream the way Apple's players expect.
• We tested these commands with ffmpeg 9.0 on macOS 27, on a short test clip.

Free method 2: HandBrake

HandBrake is a free app with a normal Mac window. Open the video, choose a preset, then go to the Dimensions (picture settings) tab. Tick Allow upscaling and set the Resolution Limit to 1080p or 4K. HandBrake's own guide says upscaling is "NOT recommended" but has uses, such as uploading to YouTube.

For the encoder, choose H.265 in the Video tab and set the quality as above. HandBrake also offers the Mac's hardware encoders ("H.265 (VideoToolbox)"), which are faster. HandBrake's documentation notes that the VideoToolbox scaler uses a different algorithm and its output will be less sharp, so keep the software scaler if sharpness matters.

AI upscalers

When the source is soft, noisy or blocky, an AI upscaler can do what resizing can't. Here is a badly compressed clip enlarged 2× three ways:

From our test setup, not a finished app. More examples and how we compared them: SeedVR2 and FlashVSR on a Mac.

On a Mac, the choices include free tools built around Real-ESRGAN, paid apps such as Topaz Video ($299 a year for the Personal plan), and Local Upscale Studio. For prices side by side, see AI upscaler prices; for how to choose, see choosing an AI upscaler for Mac. If you want the free route, Real-ESRGAN on a Mac explains it.

How long it takes

Ordinary resizing with ffmpeg or HandBrake is usually limited by the encoder, and is quick on Apple silicon. AI upscaling depends heavily on the model, the output size and your Mac, and newer models can be very slow.

As one measured example: FlashVSR, the model Studio uses for Quality video, took 1.0–1.6 seconds per frame at 540p–720p output on an M5 Max with 64 GB, using about 13–17 GB of memory. That is roughly 30–50 minutes for one minute of 30 fps video, at less than 1080p. A Mac with less memory will be slower, and 4K output means far more pixels per frame. Before you start a long job:

• Test 20–30 seconds first, with faces and motion, and time it.
• Cut first, upscale second. Only upscale the parts you will keep.
• Consider 1080p. It is a quarter of the pixels of 4K, so it is much quicker for any model.

Where Studio fits

Local Upscale Studio is a pay-once Mac app for Apple silicon, being built for photos and video in one app. It costs $49 at launch and $79 from version 1.0.

• Fast mode uses Real-ESRGAN and runs on every Apple silicon Mac. It is the option for long videos.
• Quality mode uses FlashVSR for video. It is slow and needs a lot of memory, so it will likely be offered on Macs with 24 GB or more, for short clips.
• A test on first launch picks the models your Mac can run, and you can override it. Nothing is uploaded.

We haven't published results from the finished app yet. When we do, we'll say which Mac each number came from.

Questions

Will upscaling to 4K make my video look like real 4K? No. Resizing makes it bigger but not sharper. AI upscaling can make it look much cleaner, but it can't match footage that was shot in 4K.

Is it worth upscaling 1080p to 4K for a 4K TV? Only if your upscaler does a better job than the TV. Compare a short clip both ways on that TV before you process everything.

Which is better for sharing, HEVC or H.264? HEVC for most people today. Use H.264 if someone has an old device that can't play HEVC.

Can I upscale on an Intel Mac? ffmpeg and HandBrake run on Intel Macs. Studio needs Apple silicon.

Sources and credits

• ffmpeg scale filter and encoders: ffmpeg filter documentation, ffmpeg codecs documentation
• HandBrake upscaling: Resizing video
• HandBrake quality settings: Adjusting quality
• HandBrake VideoToolbox encoders: VideoToolbox
• Topaz Video price: topazlabs.com/topaz-video
• Compressed video: "Tears of Steel" (CC) Blender Foundation | mango.blender.org, CC BY 3.0. Excerpt downscaled and recompressed by us to simulate a bad web video, then upscaled.

Topaz Labs and Topaz Video are trademarks of Topaz Labs. Mac, macOS, Final Cut Pro, ProRes and Apple silicon are trademarks of Apple Inc. YouTube is a trademark of Google LLC. All other names are trademarks of their owners. Local Upscale Studio is not affiliated with any of them.