Upscaling plugins—especially those driven by AI—require a massive amount of computational power. To avoid system crashes and stuttering playbacks, allocate maximum RAM to After Effects under Preferences > Memory & Performance , and regularly purge your disk cache ( Edit > Purge > All Memory & Disk Cache ). Conclusion

Topaz Labs offers a standalone application and workflow plugins that lead the industry in video enhancement. It utilizes deep learning models trained on millions of video frames. It does not just sharpen edges; it actively reconstructs fine details like hair, skin texture, and text. Maxon Universe (Unsharp Mask / Blur Tools)

Standard bilinear or bicubic scaling stretches existing pixels. This process creates blurry edges, muddy textures, and noticeable artifacting.

Upscaling is incredibly resource-intensive. Optimize your system with these settings:

: Create or change your composition settings to a 4K resolution, such as Apply Effect : Drag the Instant 4K

While After Effects has built-in scaling capabilities, the industry standard solution for professional upscaling has long been third-party plugins. Among the most popular is (by Red Giant, part of the Shooter Suite).

Soft, muddy details, jagged edges, and noticeable artifacts.

Neural Enhancement Suite is a powerful all‑in‑one enhancement tool. However, its impending deprecation means you should consider it only if you can work with the current version and do not rely on future updates. For new projects, look at the other options below.

Apply Effect > Noise & Grain > Remove Grain before upscaling. Apply your upscale effect.

requires purchase (trial version places a watermark) Super Resolution takes a fundamentally different approach from most other upscalers. Instead of looking at a single frame, it uses motion search to find the same objects across multiple frames and combines that information to reconstruct a higher‑resolution version.

The "Detail-Preserving Upscale" effect is the industry-standard native method for high-quality scaling in AE. Drag this effect onto your layer.