Your Nvidia RTX GPU Can Make Old Videos Look Better

If you own an Nvidia RTX graphics card, you probably use it primarily for playing video games. However, GPUs can do more than just render the latest games. Nvidia graphics cards (and, by extension, AMD GPUs) are essential for generating images, and not just the AI ​​kind. These GPUs can even make old images and videos look like you remember using the same technology they use to enhance old video games.

Nvidia RTX Video Super Resolution (VSR) is an upscaling technology that combines the power of an RTX’s Tensor cores (the hardware components that enable computer graphics rendering) and AI to improve video quality. Unlike most Nvidia technologies, which focus on video game graphics, Super Resolution applies to any video passing through the GPU. Whether you’re watching a live Twitch stream or a home movie converted from physical to digital format, VSR makes it all better.

Enabling Nvidia RTX VSR is simple. All you have to do is follow these simple steps:

1. Open the Nvidia Control Panel.

2. Select “Adjust video image settings” under “Video”.

3. Click the “Super Resolution” box under “RTX Video Enhancement.”

4. Use the drop-down menu under “Quality” to choose the intensity of the enhancement.

5. Click “Apply”.

That’s it. Once active, your GPU will automatically scale images based on the “Quality” you have chosen. You may need to experiment to find the setting that works best for you and your setup. Some people say that anything below intensity “4” doesn’t provide visible (or satisfactory) results, so you may want to start there and work your way down.

Since VSR relies heavily on AI, its results are hit or miss. While this feature can clean up old videos and images and make them sharper and more readable, VSR is just as likely to mistake artifacts and noise for real parts of the original image and include them in the final product. VSR then cleans up the imperfections, as the AIs lack critical thinking skills and sharpen everything they see.

Sometimes Nvidia RTX VSR simply gets the wrong information and adds details that go beyond the simple artifact. A completed video could include material textures that never existed, all because VSR misinterpreted some aspect of an image. You may only notice these errors if you zoom in on a particular image, so the average viewer probably won’t realize that VSR made a mistake. And that’s assuming VSR actually works, since fast movements in videos receive little to no improvement. Although Nvidia RTX VSR can upgrade your old videos and make them clearer than ever, it can’t do miracles. Your results ultimately depend on the source material and a little luck.

With Nvidia controlling the lion’s share of the computer graphics card market, many computer owners have switched from Nvidia to AMD. However, these exchanges are not transparent, as users lose access to proprietary features such as Deep Learning Super Sampling. Fortunately, AMD users don’t lose access to video upscaling, just the robustness of Nvidia’s version.

AMD chips have their own scaling program called FidelityFX Super Resolution (FSR). The most obvious application of this feature allows users to make older games look sharper, but it can also upgrade low-resolution images and videos. Unlike VSR, FSR does not use AI; some AMD upscalers do this, but not this one.

Configuring FSR requires more work than configuring VSR. Go to AMD’s Adrenalin control panel, open the “Gaming” window, go to the “Graphics” tab and enable “AMD FSR Upscaling” (if your computer doesn’t do this automatically). You also need to open “Video Playback” in your PC settings menu and enable “Automatically process video to improve it”. AMD also has several other image sharpening technologies that can bring new clarity to blurry visuals, but they each have different applications that don’t make them as universal as Nvidia RTX VSR.