How to upscale videos to 4K with Clipchamp

Clipchamp is the built-in video editor on Windows 11, and it has a surprisingly impressive feature list. A recent blog post by Microsoft outlines how to upscale videos to up to 4K by using Clipchamp. I’ve tested the feature and came away impressed.

You won’t be able to take terrible footage and fix it by clicking a button in Clipchamp, but that would be an unreasonable ask of the app. What you can do is adequately scale up footage to make it viewable on larger displays or screens with a higher resolution. I tried a few different types of clips, including some with high contrast and others with objects in motion. Overall, Clipchamp handled them well.

Clipchamp upcales video by using AI-powered Video Super Resolution. The feature increases the resolution of a selected clip and adds details to make content look clearer. Upscaling is done locally on eligible Windows devices.

If you have a Copilot+ PC or a PC with a compatible NPU, Video Super Resolution will rely on that processor. But the feature can also work on compatible CPUs even if your device does not have an NPU. For example, my laptop has an 11th Gen Intel Core i9 (11950H) and an NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070, and it was able to upscale clips in Clipchamp.

Here’s how to upscale footage using Clipchamp:

Import a piece of video into your timeline. This can be done by selecting Import media.
Drag the clip into the timeline of your project.
Select the clip you would like to upscale.
On the right side of your screen, select the Upscale icon.
Select the resolution you would like to upscale your clip to.
Select Upscale.

If you don’t like the result, you can restore the original clip with a single click. Note that there is no method to upscale an entire project at this time. Instead, you need to upscale specific clips.

Clipchamp is a surprisingly controversial video editor. Microsoft drew criticism by adding a requirement to use a Microsoft account to edit projects within the app. I don’t like that requirement and think Microsoft could do more with Clipchamp, but if you’re willing to jump through the company’s hoops, Clipchamp is a capable video editor. That’s even more true now that it can easily upscale videos.