Microsoft Edge Adds New AI-Powered Video Upscaling for Better Playback

And like magic, the blur is gone

By
Lawrence Bonk
Lawrence Bonk
Lawrence Bonk
News Reporter
  • Florida State University
Lawrence Bonk is a tech news reporter for Lifewire, specializing in gaming, AI, VR, and consumer tech, including iOS, macOS, wearables, and more.
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Published on March 6, 2023 12:07PM EST
Fact checked by
Jerri Ledford
Jerri Ledford
Fact checked by Jerri Ledford
  • Western Kentucky University
  • Gulf Coast Community College
Jerri L. Ledford has been writing, editing, and fact-checking tech stories since 1994. Her work has appeared in Computerworld, PC Magazine, Information Today, and many others.
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Microsoft News

Microsoft is launching a new AI-powered video upscaler tool to quickly improve the resolution of old or wonky videos. 

The appropriately-named Video Super Resolution (VSR) is part of the Microsoft Edge web browser and uses artificial intelligence (AI)-enhanced machine learning to increase the resolution of low-quality footage. Microsoft says the tool can "remove blocky compression artifacts" to improve text clarity and video clarity for streaming platforms like YouTube. 

Streaming video on a laptop

damircudic / Getty Images

This tool only works for video resolutions of 720p or lower, and the footage has to be free from digital rights management (DRM) technology, which rules out fiddling with copyrighted content and the like. 

VSR is currently in beta and only available to Microsoft Insider members running the Canary channel in Edge. 

There are some additional caveats for the AI super-resolution feature, too. This is a pretty robust technology that demands some computational power, so your device has to be up to snuff. VSR only works with computers that contain an Nvidia RTX 20, 30, or 40-series graphics card or an AMD Radeon GPU from the RX5700 to the RX7800.

Also, the AI super-resolution tool will run on laptops but only when the device is plugged into a power source. Finally, the height and width of the video must exceed 192 pixels. 

Microsoft gives an interesting use case for this video upscaling technology, describing content creators who want reduced bandwidth options for uploading to YouTube and other sites. Basically, the content uploads with the size and footprint of a 720p (or below) video but with some of the pizazz of Full HD. 

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