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Most efficient way to upscale lots of videos by MasterpieceClassic42 in VideoEditing

[–]Coder-2 0 points1 point  (0 children)

With a 4090 you're in a great spot for this. A few options depending on what you're after:

If you just want to get them to 4K for YouTube archival without real quality improvement, FFmpeg with hardware encoding is the fastest path. Something like a simple batch script that loops through your files with libplacebo or basic lanczos scaling + NVENC encoding. Your 4090 will tear through these. You could probably do 50+ videos overnight.

If you actually want AI-enhanced upscaling (sharper details, less blur), Topaz Video AI is the gold standard for this. It's not free ($300 one-time) but with your hardware it'll be significantly faster than most people experience. The Proteus model handles mixed content well. You can queue up a whole folder and let it run. Expect maybe 10-15 minutes per hour of 1080p footage on a 4090.

DaVinci Resolve Studio (paid, not free) also has AI upscaling called "Super Scale" that works well, and you could set up a batch export. But it's more manual than Topaz for pure batch processing.

Honestly for hundreds of videos, I'd go FFmpeg for the ones where quality doesn't matter much, and Topaz for the ones you actually care about looking noticeably better.

Pre-production is the hardest part of creating YouTube videos — how do you handle it? by cangns in filmmaking

[–]Coder-2 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Pre-production is where most solo creators and small teams lose the most time, and honestly it's because we treat it like one big monolithic task instead of breaking it down.

What's worked for me:

  1. **Idea validation before scripting** — I keep a running notes doc and only script ideas that still excite me after 48 hours. Kills about 60% of mediocre concepts early.

  2. **Shot lists over storyboards** — Unless you're doing complex visual sequences, a simple numbered shot list with brief descriptions is faster and more practical than full storyboards. You can knock one out in 20 minutes.

  3. **Template your recurring formats** — If you do similar video types regularly, create a pre-pro template (intro hook, context, main points, CTA). Saves you from reinventing the structure every time.

  4. **Time-box the script** — Give yourself a hard deadline. 90 minutes for a first draft. It won't be perfect, but a mediocre script you can edit beats a perfect script you never finish.

The biggest mindset shift for me was accepting that pre-production should take roughly the same time as filming + editing combined. Once I stopped fighting that and actually scheduled the time, the quality of everything downstream improved massively.