Upscale an old Sora download: the limits of Sume's video upscaler
Sora files you saved can be upscaled. Sume's video-upscale model takes a scale from 1.1 to 4, up to 30 seconds, and a fast, standard or pro tier.
If you downloaded Sora clips before the Videos API shut down on 2026-09-24 (OpenAI deprecations page, read 2026-10-03), you can still improve them. Sume's video upscale endpoint, POST /v1/video-upscale-1.0/upscale with model sume/video-upscale-1.0, takes a video_url and a scale and returns a larger clip. Upscaling adds pixels, it does not recover detail the render never had.
Request fields
Set duration_seconds to the clip's real length. The default reserves 5 seconds, which is wrong for most clips. The same operation is available to agents as the video_upscale_create tool. Pricing is shown in your workspace, not repeated here.
| Field | Value |
|---|---|
| video_url | Source clip URL |
| upscale_factor (or scale_ratio) | 1.1 to 4 |
| duration_seconds | 1 to 30; default 5 is reserved |
| enhancement_tier | fast, standard or pro |
Sensible settings
The existing upscale guides cover 4K targets and tier choice in more depth.
- Start with a 2x factor and the standard tier on one clip before running a folder.
- Keep the original file; upscaling a re-encode of an upscale compounds artifacts.
- If the clip is longer than 30 seconds, cut it first with video-trim.
Sources
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Written by Sume