October 6, 2026
AI video in 4K: generate in 4K or upscale afterwards?
Most video models output 720p or 1080p. What native 4K costs on Seedance 2.0, Veo 3.1 Fast and Kling V3, what an upscale by ByteDance or Topaz costs, the math model by model, and what upscaling will never recover.
Frank HoubreFounder of Imaginode
Most AI videos come out in 720p
Of the seventeen video generation models in the catalog, only three offer a 2160p tier: Kling V3, Veo 3.1 Fast and Seedance 2.0; Seedance 2.5 tops out at 720p, Wan 3.0, Flux 3 Video and Grok Imagine Video 1.5 at 1080p.
4K gets a lot of airtime in launch announcements and much less in spec sheets. The default tier of almost every video model is 720p, which is 1280 × 720 in landscape. That is the definition of a 2010 YouTube video. On a phone it passes. On a TV or a projector, it shows immediately.
Model by model: Seedance 2.5, one of the most requested, offers 480p and 720p, nothing above. Wan 3.0, Flux 3 Video and Grok Imagine Video 1.5 go up to 1080p. Only Kling V3, Veo 3.1 Fast and Seedance 2.0 offer a true 2160p tier, the 4K of screens.
If your deliverable has to be 4K, you have two routes. Pick one of the three models that do it natively, or generate with the model you want and upscale. Both have a price, and they do not give the same thing. Here are the numbers.
What native 4K costs
Five seconds of Seedance 2.0 cost 60 credits in 720p and 330 in 2160p; eight seconds of Veo 3.1 Fast cost 144 credits in 1080p and 336 in 2160p; Kling V3 costs 152 credits for five seconds whatever the resolution.
On Seedance 2.0, resolution is billed in full: 36 credits for five seconds in 480p, 60 in 720p, 150 in 1080p and 330 in 2160p. 4K costs five and a half times the price of 720p. On a ten-second shot, you go from 120 to 660 credits.
On Veo 3.1 Fast, 720p and 1080p cost the same, 144 credits for eight seconds with sound, and 2160p goes up to 336 credits. So 1080p is free compared to 720p there, but 4K costs more than double.
And then there is the exception worth its weight in gold: Kling V3 bills each second at the same price in 720p, 1080p and 2160p. 152 credits for five seconds with sound, 101 without, whatever the definition. If you use Kling V3 and stay at the default 720p, you are leaving free 4K on the table with every generation.
What an upscale costs
The ByteDance Upscaler takes five seconds of video to 4K for 18 credits, ten seconds for 35, a full minute for 208; Topaz Proteus bills by output tier, 36 credits for five seconds once the output reaches 4K.
The Enhance node, in Video mode, offers two upscalers. The first, the ByteDance Upscaler, is set by target resolution: 1080p, 2K or 4K. It costs 5 credits for five seconds to 1080p, 9 to 2K and 18 to 4K. A full minute in 4K, its ceiling, comes to 208 credits.
The second, Topaz Proteus, is set by factor, 2x or 4x, and billed at the tier of the video it produces: 6 credits for five seconds if the output stays at 720p, 12 at 1080p, 36 as soon as it reaches 2160p. A 1080p clip upscaled 2x gives exactly 3840 × 2160 for 36 credits per five seconds. A 720p clip upscaled 4x comes out at 5120 × 2880, beyond 4K, at the same rate.
Both keep the audio track of the source, which we checked on the output files: sound generated by Veo or Seedance comes out intact. Both accept clips from one to sixty seconds. And in both cases, the price shows on the button before you run it, computed on the actual length of the connected clip.
The math, model by model
For five seconds in 4K: Seedance 2.0 in 720p then ByteDance costs 78 credits against 330 native; Veo 3.1 Fast in 1080p then ByteDance, 172 against 336 for eight seconds; Kling V3 in native 2160p stays at 152, no upscale needed.
Seedance 2.0 first, because the gap is the most striking. Native 4K: 330 credits for five seconds. 720p then ByteDance to 4K: 60 plus 18, or 78 credits. Four times cheaper. Even starting from 1080p, 150 plus 18 makes 168, still half the native price.
Veo 3.1 Fast next, on its eight seconds. Native 4K: 336 credits. 1080p, which costs the same as 720p, then ByteDance to 4K: 144 plus 28, or 172 credits. A little over half the price. For Seedance 2.5, the question does not arise: it has no tier above 720p, so 120 credits for five seconds, plus 18 for 4K. For Wan 3.0, 60 credits in 720p plus 18, or 78, against 138 starting from 1080p.
Kling V3 is the only case where the answer flips: 2160p costs the same as 720p, so you generate straight in 4K and upscale nothing. To price your own project shot by shot, the calculator takes the model, the duration and the resolution, and the Enhance node shows its price on the actual length of your clip.
BalanceNative or upscaled: what changes in the image
A shot generated in 4K holds detail decided by the model at generation time; an upscaled shot can only sharpen what already existed in 720p, and a face thirty pixels tall stays a face thirty pixels tall.
Let's be honest about what an upscaler does. It does not regenerate the scene. It takes each frame of the clip and makes its edges crisper and its textures finer, staying faithful to what is already there. On a close shot, a face filling half the frame, a product filmed up close, the result is excellent, because the information was already there in 720p.
A wide shot is different. A character occupying a tenth of the frame height in 720p has a face about thirty pixels tall. No upscaler will find eyes, an expression, eyelashes in there. A model generating straight in 4K decides those details at generation time. On wide shots with people, native keeps a real advantage.
The crops below show it on a deliberately hard case: a 480 × 270 clip, upscaled four times to 1920 × 1080, cropped at 100% on the child's face. The classic enlargement is blurry. The ByteDance Upscaler makes edges very sharp, and hardens the grain and compression artifacts along the way. Topaz Proteus gives a softer, more natural image, but not a more detailed one. And in all three, the face stays a smiling smudge: the information was never in the source.
ByteDance or Topaz: which one to pick
The ByteDance Upscaler is the cheapest and the sharpest, at the risk of hardening flaws; Topaz Proteus is softer and more faithful to the source, twice the price on the way to 4K.
For a clean AI-generated video without heavy compression, the ByteDance Upscaler does the job very well at half the price. It is set simply by target, 1080p, 2K or 4K, so there is no math to do. It is our default choice to take a Seedance or Wan shot to 4K.
Topaz Proteus earns its place when the source has flaws you do not want enlarged: a video that has already been compressed, downloaded, re-encoded several times, or footage with noise. It smooths more than it sharpens. On our test clip, ByteDance came out at 30 frames per second and Topaz kept the source's 25, but the output frame rate is now chosen in the node for both, 24, 25, 30, 50 or 60: set it to your edit's frame rate.
When in doubt, the canvas settles it for a few credits: wire the same five-second clip into two Enhance nodes, one per upscaler, and compare. At 5 and 12 credits to 1080p, the test costs less than a single failed generation. Both models, and what exists elsewhere, are covered in the best AI video upscalers.
When 4K is pointless
For TikTok, Reels and Shorts, displayed at 1080 × 1920 and re-encoded by the platform, 4K will not show; it pays off on a big screen, for a client delivery, for broadcast and for reframing in post.
Good news for your budget first: most AI videos end up on a phone. TikTok, Reels and Shorts display 1080 × 1920 at best, and re-encode whatever you send them. A 720p shot upscaled to 1080p by ByteDance, for 5 credits per five seconds, is plenty. 4K there is money thrown away. Exact sizes per platform are in which format and resolution to generate.
4K pays off in four cases. Showing on a big screen, a TV, a projection, a professional display. Delivering to a client whose brief requires it. YouTube, where many creators export in 4K because the platform re-encodes a sharper source with more bitrate, which usually gives a better result even for people watching in 1080p. And reframing.
Reframing deserves a closer look, because it is the smartest use. A 16:9 shot at 3840 × 2160 contains a vertical shot of 1215 × 2160, above the 1080 × 1920 that social platforms want. In other words, a single horizontal shot upscaled to 4K gives you both the YouTube version and the Reels version, without regenerating, by choosing the vertical framing in the edit.
The method: approve low, upscale the final shot
Explore in 480p or 720p, pick your takes, upscale only the shots you keep, then edit: upscaling before you have chosen means paying 4K for takes you will throw away.
AI video is made by trial. Out of ten generations of a shot, you keep one or two. Generating those ten tries in native 4K on Seedance 2.0 costs 3,300 credits for five seconds of film. Generating them in 480p costs 360 credits, and motion, framing and character consistency can be judged perfectly well at that definition.
Once the take is chosen, two options depending on the model. If the higher tier costs nothing or almost nothing, like Kling V3's 2160p or Veo 3.1 Fast's 1080p, regenerate the chosen take at that tier, with the same prompt and the same start frame. Otherwise, wire an Enhance node onto the take and bring it to 1080p or 4K.
Editing comes after. The upscaler accepts up to sixty seconds per pass, which covers any generated shot. Upscale each shot you keep, then assemble them in the Edit node. For films longer than a single shot, the chaining method is covered in making an AI video longer than 10 seconds.
The summary
Kling V3: native 4K at the 720p price. Seedance 2.0, Wan 3.0, Seedance 2.5: generate in 720p then ByteDance to 4K, for 18 credits per five seconds. Veo 3.1 Fast: 1080p then upscale. And for social media, 1080p is enough.
If your model charges for resolution, upscaling almost always costs less than generating in 4K: four times less on Seedance 2.0, half on Veo 3.1 Fast. If your model does not charge for it, like Kling V3, generate straight at the highest tier.
Upscaling is excellent on close shots and clean sources. It will not recover the face of a tiny character in a wide shot: on that kind of shot, native keeps the edge, and that is where it is worth its price.
And in every case, explore low, choose, then raise the definition only on the take that goes into production. For a still image rather than a video, the same reasoning with its own numbers is in printing an AI image large.