Restore old video online

What old footage usually suffers from

Old video is damaged in layers. The original medium (a VHS tape, a Hi8 cassette, an early digital camera) had low resolution and a lot of noise to begin with. The transfer to a computer added another round of compression. Every share since, by email, messaging app or upload, added more. By the time it reaches you, a 2003 birthday has soft faces, blocky skin tones, jittery colour and a strobing grain over everything.

The good news is that these problems are well understood, and cleaning them is exactly what restoration models are trained on.

• Low resolution: often 320 by 240 or 640 by 480.
• Analog noise: moving grain and colour speckle, especially in shadows.
• Compression blocks from low-bitrate digitising.
• Soft, smeared faces and unreadable small details.

Digitise first, then restore

If the footage is still on tape, the quality of the capture matters more than any restoration. Use a decent capture device, clean the heads, and save the highest quality file you can (not a tiny MP4). Then bring that file here. We cannot work from a phone video of a TV screen; the result of that is always disappointing.

If your family already has digital copies, start from the earliest, least-compressed one you can find, not the version that has been shared around.

What helps, and what does not

What the AI does with a home movie

First a cleanup pass removes noise and blockiness without smearing detail. Then SeedVR2 rebuilds structure from the cleaned frame, with special strength on faces, which is almost always what people care about. Eyes become eyes again, hair gains strands, writing on a cake becomes legible.

The result is a bigger, cleaner version at up to 1080p. It does not turn 1995 into IMAX, and we do not colourise or change the content. What you see is your footage, tidied.

Limits worth knowing

Our AI restoration covers clips up to two minutes, which suits most single moments: a first step, a speech, a goal. A longer tape can be split into scenes with any editor and restored scene by scene. Longer files up to ten minutes receive standard cleanup, which removes noise and blocks but does not redraw detail.

We do not repair tape tracking errors, dropouts or missing frames, and we do not fix shaky footage. We also do not add sound; your audio stays as it was.

Preserving the memory, not only the picture

Restoration is a good moment to look after the rest too. Copy the original to two places, label it with a date and names, and keep the restored copy alongside. Add a short text file explaining who is in the video and when it was filmed; in thirty years that note will be worth more than the extra sharpness.

Many people tell us they restored one clip for a birthday and ended up doing a whole box of tapes. If that is you, the 3-video pack or the monthly plan costs much less per clip.

Make the most of restored footage

Once the clip looks better, share it from a platform that keeps quality high, such as a private YouTube upload or a direct link, rather than a messaging app that recompresses it again. And keep the original: restored versions are lovely, but the original is the document.

For a deeper walkthrough of digitising and cleaning tapes, see our article on restoring old home videos and VHS.

What to expect

Expect cleaner faces, less grain and fewer blocks, delivered as a 1080p file that plays everywhere. Do not expect a colour-corrected, stabilised film. If a tape has faded colours, a quick tweak in a photo or video editor after restoration will pull them back.

Restore an old video in three steps

1. Upload the best copyChoose the highest quality digital file you have.
2. Preview 15 secondsCheck faces and noise on the slider.
3. Download the resultGet a watermark-free MP4 at up to 1080p.