Crisp restores and upscales video on-device — then lets you actually edit it. A real timeline, auto-montage cut to the beat, and a generative restore lane. No cloud. No account. No subscription.
Free to use · 74 MB · Apple Silicon · notarized by Apple
Real output
Drag the handle. Left is the low-resolution source scaled up to fit; right is what Crisp gave back. No cloud, no cherry-picking.
Source: NASA — a city at night photographed from the International Space Station, public domain. Downscaled to 426×224 to stand in for low-resolution footage, then restored and upscaled 4× to 1704×896 by Crisp on Apple Silicon in 0.9 seconds. Measured on the images served here, after compression: 5.4× the fine detail.
What it does
Most tools give you a single stage. Crisp runs the lot — denoise, low-light lift, restore, upscale — then hands you an editor for what comes next.
An Auto mode reads your footage and picks the model, instead of handing you a fifteen-item list and wishing you luck. Manual override is there when you want it.
Hand Crisp a long video and a song. It finds the moments worth keeping and places every cut on the beat — within half a frame of it, for the whole track, not just the first minute.
Every frame is processed on your own machine. No upload, no queue, no account — and it keeps working with the Wi-Fi switched off.
More than an upscaler
Dust and blotches that flash for a single frame get voted away by comparing neighbouring frames: nothing is invented, and marks that genuinely persist are left alone. Old footage that pulses in brightness gets steadied too, while deliberate fades are kept. Scratches run across many frames, so they are outside what this does and we don't pretend otherwise.
Arrange, trim and split clips, add photos and looks, set per-clip speed and volume — then export the cut upscaled to 4K.
Denoise, shadow lift and detail restore run before the upscale — so dark and compressed clips come out clean, not amplified.
Sound is stream-copied and never re-timed — even when you interpolate to a higher frame rate. Nothing drifts.
Drop a JPEG, PNG or HEIC and Crisp upscales and restores the still in about a second.
No splash screen, no project wizard. The slow, best-quality generative lane is a choice you make — never the default.
Type “make it vertical”, “slow it down”, “clean up the audio”. Crisp picks the job and sensible settings.
How it works
No project to create, no media to import first, no render farm to babysit.
Video or photo. Crisp reads what it is and suggests the right job.
Upscale, restore, montage, reframe for vertical, trim — or open the timeline and cut it properly.
The finished file lands beside your original, with your audio intact.
Honest comparison
Topaz has a deeper model library. VideoProc is a broader toolbox. Here's the trade, without the spin.
| Crisp | Topaz Video AI | VideoProc | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Price | $19 one-time | $299/yr — or $59/mo | Subscription or licence |
| Cost after 5 years | $19 | $1,495 | Recurring |
| Keeps working if you stop paying | Yes — it's yours | No — subscription-only since Oct 2025 | Varies |
| Runs fully offline | Yes | Best model is cloud | Varies by feature |
| Timeline editor | Yes | No | Basic |
| Auto-montage to music | Yes | No | No |
| Audio when interpolating | Stream-copied, in sync | Stripped | Varies |
| Model choice | Auto, with override | Manual, 15+ models | Limited |
| Watermark-free exports | With Pro ($19) | Paid | Paid |
Pricing
No subscription, no credits, no cloud bill. Buy it once and it stays bought.
The full editor and the 4K upscaler, with a small “Made with Crisp” mark on exports.
Everything in Free, without the mark — plus the generative lane and batch.
Crisp is $19 once. Topaz Video is $299 a year, every year, and since October 2025 new licences are subscription-only, so when it lapses the app stops opening.
Topaz Video is $299/yr paid annually, or $59/mo month-to-month. Topaz Studio, which bundles all seven apps, is $399/yr, and the commercial licence is $799/yr. Prices taken from topazlabs.com/pricing, checked 7 August 2026 — Crisp's $19 buys the version you have, forever.
FAQ
Yes. Crisp runs entirely on your Mac. No upload, no account, no queue, and it works with the Wi-Fi switched off. The only things that ever touch the network are checking for an update, activating a licence, and downloading the optional Max model pack, never your footage.
Topaz moved to a subscription, and its Starlight restore models need either macOS 26 or 36 GB of memory depending on the variant. Crisp is a one-time-owned, fully-offline app with a generative-restore lane on-device, an AUTO mode instead of a 15-model picker, a low-light stage Topaz lacks, and interpolation that keeps your audio.
Any Apple-Silicon Mac runs the fast tier (1080p → 4K at interactive speed). The generative Max tier is an optional download and is happiest with 32 GB+ of memory. It's the slow, overnight, best-quality lane.
No. Audio is stream-copied and never re-timed, even when you interpolate to a higher frame rate. Color is converted and re-tagged correctly, so nothing comes out washed-out.
That's exactly the target. Crisp denoises, lifts shadows, and restores detail before it upscales, so low-light and compressed clips come out clean instead of amplifying the mess.
Yes. Drop a JPEG, PNG, or HEIC and Crisp upscales & restores the still in about a second. And the built-in Montage mode auto-edits a long video into a highlight reel, a tightened condense, or a music montage cut to the beat — all on-device, no timeline required.
No subscription, ever. The Crisp editor and 4K upscaler are free (exports carry a small “Made with Crisp” mark). Crisp Pro is a one-time $19 — it removes the watermark and unlocks Max Quality + batch. No monthly bill, no credits, no cloud.
Free to use, 74 MB, and it opens in about a second. Nothing to sign up for.