Felix Laurent
Black Forest Labs says it gave the FLUX Video Upscaler a full upgrade. In a post on X on Oct 22, the company said the tool can upscale any video up to 4K. We read the post and the pricing pages around it. The speed and price claims come with no numbers.
What Black Forest Labs announced
The company calls the upgraded tool the best video upscaler on the market. It says the tool costs less than Topaz Astra 2 and is twice as fast. These are the company's own judgements. The post shows no test details.
What the post does not say
The post gives no prices, no render times and no clip used for the comparison. "Twice as fast" has no stated baseline. "Costs less" has no unit, such as per second or per megapixel-second.
What outside pages show
A guide on fal, published in August, lists prices for both tools. It puts FLUX 3 Video Upscaler precise mode at $0.14 per second at 1080p and $0.55 at 4K. It lists Topaz Astra 2 at $3.00 per 10 seconds up to 1080p and $5.00 per 10 seconds at 4K.
These figures predate the Oct 22 upgrade. The current prices after the upgrade are unconfirmed. BFL's own release notes give a different unit, per megapixel-second, so the sources cannot be compared directly.
The same fal guide says Topaz Astra 2 took more than a minute on its author's test clip, a 15-second 720p video. That is one author's test, not a benchmark of the new FLUX version.
How to check the claim
The claim can be tested by running one clip through both tools. Compare cost per minute of output, render time and the final quality at the same resolution. Until then, the speed and price advantage rests on BFL's word.
