Video Face Enhancer Review: Sharper Faces, Same Clip
Pick Video Face Enhancer to rescue soft or over-compressed footage of people; it fixes faces, not pixel count, and it can smooth skin a little.
Spicy Index
Not indexed
Freedom Score
Not yet tested
- Price
- $0.06 per 5 s processed
- Median time
- 54 s
- Success rate
- Collecting data
Video Face Enhancer takes one field, video_url, and returns the same clip with up to three faces per frame restored, picked in order of size. Resolution, frame rate, length, framing and the audio track come back as you sent them. There is no prompt and nothing to tune. It costs $0.012 per second of the input clip, rounded up to a whole second with a 3-second minimum, and the clip must run between 3 seconds and 5 minutes.
- SpicyAPI Engineering
- Tested Oct 25, 2026
- Methodology v3.3 →
- We sell these models; scores ignore price →
The verdict
Use it on footage where the faces are the problem: a podcast clip crushed by compression, a webcam recording, a generated video where the faces went soft. It is not an upscaler, so a 640×360 clip comes back at 640×360. If you also need more pixels, run it before or after Video Upscaler.
Key facts
- Content ladder: not tested on this endpoint; it restores footage you supply rather than generating new scenes.
- Price: $0.012 per input second, 3-second minimum, failed requests are not charged.
- Limits: 3 seconds to 5 minutes, up to three faces per frame, no resolution change.
- Sources: the parameter list and the published example are on the Video Face Enhancer model page.
What we liked and what held it back
What we liked
- One field, one job.
video_urlis the whole request, so it drops into a pipeline without a prompt-writing step. - Everything outside the faces stays put. In our test the room behind the speaker was unchanged, and length, framing, motion and the audio track were kept.
- No visible flicker in our clip. Eyes, teeth and the hairline were sharper in every frame we checked, and the speaker still looked like the same person.
- It runs fast for the job. The 5-second test clip finished in about 21 seconds of processing.
- It is inexpensive. A 30-second clip costs $0.36.
What held it back
- It does not add pixels. Output size equals input size, so a small clip stays small.
- Skin can come back a little smoother. In our before and after comparison the faces were clearly sharper, with slightly softened skin texture. Watch the result at normal speed and on a paused frame before delivering it.
- Three faces per frame. Up to three faces are restored, in order of size; any further, very small or hidden faces are left as they were.
- Real, clearly visible faces improve most. Faces that are tiny, turned away or obscured give the model little to work from.
- Five minutes is the cap. Longer footage needs to be cut into pieces first.
What we tested
We ran one real clip on 25 October 2026: a 5-second 640×360 shot of a podcast host, degraded with heavy compression. It came back at 640×360 and 24 fps, still 5.0 seconds long with the audio kept. We compared the original and the result side by side: eyes, teeth and hairline were visibly sharper, the background was unchanged, and we saw no frame-to-frame flicker on playback.
That is one clip, so treat it as a confirmation of how the endpoint behaves, not a benchmark. We did not test multi-person footage, fast head movement, profile views or low-light clips, and we have not scored it against other restoration tools. If your footage looks like that, run a short sample first; billing is per second, so a 3-second test costs $0.036.
Alternatives
- Restoring a single photo instead of a clip? Face Enhancer does the same repair on one image.
- Need a larger frame as well as better faces? Video Upscaler raises the clip to 720p, 1080p, 2K or 4K.
- Re-voicing the person on screen? Lip Sync redraws the mouth to match a new audio track.
How Video Face Enhancer earns its Spicy Index
Each dimension below links to its full workings: the table row every point came from and why points were lost.
- Public leaderboards 45% of quality
- Not yet tested
- Blind output test 35% of quality
- Not yet tested
- Arena quality 20% of quality
- Not yet tested
- Capability 10.5% weight
- Not yet tested
- Freedom Score 30% weight
- Not yet tested
No exact match on a tracked public leaderboard yet. How it works
Not in our blind output test yet. How it works
Counts once the model has 100+ blind votes and a 95% interval under 200 Elo. How it works
Not scored yet. How it works
Freedom evidence is untested or insufficient. The Index retains the original quality and capability score, is marked preliminary and still receives a rank. Missing evidence is not zero. How it works
What Video Face Enhancer can do on SpicyAPI
Straight from the live model specification on SpicyAPI. Some creators offer more in their own apps; this is what you can call through our API today.
| Feature | Video editing |
|---|---|
| Native audio | No |
| Seed control | No |
| Negative prompt | No |
How long it really takes
Measured on real jobs over the last 30 days, from request to finished result. Times include our own test runs.
- Median time
- 54 s
- 90th percentile
- 4.1 min
- Wait per second of video
- Collecting data
- Success rate
- Collecting data
A time appears once at least 10 completed jobs are in. Success rates count customer jobs only and stay hidden for every model until we have a full 30 days of traffic.
Models to consider instead of Video Face Enhancer
SpicyAPI
Face Enhancer
Restoring a single photo instead of a clip?
- Spicy Index
- —
- Freedom Score
- —
- Price
- $0.012/ image
SpicyAPI
Video Upscaler
Need a larger frame as well as better faces?
- Spicy Index
- 56.3
- Freedom Score
- 56.0
- Price
- —
SpicyAPI
Lip Sync
Re-voicing the person on screen?
- Spicy Index
- 65.6
- Freedom Score
- Not enough evidence yet
- Price
- —
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Video Face Enhancer FAQ
Try Video Face Enhancer yourself
Set every parameter in the Playground and see the exact price before you run it.
$0.06 per 5 s processed
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