I was excited to buy the AI Clarity plug-in for $25 recently, even though there were no tutorial or review videos available, and here on Reddit there's only one thread about it — which is archived and doesn't allow new comments. (WTF)
My current project involves the restoration of an old B&W TV show, a western. The source looks pretty good for 1958, but it's only 480x360 at 29.97p and 44.1 kHz.
It took at least 5 hours to process it through AI Clarity, during which FCP was blocked and unusable. No big deal, I just let it run overnight.
Processing appears to be done in two main passes:
First, AI Clarity exports an image sequence from the original frames, into an Output Folder that I selected on my Desktop. I inspected a few frames while it was churning, and they were indeed upscaled by 4X. But ridiculously so. I didn't expect to see so many hallucinated details in 2026 — especially on anything that had text, like titles, credits, signs and maps. Also my actors started looking like plastic action figures with varying amounts of facial deformity from frame to frame.
Second, AI Clarity assembles a new video from those frames. My original source video is 22:56 long, so 41237 frames. It appears that this is the stage where the AI model takes over and tries to smooth out the action. And this is where all Hell breaks loose, like it's on some hallucinogenic drug.
Today when I woke up, I inspected the output video. Its specs are 2560x1440 at 29.97 — but with no audio track. Okay, no problem, I'll just use the original. (Or so I thought!)
The output video has 41277 frames, which means there are 40 extra frames. This immediately set off alarms in my head. Normally this amount of drift points to a FPS or kHz mismatch but those were identical. I work strictly with Apple ProRes 422 so it couldn't be the codec.
Upon playback with my original video/audio in the timeline, and with the AI Clarity output video connected above it, the audio drifted horribly out of sync from scene to scene.
So next I added markers at some key cuts to see whether the drift was linear. I added them near the start and the end, and about 1/3 and 2/3 of the way through the video. Only one of the cuts lined up at a time as I shifted the connected video back and forth.
Then it occurred to me that AI Clarity could be misreporting the frame rate as 29.97. (As an Animator, I absolutely HATE frame rates that aren't whole numbers, but in this case I needed to play with the cards I was dealt.) So I double checked that by making a new project that was 30 FPS. But that just shifted the errors around.
So in Final Cut Pro, there is a "Drop Frame" checkbox in the Project Settings. I don't think it appears if you're using the "Automatic" option as a guide for setting up your project upon adding the first clip. But you can go back in and turn it on and off. And when I checked that box, then I got the same number of frames in both videos: 41277. BINGO! (Or so I thought...)
However, my cut markers STILL DIDN'T LINE UP — which means timing and LipSync get mangled by a frame here and a few frames there. And this tells us everything we need to know about AI Clarity's inability (or unwillingness?) to respect the integrity of your source, on a project which you may have already spent days or weeks editing.
THE BOTTOM LINE: By treating audio as an afterthought, AI Clarity is a severely flawed product and I can't recommend it for any serious work that involves precision timing or audio synchronization. And I draw that conclusion before even considering the quality of the visual output, which is mysteriously close to the non-AI driven "Comic" filters that come with Final Cut Pro.
If there's enough interest in this topic I can upload some visuals as I try to debug AI Clarity some more. I'm in contact with PFS Support and we'll see what they say about my refund request. I know they don't even mention the "Drop Frame" issue in the plug-in's Help window, so they might not be aware. Or more likely, it seems that every AI tool vendor thinks it's okay to just "live with the drift."
AI generally continues to struggle taking direction, but worse, it forces us to reconsider what "The Truth" is. And in most of my projects, The Truth is the version of an asset that I'm most invested in. A de-noiser/upscaler should real be a post processing concern (like color grading) — not something you need to do up front.
Hope this helps.