720p uprez methods

[mgalvan]

Hey all,

Seeing how I will proabably do mostly all my narrative indie film work in 1080p24 with the HVX200, I am curious as what you guys think would be the most effective method of uprezzing 720p footage from the camera to 1080p to incorporate the variable framerate abilities of the camera to the higher resolution. Someone has suggested using the Photozoom Pro method, but I am curious as to what others think would work best for doing this.

[FiL]

so you'd shoot your "normal" stuff at 1080 24p and slow motion at 720 60p (for example)

i too would love to know the best up rez ideas here..

i'd resigned to shooting everything in 720p, but if a suitable uprez method works, then why not?! :)

[mgalvan]

Yes, thats the idea ... if I can shoot in the highest rez possible and then for shots requiring any slow motion for example, use 720p (which would be 5% of shots at most), finding a method of uprezzing the footage cleanly to 1080p would be ideal ...

[Ralph Oshiro]

I've been wondering this myself since I was at one time considering the JVC HD100, which only shoots at 720p. In fact, even if I had purchased the HVX200, I was only planning on shooting at 720p anyway to conserve storage and overhead resources (and easily cut-in my 60fps high-speed 720p footage!). Now that I'm seriously considering a 2/3" 24p widescreen standard definition camera (the Sony DSR450WSL), I will DEFINITELY need to upconvert from 480p! I would imagine that the best upconversion would be from some expensive black box from Snell & Wilcox, Leitch, or Miranda or someone like that.

Anyway, these black boxes are still in the $20,000-and up range, so they MUST be doing something pretty cool to your footage. My plan is that since I'll only have to really upconvert my final edit master anyway, I think it would be worth paying for the highest quality upconversion at a good post house to benefit from the best-optimized hardware solution for this application. If there is a poor man's software upconverter that's just as "smart" at rescaling your 480p/720p footage as the expensive black boxes are, then I would like to know what that is as well, and I would also like to know what the processing time is for a software upconverter (my guess is that it wouldn't be real time).

[mgalvan]

I've been wondering this myself since I was at one time considering the JVC HD100, which only shoots at 720p. In fact, even if I had purchased the HVX200, I was only planning on shooting at 720p anyway to conserve storage and overhead resources (and easily cut-in my 60fps high-speed 720p footage!). Now that I'm seriously considering a 2/3" 24p widescreen standard definition camera (the Sony DSR450WSL), I will DEFINITELY need to upconvert from 480p! I would imagine that the best upconversion would be from some expensive black box from Snell & Wilcox, Leitch, or Miranda or someone like that.

Anyway, these black boxes are still in the $20,000-and up range, so they MUST be doing something pretty cool to your footage. My plan is that since I'll only have to really upconvert my final edit master anyway, I think it would be worth paying for the highest quality upconversion at a good post house to benefit from the best-optimized hardware solution for this application. If there is a poor man's software upconverter that's just as "smart" at rescaling your 480p/720p footage as the expensive black boxes are, then I would like to know what that is as well, and I would also like to know what the processing time is for a software upconverter (my guess is that it wouldn't be real time).

You know, thats a very good suggestion that you brought out. Now that I think about it ... as of now, I am only planning to shoot any major film project in 1080p just in case it is a project that warrants a blowup to 35mm. I would like to shoot in the highest quality and resolution possible just in case 35mm blowup becomes an option or a necessity (or definitely when an HD master is necessary). Only then would a 720p uprez truly become an issue. I am assuming now that I will probably be downconverting most projects onto DVD, where the sequences shot on 720p should look equally as good as the 1080p footage (of course, I plan to edit any variable framerate 720p footage in a separate 720p 24fps timeline and compress out that footage from there).

So yes, I suppose this wouldn't really be an issue until HD DVDs or some other distribution format for HD and total HD marketshare penetration really becomes widespread. If the need absolutely arises to uprez footage, then yes, I'd then try to have it done at a posthouse or something along those lines ...

But I'm still going to try the Photozoom method just to see how it looks :-P

[holymexicobatman]

PhotoZoom Pro perhaps? Thoughts?

[Jim Carswell]

I'm not that familiar with PhotoZoom Pro...would you have to uprez the video frame by frame? Or is this a video friendly program?
Jim

[electricpig]

Try Shake with it's adaptive retiming options under 'Convert' in a FileIn.
You can choose a new resolution aswell as different framerates.

Top quality conversions, with many options.