InstantHD or Teranex Mini?

[Ralph Oshiro]

I'm rendering an InstantHD file right now of some Sony DSR450 2/3" widescreen 24p footage I shot recently. I'm excited to see the results of InstantHD since my footage is ultra-clean to begin with. I shot some daylight exterior downtown L.A. freeway/skyline shots, all at -3dB. This is an 800-line (850-line in 4:3) broadcast camera head, so I'm expecting some pretty good results. I know the price is right for the Red Giant product, but the Teranex Mini is priced at about $3,500, and according to Teranex, it's got all the same uprez technology as its VC600 $200,000 big brother, without the noise reduction (and without a few other things as well, I imagine).

Well, I just finished a first render, and I thought it looked pretty good. I'm doing a second render to correct aspect ratio, so I'll post a frame frab in a few minutes.

[Ralph Oshiro]

For those of you unfamiliar with Teranex products, here's some links . . .

SILCON OPTIX TERANEX PRODUCT INFO:

Teranex Mini (http://teranexlive.dimentians.com/home/platforms/Mini.cfm)

Teranex VC-series specification sheets (http://teranexlive.dimentians.com/home/platforms/videoComputer.cfm)

RED GIANT SOFTWARE:

InstantHD (http://www.redgiantsoftware.com/instanthd.html)

[Ralph Oshiro]

Here they are . . .

INSTANT HD DSR450 FRAME GRABS:

http://www.24framefilms.com/SD-1.jpg
Standard-definition native 16:9 Sony DSR450 720x480 image (rescaled to 852x480 to compensate for pixel aspect ratio difference); saved out of Adobe Photoshop at a quality of '7'

http://www.24framefilms.com/HD-480.jpg
"InstantHD" uprez to 1280x720 high-definition image from native 720x480 DSR450 image, rescaled down to 852x480 for comparison; saved out of Adobe Photoshop at a quality of '7'

http://www.24framefilms.com/SD-2-2X.jpg
Standard-definition native 16:9 Sony DSR450 image, rescaled to 1280x720 in Adobe Photoshop for comparison; saved out of Adobe Photoshop at a quality of '7'


http://www.24framefilms.com/HD-0.jpg
"InstantHD" uprez to 1280x720 high-definition image from native 720x480 DSR450 image; saved out of Adobe Photoshop at a quality of '7'

[Ralph Oshiro]

Well maybe I'm not doing this right, because I don't see any difference. Do you?

[Ralph Oshiro]

That was a fairly low-contrast test image. Here's one with more contrast:

http://www.24framefilms.com/SD02.jpg
SD image rescaled to 1280x480 for comparison; saved at a quality of '7' out of Adobe Photoshop

http://www.24framefilms.com/HD02.jpg
"InstantHD" uprezzed HD 1280x720 image; saved at a quality of '7' out of Adobe Photoshop

[Ralph Oshiro]

Hmmm . . . everything looks the same to me. Note that none of these frame grabs are static--they're all frames from the middle of a pan.

[Spartacus]

We bought instantHD, even though some people doubted its quality advantages over PS uprezzing...
I´m afraid they were probably right.
One of the reasons we went for the HVX later on...

[Barry_Green]

Well, InstantHD looks like it's probably doing the same algorithm as photoshop, and delivering extremely comparable results. The difference is that it's automated to handle video files, yes? Vs. photoshop where you'd have to save out your images as a sequence of stills, then up-rez them frame by frame, and then re-incorporate those up-rezzed stills into a movie sequence?

Where's all the mosquito noise coming from though -- is that in the original footage, or from the first save-out to JPG? It's too big to be from the second save-out I think... look at the plant in the upper-left, or the highway sign around "north" or in the lower right of that leftmost highway sign; on the first shots it's on the top of the buildings on the far right...

If that's in your original footage then there's nothing InstantHD can do about it (or PhotoShop for that matter). But if it's being introduced when you're saving the stills from the timeline then you're not giving InstantHD or PhotoShop a good base to work from.

[Kdawg]

In photoshop, if you rescale a picture is that actually uprezzing or just zooming the scale a bit. I thought uprezzing actually calculated and added info to the pic. I'm a bit confused by red giant too.

I uprezzed a small 30p file in premier using red giant trial version. when I expand my DV footage to fit my monitor, it looks the same as the file I uprezzed from red giant. Shouldnt there be quite a noticable difference if its HD?

[MarkG]

Shouldnt there be quite a noticable difference if its HD?

I don't understand what you mean. If you start with DV footage and upscale it to HD, it's never going to have any more detail than the original DV footage, unless the upscaling software makes some up... mere scaling can't create detail that isn't in the original footage. The best you can do is use some kind of 'smart' algorithm that tries to guess what details to add to the upscaled frames and eliminate some of the DV artifacts in the original footage.

[vidled]

Wow.

Rezfactor, InstantHD uses a DIFFERENT algorithm than PS. QUITE different. BUT, this won't manifest itself unless there is a high contrast difference between the particular picture area. So, for a soft image, InstantHD won't be all too different to a good Bicubic or Lanczos (these are similar to PS) resize. Where InstantHD (and Photozoom) shines are picture (or video) areas where there is high contrast difference.

Here's some examples from a file posted some time ago:

Pixel resize:
http://pig.us/hduprez-pixel.jpg

Bicubic resize (PS or equivalent):
http://pig.us/hduprez-bicubic.jpg

InstantHD:
http://pig.us/hduprez-InstantHD.jpg

[Ralph Oshiro]

Gotcha, vidled! Now, it all makes sense! Adobe Photoshop was already doing a kind of "smart" uprez using its "bicubic" algorithm! That's why I couldn't see a dramatic difference! The Red Giant Software web demo stills were comparing simple "pixel" enlargements to their "S-spline" type methods (those used by Photozoom and InstantHD). Thanks for pointing that out, and for re-posting those stills!

[Ralph Oshiro]

Where's all the mosquito noise coming from though -- is that in the original footage, or from the first save-out to JPG?Good question! Can't tell.

[khmuse]

Another difference is the intended application.

A hardware solution (like the Teranex) is a real time device and is most suited to process a signal just prior to being displayed. We use a higher end version of this core signal processor in a number of our products (the White Horse engine).

A software solution (like InstantHD) is a non real time device intended to be used in a post production work-flow. The advantage is lower cost, and more flexibility to handle difficult subjects as it is not hindered by the necessity of real time performance.

I should point out that despite being "real time" the Teranex (like any video signal processor) has latency (several frames). This requires a corresponding delay in the audio signal path to maintain synchronization between the two.