faking a 16:9 look for upconverted HD WWII footage

N

Nicholas Natteau

Veteran
For an upcoming documentary-film I am making about WWII, I'll be shooting and delivering in HD. As my film has a lot of 4:3 WWII newsreel footage, I'm grappling with whether to leave it pillarboxed in the 16:9 720p timeline or whether to apply a 16:9 look to it.

I decided to perform a little 16:9 experiment after upconverting a DV NTSC 480i clip to 720p via hardware (Matrox MXO2). The clip in question is some old WWII newsreel footage I received from the National Archives on a DV NTSC tape.

I dropped the upconverted 720p footage into a 720p timeline. Since it's 4:3 it's pillarboxed in the 720p timeline. So I decided to scale up the 4:3 footage a little further to 135% until it completely filled the 16:9 frame.

Here is the same clip: pillarboxed in the 16:9 720p sequence, and afterwards scaled up 135% along with the FCP Widescreen filter applied (1.78) with offset:

http://vimeo.com/10423134

Very much looking forward to feedback. How does the 16:9 newsreel look? Would the image quality be acceptable for an indie-documentary? Personally, I can't see that much loss of quality, but I don't trust my judgment. I would welcome any thoughts.

My reason for wanting to give the 16:9 look to the WWII footage was that I felt it would blend in better with everything else that would be shot or created in a 16:9 aspect ratio (interviews, animated maps, etc).
 
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I prefer the original unmutilated aspect ratio. In some cases like when the camera moves up the frame along the conveyor line, the difference is minimal, but in other cases like the crane operator or a pan over the workers at their benches, the difference is substantial. Cropped images look too close, too tight to me, I especially did not like 0:16 to 0:38 conversion, it is not obvious where therse men are sitting in.

Also, everyone knows that World War II newsreels were not shot in widescreen, so seeing it in widescreen does not help "blending in". IMHO.
 
I don't even have to look, because I'll always prefer the original aspect ratio over a cropped image.
 
Keep the original aspect ratio. A common editing technique for 4:3 archive footage in a 16:9 project, especially if the 4:3 archive is SD and the overall project is HD, is to put the 4:3 frame over a blurry, moving background that could be anything from a custom element to a heavily-blurred version of the archive footage.
 
C2V said:
A common editing technique for 4:3 archive footage in a 16:9 project, especially if the 4:3 archive is SD and the overall project is HD, is to put the 4:3 frame over a blurry, moving background that could be anything from a custom element to a heavily-blurred version of the archive footage.
Click to expand...
I think this is quite lame. I can understand why they do this in news and sports, they want to tell a viewer "hey, you are watching an HD channel, but this piece is SD". I don't think this is needed in a full-length movie. Considering that all TV channels now have channel bugs, I think that a semi-transparent bug with "HD" lettering is just enough.

In a related discussion, I bought Snow White BD for my son, and the disc has two versions: normal 4:3 and 4:3 with colored side pillars, which sort of match a scene in color and theme. These are custom-drawn pillars, not a blurred background from the main title. I think it is quite lame, maybe this was done to alleviate worries of plasma display owners about uneven panel burn-through. I have a plasma display and prefer the original 4:3 version. I watch 4:3 content very often and my TV does not get any noticeable damage.
 
OK, here's my final 16:9 test. I upscaled in FCP from 100% to 135% and changed the aspect ratio setting in the FCP Distort tab to -33.33. The 4:3 image becomes 16:9. In this example, you see the entire picture rather than have the upper and lower thirds cropped out.

Is that OK for distribution, or are distributors very strict about the 4:3 rule?

http://vimeo.com/10437246
 
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Nicholas Natteau said:
OK, here's my final 16:9 test. I upscaled in FCP from 100% to 135% and changed the aspect ratio setting in the FCP Distort tab to -33.33. The 4:3 image becomes 16:9. In this example, you see the entire picture rather than have the upper and lower thirds cropped out.

Is that OK for distribution, or are distributors very strict about the 4:3 rule?

http://vimeo.com/10437246
Click to expand...

Looks a little odd to me, but then, according to some folks around here, my suggestion is "lame."

There's something about maintaining the original 4:3 aspect ratio that stays true to the source footage. Just my $0.02USD worth.
 
I just happened to rent Michael Moore's doc-film "Capitalism: A Love Story" and I noticed that all the 1940s and 50's newsreel footage fills the 16:9 screen. Some of it may have originally been 16:9. But he also shows some home movies his father shot of him when he was a boy, no doubt 16mm or 8mm which if I'm not mistaken must be 4:3.

My point being, that although the picture is noticeably "soft" being upscaled to fit into a 16:9 screen, and although there definitely seems to be cropping going on (some of the shots are more tightly framed), I think this approach works well. I'm wondering if all the old newsreel footage was upscaled for that very purpose: to blend in better with the rest of the modern day 16:9 footage he shot.
 
I still prefer the first approach. In the second you are losing information and making it softer, in the third you are distorting it, ew.

But I might be in minority. I usually am.
 
I think the aspect ratio should always be intact...

I would use cropping if I didn't need anything being cropped... otherwise the pillars. But you probably should pick only 1 and run with it.
 
Nicholas, I'd say to do the scaling. It seems to be the least noticeable.

I think very few people will ever stop to think, "Hey, shouldn't that be in the 4:3 aspect ratio?" I'm all for the consistency.
 
Thanks everyone. I really appreciate everyone's input here. I have to say personally, that when I watch History HD, I do notice a lot of old WWII footage that seems like it was horizontally stretched to fill the 16:9 frame and blend in with the modern stuff (the interviews that were shot in HD) and it never bothered me. In fact, I have to look for it to even notice it.
 
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