Procedure for uprezzing 4x3 letterbox to 16x9

thanks for the speedy reply ryan
will have to try it & see i guess. I thought it was mentioned that it only worked on progressive footage - hopefully i read that wrong
a few things i forgot to add were -
it's going to be played off a flash card in mpeg2 but not off a dvd. i presume that doesn't work the same as a dvd player in telling the tv screen whether its 4x3 or 16x9? also wondering if the plasma screen will clip the footage around the edges like normal tv does or if the flash card will make the plasma screen work like a computer monitor i.e you see all the footage?
Also wondered, if i was right about it having to be progressive - a solution may be to convert the footage to progressive using magic bullet then following disjecta's advice but is that true progressive, wouldn't i lose even more resolution?
sorry about all the questions but i only found out it was going to be shown widescreen today - got to finish it within a week
 
ade4all said:
thanks for the speedy reply ryan
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No problem. glad I can help.

ade4all said:
will have to try it & see i guess. I thought it was mentioned that it only worked on progressive footage - hopefully i read that wrong
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I do not remember reading that. PZP just reads the individual files / images, and can't tell if it is progressive or not. All it does is re size the image, and it does that well. A progressive image is going to give you better results, as you have more resolution to work with. So it is better to use progressive, but that doesn't mean that you can't use interlaced.

Something else you may want to consider, since you are on a tight schedule- is just use pp1.5 to scale the sequence and make it 16:9 for you. The results will not be as good as PZP, but it will be quicker, easier, and should give you results that are good enough. (I would recommend testing it out first on a small / short clip.- hopefully you have access to the display before the actual presentation.)

ade4all said:
a few things i forgot to add were -
it's going to be played off a flash card in mpeg2 but not off a dvd. i presume that doesn't work the same as a dvd player in telling the tv screen whether its 4x3 or 16x9? also wondering if the plasma screen will clip the footage around the edges like normal tv does or if the flash card will make the plasma screen work like a computer monitor i.e you see all the footage?
Also wondered, if i was right about it having to be progressive - a solution may be to convert the footage to progressive using magic bullet then following disjecta's advice but is that true progressive, wouldn't i lose even more resolution?
sorry about all the questions but i only found out it was going to be shown widescreen today - got to finish it within a week
Click to expand...

Hopefully some one else has more detailed answer for those questions. I do not know enough about plasma to give you a solid answer. But here are my thoughts:

1. TEST, TEST, TEST- using a short clip, test out your options with the screen- try with just using pp1.5, try using with PZP, see if the screen will recognize that it is 16:9 .... this will give you the best example of how your footage will work / look / oporate when it comes to show time.

2. Converting-It would be true progressive, in the sense that it would be one full image without fields. It just would not have the same detail / resoultion as an image that was originally progressive in the first place. I'm not sure that you would be loosing resolution per se, but you definately would not be gaining any resolution.

Good luck, I hope it all goes well for you.
 
thankyou so much,
blown away with how quickly & comprehensively you've answered my plea. fantastic advice, i'm already experimenting, no time to lose
 
have tried all your suggestions & here are my results
using photozoom pro
have tried it with interlaced footage & it has problems with the stretched out horizontal lines, deinterlacing the film helps a lot. making the footage progressive using magic bullet definitely works best - it loses less resolution than interlaced footage that has been deinterlaced, though there's not a lot in it (was fearing this would be the case - going to be spending a lot of my time at the end rendering)
stretching footage in prem pro 1.5 - (widescreen settings)
stretching the interlaced footage by 133% (using the fact that i stretched in photozoom from 576 to 768 - think my maths is right) - the 16x9 footage looked very soft, almost like it was out of focus a lot of the time.
making the footage progressive with mb before stretching, it was slightly better

conclusion - progressive with photozoom pro looks the best

however I guess the only true test is to see what the footage looks like on a widescreen plasma, all these results are from my 4x3 interlaced tv - perhaps the 'interlacing' i saw from the interlaced footage would disappear on a widescreen plasma screen & i could avoid having to use magic bullet. will find out on monday when i can access the plasma screen

oh how i wish i'd got my dvx100 a couple of months earlier. footage was shot with canon xm2
 
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PZP definately has the best algorithm (sp?) for stretching images, glad it is working for you.

As for having the problems / issues dissapear when on the plazma, I'm not sure that would happen. I know that plazma displays differently then your reg. TV, but you are increasing the image to 42", so that might just increase the problems too. (Hopefully it all goes well on monday.

Good luck.
 
So, should I do color-correction before or after uprezzing using Photozoom? Will one yield significantly better results, or does it end up being the same either way?

Also, I just downloaded the Instant HD demo from Red Giant software. How does that compare to Photozoom in terms of speed and quality?
 
jrv3034 said:
So, should I do color-correction before or after uprezzing using Photozoom? Will one yield significantly better results, or does it end up being the same either way?
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Again, I would suggesting on a short clip, and seeing the results - then judge for yourself. For our submission to the DVX SiFi fest we upresed our footage first, and then CC'd and added the FX. While we did do some testing, we were pressed for time, and did not test enough. We decided on upresing first just becsue we thought that would give us cleaner footage to work with. With the CC and FX added, the footage had to be rendered out, and we did not want any part of the image that might suffer from compression from the render showing up in the final. (When you upres everything is being magnified.) I would do some testing and see what you like from each otpion.

jrv3034 said:
Also, I just downloaded the Instant HD demo from Red Giant software. How does that compare to Photozoom in terms of speed and quality?
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I haven't used it, so I have no clue. PZP can take a while, especially since you have to export, and then reimport. So the Instant HD might be quicker, as it sounds like you can stay within your NLE ... You can get a demo of PZP, so test the two of them using the same footage. And then let us know what you find, I would be interested in hearing about your results.
 
With what pixel aspect ratio do you export your footage to a tiff sequence from your NLE before uprezzing? I have tried both PAL DV (1.067) and Square pixels (1.0). None of them seem to be the right one as 1.067 squeezes the frames a bit horizontally and 1.0 renders some kind of vertical lines all over the frames.
 
It should be DV. I'm using FCP as my NLE, and when I export, I just have is export using the current sequence settings- which is NTSC DV for myself, and it work fine. I would think that it would be the same for PAL.
 
really stupid question:

followed the photozoom method, imported footage into premiere as a folder, interepreted it, put it on the timeline as a sequence.

now it appears on the timeline as separate files, and each one plays in the program for the whole duration of original footage.

how do i put them back together? is that what rendering is?
 
That's a common mistake. You need to import your footage as a sequence, not individual stills. You will see that option in Premiere's import dialog box. Make sure that's checked and select the first image in your sequence and import. Premiere will do the rest.
 
It works!!!

Couldn't find where it says import "as sequence", so just imported the first image as "all files". Then conformed the pixel aspect ratio to 16:9 and the black bars on the sides disappeared. How does it know that the first image is the whole video? Unbelievable.

Thanks so much Disjecta, for your time and effort.
 
Hi!
I went through the entire up-rez process, but I am not quite sure if I got the appropriate results. Here is a snapshot of my footage in FCP.

http://i77.photobucket.com/albums/j62/molocono/widescreenFCP.jpg

It was shot in normal 4:3 mode with no letterboxing. What worries me is that my clip does not extend beyond the 'safe zone' on the sides.

I'm working on a project which I shot with the anamorphic adapter, but I need to incorporate some VHS footage that was shot in the normal aspect ratio. So I ultimately need to deliver the final product in 16:9 with no bars. Will this process work?

Thanks!
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EDIT: Nevermind, I had not scaled the image to 100%. Doh! Here is the new snapshot. Lemme know what you think.
http://i77.photobucket.com/albums/j62/molocono/widescreenFCP_100.jpg

So is it necessary to have your footage letterboxed for this process to work? What are the settings for non-letterboxed footage?
 
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What would be the corresponding "new image size" with a PAL dvx? I have shot some of the footage with the anamorphic adapter and now I want to uprez couple of letterbox shots to the right size.

Help would be much appreciated.
 
jrv3034 said:
So, should I do color-correction before or after uprezzing using Photozoom? Will one yield significantly better results, or does it end up being the same either way?
Click to expand...

I've heard claims from various sources that it's better to uprez first, then do your thing. I can see how if you are doing special effects, that would be the preffered method as you don't want to uprez your seemingly good looking special effects and introduce grain or whatnot into it.

However, if you are just doing color correction to the image, I would argue it might be better to do it on your 4x3 letterboxed master. Why? Because that way, you'll have a completely done letterboxed master along with your anamorphic uprez. Why is this important? Because depending on how a festival or tv station or whatnot want your footage delivered, you may need a 4x3 letterboxed option.

For instance, I had to submit a film last year into a film festival and they wanted it in DigiBeta so that meant they had to transfer my footage from miniDV to DigiBeta. The thing is, I only had an anamorphic master so it would looked stretched on tape. I had to make a 4x3 sequence and resize my file into it which cut into the resolution of it.

The same would apply to if you only had a 16x9 anamorphic master that's all color corrected but no letterboxed version. You would have to resize it and the resized 16x9 onto 4x3 file will look lower quality than your natively 4x3 file.

If you color correct your 4x3 and have a finished version, you'll have that for any tape transfers. Also when you uprez, you'll have a 16x9 version for your DVD file. Voila. Best of Both Worlds.
 
Norbert said:
With what pixel aspect ratio do you export your footage to a tiff sequence from your NLE before uprezzing? I have tried both PAL DV (1.067) and Square pixels (1.0). None of them seem to be the right one as 1.067 squeezes the frames a bit horizontally and 1.0 renders some kind of vertical lines all over the frames.
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You should export as PAL DV (for your letter box footage in a PAL DV sequence). Don't worry about the tiffs looking stretched, that'll be corrected once you've resized to 720*768 in Photozoom.

Then import the uprezzed tiffs into a widescreen timeline (1.422), interpreting the footage as widescreen, render then export as widescreen. There's absolutely no quality loss and the footage sits nicely.

The only thing I've noticed with this process is that it chops off a couple of frames off the top and has two extra frames at the bottom where the letterbox bar is still visible.
 
I have a slightly off-topic question...

what does 4:3 letterboxed SD footage look like on a widescreen 16:9 television set?
 
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