Procedure for uprezzing 4x3 letterbox to 16x9

stan_the_man: That has already been said in this thread. The conclusion is: Do it after Photozoom.
 
I couldn't answer your question papa, but just today saw there was a new version of photozoom...photozoom pro 2...and it says it has faster render times. i was going to use the demo version of instanthd, but i don't have PPro, so no tests from me, but i've done my own fiddlin' with photozoom and it's better than a lot of other apps out there and i'm thinking that it's doing so well that benvista raised the price.

for those interested...

Photozoom Pro 2
 
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The new S-Spline XL algorithm in Photozoom Pro 2 doesn't seem to do anything to the image. I took a 720x576 frame and ran it through both PZ Pro 1 with S-Spline and through PZ Pro 2 with S-Spline XL (I did not scale the images) and compared the resulting images and the original image. The image that came out of PZ Pro 2 looked exactly like the original to my eye. The image that came out from PZ Pro 1 was much sharper.
 
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Does this method take away the "horizontal" stretch in the 16:9 footage coming off the DVX - as it isn't true 16:9. I assume that PPro "resizes" the footage proportionally while boosting the image quality as described.

I am a newbie and have thoroughly read this thread but am still a bit confused.
 
Photozoom doesn't have to have anything to do with the scaling of the image. I usually render out squeezed (or stretched) tiff-frames and run them through Photozoom without changing the resolution. Then when I import my frames back into a widescreen project I conform them to the 16:9 PAR.
 
When you crop your footage in your NLE before exporting to a tiff sequence those black bars should disappear outside the frame. I would recommend to not shoot letterbox though because without black bars you have the option to correct the framing vertically in your NLE. Therefore I always shoot normal.
So, if you shoot normal or letterbox, then crop your picture with the proper aspect before Photozoom. If you shoot squeeze mode you don't have to do anything.
 
I have followed the tutorial to a tee - nothing changes in the process. I don't know how to crop within the AVID before exporting which makes it difficult to try another method as stated above.

Anyone have any luck with the tutorial - am I missing something?
 
I also have some trouble cropping the footage just righty, but I am using Premiere. I have done some tests and I found out that using the video effect called "crop" in Premiere was the best way to go if I cropped of 12.5 units of the top and bottom of the image. I don't know if 12.5 is exactly right though but I didn't come any closer to 16:9. So, open up the help system in AVID and search for the word "crop". I'm sure you will find something.

If you shoot with squeeze mode you will not have these problems at all since the image is already squeezed for the right aspect. But of course, that makes it impossible to correct the vertical framing before cropping the footage. If you are happy with your original framing then that shouldn't be a problem.

So, for myself, does anyone have a clue on how to properly crop footage in Premiere Pro 1.5?
 
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Has anyone done this tutorial in an Avid? Or something outside of Premiere?

Does anyone have another alternative to uprezzing?
 
uprez

uprez

How long should this take? i'm uprezzing a 4 minute video and it generated 7780 frames and i set it to resize at 720x640 %, it's going on 20+ hrs and only 758 frames out of 7780 have been uprezzed....is this normal?
 
Norbert said:
The new S-Spline XL algorithm in Photozoom Pro 2 doesn't seem to do anything to the image. I took a 720x576 frame and ran it through both PZ Pro 1 with S-Spline and through PZ Pro 2 with S-Spline XL (I did not scale the images) and compared the resulting images and the original image. The image that came out of PZ Pro 2 looked exactly like the original to my eye. The image that came out from PZ Pro 1 was much sharper.
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That's what we have noticed as well. But you have to keep in mind that the original use of this program is to increase the size of still images. The sharpness of the original is an unintended side effect of them trying to accomplish resizing still photos as close to the original as possible. They were hiding some inadequicies of the original algorithim with sharpening the image. Now that they have solved those problems, they don't have to sharpen anymore.

So this leads us to the question: I Photozoom 2 worth it? The answer is yes, if for no other reason than it is faster. If you will look you will see that the original algorithim is there. So you can use the original S-Spline and it should process faster.

Now the question we are grappling with is that if we can use the new S-Spline XL algorithim, turn on the unsharp mask, which is what gives the S-Spline its sharpness, and find a good setting that gives us a less processed looking image while still sharpening it.
 
PaPa said:
Therefor does photozoom deliver a higher quality uprez than instandHD?
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From our tests with the demo of InstantHD, Photozoom 1 delivered a higher quality image. I have no doubt that Photozoom 2 will be even better, but I would suggest you download the demos and test it for yourself.
 
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disjecta helped me out with photozoom a while back, but i never really got the hang of it, seemed extremely confusing, and i always hit a wall, even with his step by step instructions.

dunno.... im a goof, who is aloof.
 
uprez

uprez

I'm still getting black bars on left/right side of picture after movong to timeline and rendering....how do I scale up and remove bars?,,,thanks
 
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