The HVX Letter Box blues!! What on earth can I do now!!

M

Mavoz

Well-known member
Have just returned from Germany with my new HVX (in DV mode) and filmed my uncles stories from WW2...

The look of the cam came through great...as did the audio....

all apart from one major major problem....

I've ended up with low res footage (lower than SD!) because I misunderstood the manual re: Camera Setup Aspect Conv - Letter Box....

When it said on page 43 "Letter Box: Recorded in 16x9 aspect ratio" I asssumed I was on the right track...instead I think I successfully found the one feature on the cam that kills your footage!


(Tip for anyone new to the cam like me....make sure you absolutely understand this Camera setup - Aspect Conv feature...it would appear to be crucial! )

Apparently I should have used "Squeeze"...(at the time "Squeeze" sounded like it was the one likely to kill my footage)

Anyway in order to make normal 16x9 video I now need to upscale it around 135%

Anyone got any advice on what I can do now to improve the look of this footage?

All I can think of are the following:

- Upscale it 135% and just put up with the degradation
- Upscale it and find some magic filter that smoothes the lack of res!
(Anything like this in After Effects?)
- Do some creative editing..and maybe use the footage in a picture in picture type way

Is obviously quite disappointing to shoot lower than SD res footage with the HVX..but have learned a valuable lesson anyway! We learn by our mistakes I guess!
 
hmm..what resolution is the footage? how many horizontal x vertical pixels do you have?
 
"letterbox" is 4:3 footage with letterbox bars.

"squeeze" is native 16:9 mode (on the HVX200; on the DVX100 "squeeze" was a digital stretch).

So yes, you made the wrong choice. Look into something like Red Giant's "Instant HD" for an option on converting to native 16:9.
 
Thanks Barry...much appreciated....you've given me hope of restoration!

.....just discovered your explanation of "Squeeze" mode etc on p.143 of your book (much clearer than the Pana manual!).....

Can I ask a question...

I'm about to try editing this thing together...I'm using Adobe Premiere Pro 2.0 (with Raylight)

I've got a mixture of this 4:3 letter boxed interview Mini DV footage....with 20 gig or so worth of filler shots 720p footage...

Even though a lot of my footage is mini DV and initially my film will be only produced in SD DVD....would it still be best to edit this together in HD mode in Premiere?
Am I likely to end up with a better 'SD' product by editing in HD first anyway?
Or should I just export the HD footage backwards to SD..and edit the whole thing in regular 16x9 mini DV.

Thanks for any advice!
 
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Not an answer, just a thought (I have done this with reasonable results):

Why not set up a 720p project, then where you use your SD stuff in the timeline just set it in at 100%. It, of course, will be smaller than the 720 stuff but won't look horrible because of having to stretch it to the full 1280/720 frame size, (or just use INSTANT HD as Barry suggested).

If you're going to DVD (SD) now I think either will yield the same approximate result and you'll still have your project if you decide later to go HD after uprezzing the SD footage.
 
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dregenthal said:
Not an answer, just a thought (I have done this with reasonable results):

Why not set up a 720p project, then where you use your SD stuff in the timeline just set it in at 100%. It, of course, will be smaller than the 720 stuff but won't look horrible because of having to stretch it to the full 1280/720 frame size, (or just use INSTANT HD as Barry suggested).

If you're going to DVD (SD) now I think either will yield the same approximate result and you'll still have your project if you decide later to go HD after uprezzing the SD footage.
Click to expand...

Thanks for that tip...I was wondering about that....just setting the video at a smaller size...or even somehow creatively merging the smaller video with a background motion graphic or something...just wasn't sure if there was a way of doing this without it looking dodgy!

If anyone can think of a doco or film example we're they've made use of a smaller size video on the screen and it still looks professional I'd be interested to see it.

I guess another alternative is to just make the project 4x3 letter boxed and just go with it....but figured these days 16x9 was the way to go.

Thanks.
 
Lez said:
http://www.youtube.com/profile?user=TheSnowyRiver

There's are couple archive shots of the river from 1947.. the program was shot 1080i and the archive footage was injested from a SD DVD and enlarged to fit 1920 by 1080... I've never had a viewer complain that the archive footage looked soft,,

Cheers

LeZ
Click to expand...

That interesting.
What camera where they using to shoot 1080i back in 1947?
(a little humor intended).

The open seconds (archived footage) are not exactly what I would charecterize as "tack sharp" but it would be impossible to tell from youtube footage . . . the real visual test would be, what does it look like in 1920x1080 as you say.

I can state that I have been able to take a lot of footage that looks like ka-ka, full-rez and shrink it down to a 320x180 footprint which then looks glorious.
 
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