Tips for SD in HD Project

F

Format_Foreigner

Active member
I have over 3/4 HD footage and the SD footage I have for this project is not critical but could be considered useful.

I know I can do PIP or slap an old film filter on but is there any combination of filters that can give the SD a "look" that will actually hold up in the HD timeline. (assuming the most it would be played on is a big flat panel and not in theaters)
 
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Red Giant Instant HD might be worth a look (I think there are still trial downloads available). I've used it with mixed results. The product is okay but bottom line there really isn't any magic that's going to turn SD into HD (but can enhance it).

My only sucsessful conversions have been when the SD product I had to work with was well lit/composed/etc. You're not going to have much sucsess up-rezzing stuff that looks like garbage in the first place (talking about stuff I've had to work with not your films), <g>.
 
It also depends on what you mean by "hold up." The lower your standard on that, the more likely it is. :) If you want it to look just like HD, not going to happen. If you want it so that it doesn't look ridiculously bad, that can be done, but as said -- the better the footage is to start with, the more likely it is to make a reasonable uprez. You'll probably never get a good result with poorly-shot footage; it'll just look that much worse.
 
All SD to HD upconversions I've seen look pretty bad. Last year's Wimbledon looked decent, though it was obvious it was upconverted SD. Formula 1 GP looked decent, but I cared more about racing that about image quality, I was grateful for that it was in widescreen. Stuff that some PBS affiliates broadcast on their HD channels can look much worse, because it was not shot with a broadcast SD camera, but with a dinky DV camcorder instead. California Gold, for example: very soft picture and ugly artifacts from interlaced upscaling. The smoother the picture and the less vertical detail in it, the better it will upscale. Basically, throw it onto a consumer 50-inch plasma and see, does it look decent or not.
 
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