Up-rezzing for film transfer

S

SergioRaposo

Member
I suppose the article linked below has been discussed somewhere here, but I couldn't find anything through the search tool, so:

In this article for American Cinematographer http://www.theasc.com/magazine/product.htm
, John Fauer shot 16mm and DVX, then scanned 16mm at 2K resolution and up-rezzed dvx footage to 2k using Photozoom (which he calls by its former name S-Spline) before transferring both to 35mm (4x3). My question is: how can this be done using photozoom? I mean (I know how photozoom works), what is the 2k (4x3) resolution in pixels?

Does it really improve the quality of the transfer? how? Is it what transfer facilites usually do?

If it is, I thought I might incorporate it to my workflow and try to negotiate a better price with the transfer house since they would skip that step. What do you think? Have you done this?

Sérgio
 
Re: Up-rezzing for film transfer

I think you misunderstood the article. They were uprezzing single frames, not a clip.

Photozoom is only doing single frame conversions, not video.

Even if it were possible to use Photozoom (which it isn't) let's do the math:

@30 fps x 60 for one minute is 1800 frames.
A twenty minute video has 36000 frames.

Not a realistic process.

Transfer houses use a different process, which is a part of the reason 2k or 4k transfers are so expensive, and rarely done "privately".

As far as improve quality, I think you'll need to study the process further.
In order to project your project in a theatre, the resolution needs to be increased to 35mm "size", for lack of a better term.

"If it is, I thought I might incorporate it to my workflow and try to negotiate a better price with the transfer house since they would skip that step"...

you're looking at massive time, doing nothing else, months....and they would still want to do it again.

Unfortunatly, an unrealistic plan.
 
Re: Up-rezzing for film transfer

Thanks for your reply, Pookie. I sure need to study the process further, but quoting the article:

"Another test we did was use a desktop-based application to up-rez some of the DVX100 footage. The TIFF files were brought into S-Spline(www.s-spline.com) and 2K files were created(...)"
"Once all the files were at 2K, they were output to Kodak 5242 fine-grain negative(...)"

I did not mean up-rezzing the video itself, but the uncompressed TIFF frames exported from the 24p timeline, as described by Fauer.

"We were all amazed by how good the DVX100 footage looked. The images were very sharp — not quite as sharp as 16mm, but still very crisp."

As far as I understood, he got good results. I'd never heard of such method before reading the referred article. Can you explain how transfer houses usually do this up-rez from dv-originated footage?

All the best,
Sérgio
 
Re: Up-rezzing for film transfer

Larry, I had read that topic but it is about uprezzing for a different purpose (4:3 letterbox to 16:9). In this case I'm talking about 4:3 to 2k for transfer, like in John Fauer's article.

Thanks
Sérgio
 
Re: Up-rezzing for film transfer

photozoom will uprez to whatever size you want from whatever size you want. simply do the math on the pixles and give it the numners to play with.
..but at any rate if your going to 2k most transfer houses have their own preferred method of uprez and do it for you before the transfer, so you dont really have to worry about it aside from the quality of uprez and transfer they do. just check around with the houses your interested in and ask how they do thier transfers and what uprez process they use and see about getting a sample for you to judge the final quality by.
 
Re: Up-rezzing for film transfer

Sergio, the co-author of that article, and the guy who did the actual up-rez, is a member of this board. Michael Phillips is usually found here in the Avid board under the username MichaelP, or at his website, http://www.24p.com. Jon Fauer did the shooting, but Michael did all the post, so you can ask him directly.
 
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