UPconverting SD toHD

B

blues

Well-known member
I have made 4 feature films with the DVX 100. first generation and have been very happy with this gift from the Gods.Everybody has been talking about downconverting HD to SD to manage and edit the project for whatever exhibition format you may want to use it for.It seems to me we are being led by the industry to upgrade and yet the upgrade will not cost on the camera itself but the support systems it must rely on from P2 cards to tape decks to the computer platforms itself(ie from G4 to G5)Its enormous and time consumining with anxities on the filmakers meager pockets to endure. Why not upconverting our present SD s to HD????? Heard an outfit in mexico has been doing it.Perhaps thats the an swer to our woes. So far we have done well with our SDs why not help us refine the format farther .Its like upconverting the Hi 8 analogue to SD..works just great.
 
dregenthal said:
http://www.redgiantsoftware.com/instanthd.html
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InstantHD does a surprizingly good job of upconverting SD DV to HD. Two things will improve the results: (1) start with progressive scan DV footage (otherwise you need to deinterlace with another application prior to running InstantHD), and (2) shooting progressive scan on the DVX with the vertical detail set to "Thin" so there is no vertical blur being done to the image (this is handy to reduce flicker on interlaced displays, but that is no reason to reduce vertical resolution if your goal is to have the best HD progressive upconversion possible).
 
Have a question on this also.... Oh btw I use instand HD to upres cropped 4:3 footage to full widescreen, its a little gem at this. Fast and easy.

OK Question: especially if you know FCP. On FCP you can edit your standard def footage at 32 bit. This will not add colours but during cc etc it can preserve your colour range. Anyway wondering if there would be any benefit in editing in 32bit then doing the HD upres? Anyone tried this?
 
None I could see. The new FCP scaling is pretty good also - I couldn't tell the difference between FCP and the new fangled red giant thing when I tried it. And FCP works with interlaced footage too.
 
I too am having a really hard time seeing the difference betweeen vegas upsampling and Red giant, actually I thought the vegas looked slightly better, but that's just me, and like Graeme says, it works with interlaced footage as well, but who shoots interlace :)?
 
We might not want to shoot it, but we often have to deal with it. To me, it is an issue until interlace is dead and burried.

Graeme
 
I'm trying to figure out how to put the algorithm on the GPU as that's the direction I'm taking all my image processing these days. It's trickier said than done though :-)

Graeme
 
There are hardware options that are terrific, like the Teranex Mini. I have seen HVX SD footage that looked virtually identical when bumped to 720p as 720p native footage.

As for InstantHD, you will really begin to notice when you view on a large HD source. On my 65" HDTV I can easily see the difference in the FCP and InstantHD conversions...



ash =o)
 
Even on my 100" HD projector really couldn't tell the difference, except that the Instant HD footage was darker and had more contrast, and was not in a good way. Truthfully, anything that has someone looking this close isn't worth the price. And yes it sounds like we are comparing penis sizes now, anyone got a 150" screen with a Christi projector they want to test this out on? :)
And Graeme I agree completely, in fact I will be shooting a big interlace project coming up later this month, and I am not looking forward to it :(
 
Interesting... I was conveting XL2 and HVX SD to 720p to cut into a Varicam project. FCP did a DECENT job but you could still tell, once we ran it thru InstantHD it cut in seemlessly... this only works well for progressive footage.


ash =o)
 
cinemakinoeye said:
InstantHD does a surprizingly good job of upconverting SD DV to HD [...]
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To add to my eariler comments, while I think InstantHD does a nice job with anti-aliasing and presents a clean interface with resizing pre-sets and controls for sharpness, quality and anti-aliasing, I have mixed feelings when it comes to using it in Final Cut Pro, as you can achieve reasonable results with just scaling, especially if you don't have problems with jaggies to start with (shooting within the limits of DV, in other words).

Here's a frame from the video clip I used for my own testing and comparisons:

http://kino-eye.com/wp-content/uploads/2006/06/InstantHD.jpg (Upscaled w/ Instant HD, JPEG from DVCPRO HD master, 16:9 flat, 1280×720, 210.6K)

http://kino-eye.com/wp-content/uploads/2006/06/ScaleFCP.jpg (Upscaled w/ Final Cut Pro, JPEG from DVCPRO HD master, 16:9 flat, 1280×720, 205.6K)

http://kino-eye.com/wp-content/uploads/2006/06/Original.jpg (Original Progressive DV Frame, JPEG, 16:9 squeezed, 720×480, 233.3K)

If you're interested, you can read more of my comments on Instant HD here: http://kino-eye.com/2006/06/18/instant-hd/
 
Take a look at Resizer2. I think it does a better job than InstantHD. I would also agree with Graeme (and how can anyone disagree with Graeme when it comes to such areas) that FCP's new scaling algorithms are pretty good. I had one DVCAM shot (under 10 seconds) that I needed to include with 720- HVX project (project was 60i so no need to convert that footage to 24p). Deinterlaced footage and then uprezed with Resizer2. Since it was a "then and now" shot, the fact that the uprezed footage was a little soft actually made the scene work!

Ned
 
nsoltz said:
Take a look at Resizer2 [...]
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That's Windows only, right? For a Mac user, is there anything significantly better than simply using the scaler in FCP (and possibly adding a little sharpening if needed)? Based on my experiments, I'm happy enough with what FCP can do.
 
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Resizer2 is multi platform. Windows? Moi... (he says as he writes from his Dell which thus far has only been used for video purposes to run P2 Viewer). No... they have versions for all platforms.

Ned
 
Although it's fine to disagree with me, as I can be wrong.... But yes, the new FCP scaling is what I'd consider "standard" quality now. It's not sub-par any more, and is "decent". Whether a more adaptive algorithm will work better is probably footage dependent.

David - thanks for the test frames! What's happening in the nose shadow on the girl in the InstantHD shot? Other than that, the differences are subtle at best, and inconsequential otherwise.

Graeme
 
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