• Adobe Premiere Pro

  Workflow Suggestions Please – Mixed Media Doc

  Posted by Peter Foxman on January 23, 2020 at 10:38 pm

  Hi there, longtime reader first time poster!

  I’m working on a documentary that is mixed media. Shot over a long period of time.
  There is a mixture of SD (720×576, 720×486) and HD (1920×1080, 720p).

  I’ve inherited the project. And it has been cut in 720×576. I started to upres the footage in Premiere to 1080p. I have Red Giant Instant 4K so I was going to use that in some of the places. We don’t have the money to use something like a Terranex to UpRES it. Also I don’t think all the tapes have survived.

  I would love to hear what people thought. The director would like to make a DCP and hopefully send it to festivals when it’s done.

  Thanks in advance.

  Peter Foxman replied 6 years, 7 months ago 3 Members · 3 Replies
• 3 Replies

• 

  Mark Suszko

  January 24, 2020 at 3:09 pm

  You have what you have. And you don’t have the money to make it higher rez. The proper answer from a business standpoint is, pause the project and go raise the money to do it right.

  Yeah, that doesn’t get me anywhere here either, lol. But that’s the real, best answer.

  Last weekend, I watched a free stream of the original version of “The Thomas Crown Affair” starring Steve McQueen. I recommend you watch it this weekend, particularly for the multiscreen PIP visual effects editing techniques used by Avildsen. Depending on the content and themes of your doc, maybe the low rez footage would work if you took it apart and put it into a multi-screen approach like this. That opens up the ability to add other higher rez footage, b-roll, or backgrounds in with the multiscreen, and gives you a 16:9 frame to present on the screen.

  Make the problem look like an intentional aesthetic choice.
• 

  Shane Ross

  January 24, 2020 at 7:23 pm

  Use the tools you have. Adobe After Effects can scale well, Instant HD does an OK job. If you can’t afford the hardware, these software options will do just fine. I’ve used them many times myself. Of course it won’t make SD look HD by any stretch of the imagination, but it won’t degrade the image that much.

  Know that blowing up DV does REALLY show off the stupid DV compression lines. No way around those.

  Shane
  Little Frog Post
  Read my blog, Little Frog in High Def
• 

  Peter Foxman

  January 25, 2020 at 6:09 pm

  Thanks Shane. It good to know that I’m on the right track.

  We’re not going to recut just to get around the low resolution footage, and there’s no way we, or anyone is ever going to pay for the upscaling to be done through hardware.

  Many thanks to all responses.

Reply to this Discussion! Login or Sign Up