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Scaling footage up without resampling
Hello
I have the same video footage in two different versions- one 1080p HD, one PAL.
I’ve been asked to show the difference in quality on-screen, using a split-screen, so the HD version is visible on one side and the SD on the other.
When I pull the SD footage into my HD timeline, Final Cut is automatically trying to upscale it, using resampling (forgive me if my terminology’s not correct) to try to ‘fill in’ the missing pixels so that the result is like a soft-focus HD version rather than looking like the original SD.
Is there a way to resize a clip on the Timeline, but to make sure Final Cut Pro just does it the basic way? And yes, part of the point is to deliberately make the SD look visibly uglier.
It’s stop-motion animation so fields aren’t an issue.
In Photoshop, under Image Size, this would be the difference between ‘resample- bicubic’ and ‘nearest pixel’- I’m looking for the Final Cut equivalent?
Thanks in advance
Stuart
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4 Replies
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[Stuart Bruce] “When I pull the SD footage into my HD timeline, Final Cut is automatically trying to upscale it, using resampling (forgive me if my terminology’s not correct) to try to ‘fill in’ the missing pixels so that the result is like a soft-focus HD version rather than looking like the original SD.
Is there a way to resize a clip on the Timeline, but to make sure Final Cut Pro just does it the basic way? And yes, part of the point is to deliberately make the SD look visibly uglier. “
In the Sequence Setting > Render > Motion Filtering Quality> Lineal.
This would make FC enlarge the image with the lower quality (?) available in FC.
I don’t know if it will be bad enough.
Rafael -
Hi Stuart,
I am not sure that this is easy to do, FCP is trying to display your footage at the best resolution possible, and you cant have one side of the screen at a different resolution than the other, if that makes sense. I dont think you will ever be able to do a true test in the same frame because one screen cant show 2 different resolutions at the same time.You will have to ‘fake’ it i think. Try putting the HD footage in a SD timeline, you might see the difference depending on your output video hardware. Or just have 2 separate timelines and switch between them, playing one at a time. Depending on your hardware you should be able to see the difference on an external monitor quite easily.
cheer
sNick -
[Stuart Bruce] “Is there a way to resize a clip on the Timeline, but to make sure Final Cut Pro just does it the basic way? And yes, part of the point is to deliberately make the SD look visibly uglier.
It’s stop-motion animation so fields aren’t an issue.
In Photoshop, under Image Size, this would be the difference between ‘resample- bicubic’ and ‘nearest pixel’- I’m looking for the Final Cut equivalent?
“Tell us again—in different words—what you’re actually trying to accomplish because there may be a better way to do this. One would be to use two projection systems running simul-rolled SD and HD footage.
Your HD timeline sets the resolution for your project. Using round numbers, your HD sequence is about 2k pixels high, your SD footage only contains about 500 horizontal lines. If you put them side by side without scaling, leaving each clip at their relative pixel-to-pixel resolutions, the SD clip will be 1/4 the vertical size of the adjacent HD clip. It will also only be 1/4 as wide. That’s the incontrovertible math.
If you scale up the SD, all you do is create bigger macro-pixels. You cannot create new pixels without doing a resample and the tools to achieve a PS-like change in image quality are expensive, IIRC.
bogiesan
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[david bogie] “One would be to use two projection systems running simul-rolled SD and HD footage”
Hi David,
This would be the best way, but he wants the SD look as poor as possible.
rafael
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