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HD – increasing Scale
Hi,
I’m editing a video — I have a client that specified to the cameraman on the shoot that they wanted a wide shot. One person selling a product with a billboard — you can see feet, head, sign to the right of the person, etc. They would not give the cameraman multiple takes, varying frame sizes, or cutaways, even though he thought it was a mistake.
It’s a one minute video, and they fed the speaker the lines two at a time. I had no choice but to ‘dissolve’ between all the shots, the video looks terrible, but they like it.
NOW… they want it cropped to head and shoulders. So, the frame size is going to be between 180 to 200% to get to that goal. This is way less than SD.
I guess my question is, if you have an HD image, is it possible to make it an SD image without losing quality on the SD image too? I am better than a newb at compressor, but I’m not sure how I would even do this?
The delivery format is web only. I don’t know that I can offer them a solution that doesn’t stink. Can I somehow get it to 360p or 240p and have it look good?
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4 Replies
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How are you calculating the 200%? If you are working in a SD sequence then you would actually be shrinking the HD video by more than half to get it to fit. If that is your 100% filling of the frame, then you certainly can blow it up by 200% from there. And if the output is 360 then you could use a tiny portion of a 1080 image and still have pristine results.
I like how After Effects calculates this stuff. 100% means pixel for pixel. That is not so in FCP (7) and has always bugged me.
I would go ahead and work in a native sequence. Then compress it for the web from that. But stuff that you have to blow up extremely will benefit from the perceived increase in sharpness that comes from shrinking down the image to 360 or 240. Why don’t you do a quick test?
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Thanks Bret.
I am working in a native sequence (HD) currently. It’s blown up to 200 percent in the native sequence. I’ll run a test, good idea, and let you know. I thought that there would be still less pixels than required in the smaller sequence… I admit, I’m an editor storyteller, I don’t have the technical chops that some do, hence my post 🙂
Appreciate it
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So, if it’s blown up 200%, you’re effectively using 540 lines to fill a 1080 line space. Output that as a 360 line QuickTime and you’re using 540 lines to fill a 360 line space. I don’t think that even qualifies as algaebra. It’ll look fine. Resolution wise. The fact that there won’t be any real camera perspective change might be a little odd, but maybe not.
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If you work in an SD timeline, then to see the entire HD image, you will need to shrink the HD by 54% (at least thats the amount in PAL).
If you want to zoom in then you can zoom all the way to 100% without losing any quality and the image will be twice the size it was! By zooming to 200% in the HD timeline you will see artefacting because you are increasing the pixel size of the material.
These will be less obvious when you compress the file, but you will have already introduced a drop in quality which could even make your Compressor job less efficient, as it will have more noise to contend with.
However, as you are not outputting a HD edit, you would be better off editing in a format closer to the end product, and gaining the scaling flexibility afforded by using that HD material in a less generous frame size.Adam Taylor
Video Editor/Audio Mixer/ Compositor/Motion GFX/Barista
Character Options Ltd
Oldham, UKhttp://www.sculptedbliss.co.uk
My YouTube Animations Page
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