best method for downscaling from hd to sd

[Drea Solan]

Wow, Kati, thanks for the great, thorough post, which I have since saved offline for future reference!

I’m not sure if I should start a new post for this since I’m asking about my particular project but further clarification of your last bit of advice should solve this so here goes.

In my current situation, I am limping along with FCP 6.06 on an older MacBook Pro and do not have access to After Effects. My DVD audience does not have high end expectations from the final piece, so I’m hoping that I can get very good to acceptable quality out of this. This is my first go with HD so can you fill in the blanks a bit for the specific steps involved with your recommendations for downsampling in FCP? Specifically:

You recommend applying Gaussian Blur with an amount of 1.2 to 1.5 before downscaling.

a. I assume this means the downscaling is done of just the raw HD footage (1920×1080 30p) vs. the final edited material? (I’ll be adding titles, transitions, and overlaying HD clips from 2 camera angles). I assume you are recommending adjusting the raw footage (I will also be sparingly blending in a few clips shot in SD so it would make sense to add this after the downsample).

b. What are the actual steps to take for downscaling in FCP? So far, I’ve dragged and dropped HD clips into an SD timeline – is that in fact the downscaling method recommended or is there another way? Do I create an HD timeline for all of my HD footage, add the blur, and then what?

c. Your answer to b. should then reveal when/where I add the unsharp mask (your recommendations: add a little amount of Unsharp Mask afterwards to get some sharpness back. Try amount of 20 to 30 and radius of 1.0.)

d. And if I follow the above recommendations of blur/downscale/unsharp mask (hopefully with further clarification from you), will the results be markedly better than if I just ran with dropping the raw HD clips into an SD timeline and editing away and exporting as QT movie and on to DVD? I’m trying to judge how bad the latter route would be given my audience’s expectations and how little time I have to complete the project (of course!)

e. And I just saw Andy’s post asking about your thoughts about using Compressor, which I have and Apple touts as the way to go in thisw workflow (https://documentation.apple.com/en/finalcutstudio/workflows/index.html#chapter=5%26section=3%26hash=apple_ref:doc:uid:FinalCutStudio-Workflows-CH104-SW3).

Again, I’ve got an older MacBook Pro 2.16 GHz Intel Core Duo, so anyone’s recommendations on what I can get away with given that factor is much appreciated.

Thanks a lot,
Drea

[Simon Ubsdell]

[Andy Neil] ” And with the 64 bit rewrite, it does a good job of using all cores.”

I thought there was some discussion as to whether or not Compressor 4 actually is a 64 bit application as such (e.g):

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/3135546?start=0&tstart=0

“The CompressorJobController is 64 bit. The application itself (and its individual, processor core specific instances) are still 32 bit.”

Simon Ubsdell
Director/Editor/Writer
http://www.tokyo-uk.com

[Simon Ubsdell]

[Drea Solan] “In my current situation, I am limping along with FCP 6.06”

The ony thing I will say is whatever you do, don’t use FCP 7 or earlier as a downscaling tool – the results are really poor, whatever pre- or post-processing you might want to apply.

Compressor (while not anywhere near the quality of expensive hardware scaling solutions) will give you a far better result – Compressor 4 is insanely cheap/good value.

If you have Adobe Creative Suite, you will also have Adobe Media Ecnoder which can give good results but lacks the level of control that you get with Compressor.

Simon Ubsdell
Director/Editor/Writer
http://www.tokyo-uk.com

[Drea Solan]

Thanks for the last bit of info. I am stuck with Compressor 3.0.5 but I’ll give that a go. Feel free to provide some no fail quick tips on the settings I should use for that conversion.

I don’t think I saw anyone asking about converting using QuickTime Player. What about that as an option? I have QT 7 and QT 10.

And can you clarify, are you talking about downsampling the HD clips before they’re placed into an SD sequence in FCP or do you do all of your editing in an HD timeline in FCP and then export the final HD movie and downsample that in Compressor? I would think the latter if ever one wanted to use an HD version of their FCP project, however, I saw previous threads referring to dropping in HD clips within SD timelines in FCP, which would describe the workflow of the first scenario (regardless of whether using that app to downsample was a good idea or not).

Thanks.

[Andy Neil]

[Drea Solan] “And can you clarify, are you talking about downsampling the HD clips before they’re placed into an SD sequence in FCP or do you do all of your editing in an HD timeline in FCP and then export the final HD movie and downsample that in Compressor?”

I don’t know who you’re replying to, but I’ve always downrezzed in Compressor from an HD project in FCP. The consensus seems to be that using FCP to downrez is probably one of the worst workflows.

Work in HD. Export an HD QT. Convert HD QT to SD DVD in Compressor.

Andy

https://www.timesavertutorials.com

[Kati Haapamäki]

Thanks for the tip Andy.

I have completely forgotten the existence of Compressor 4. I never liked Compressor, 3 but I really see hope in version 4. If it only has as high quality image processing as FCP X has built in. Gotta try it tomorrow.

Kati

[Kati Haapamäki]

Hi Drea.

My wrote my answers beneath your questions.

a. I assume this means the downscaling is done of just the raw HD footage (1920×1080 30p) vs. the final edited material? (I’ll be adding titles, transitions, and overlaying HD clips from 2 camera angles). I assume you are recommending adjusting the raw footage (I will also be sparingly blending in a few clips shot in SD so it would make sense to add this after the downsample).

You add all the SD stuff afterwards, so it stays intact. It’s also wise to make all the graphics in the SD size and add them after downsample.

b. What are the actual steps to take for downscaling in FCP? So far, I’ve dragged and dropped HD clips into an SD timeline – is that in fact the downscaling method recommended or is there another way? Do I create an HD timeline for all of my HD footage, add the blur, and then what?

When you throw your HD clips into SD timeline, FCP resizes them using it’s own not-so-great downsample algorithm. You can nest your HD timeline, and add blur in to nested clip and then edit the whole HD sequence into SD timeline. (FCP scales the HD sequence automatically). Then you can add the sharpening. And edit you SD stuff to the that sequence.

But to get this working you must have all your footage and all your sequences have set their field dominance to None. Also you have to make sure that Motion Filtering Quality is set to “Normal” on you sequence settings. Other values seems to produce pure crap.

If you use Unsharp Mask, uncheck Luminosity checkbox. It seems to produce banding.

c. Your answer to b. should then reveal when/where I add the unsharp mask (your recommendations: add a little amount of Unsharp Mask afterwards to get some sharpness back. Try amount of 20 to 30 and radius of 1.0.)

d. And if I follow the above recommendations of blur/downscale/unsharp mask (hopefully with further clarification from you), will the results be markedly better than if I just ran with dropping the raw HD clips into an SD timeline and editing away and exporting as QT movie and on to DVD? I’m trying to judge how bad the latter route would be given my audience’s expectations and how little time I have to complete the project (of course!)

Markedly better? I bet most of the people are so blind that they can’t tell the difference nor they don’t care about quality. You have to decide by yourself if it’s worth of it. Make some test and use properly adjusted television or video monitor to compare results.

But this is a kind of all around fix and very much a compromise. It depends a lot on your original material weather this helps or not. If your footage is already soft, there’s probably not much use of this. But if you have problems with too sharp jagged edges and flickering this may help. Don’t take my filter values granted. Play with them and find out what’s best for you. You may want more post-sharpening for example.

There sure are better methods around, but if you’re stuck with FCP 6, you can try this. Not never tested this with FCP 6 tho, but i don’t think there’s any difference between versions 6 and 7.

Can’t wait getting my hands on Compressor 4….

Kati

[Simon Ubsdell]

[Kati Haapamäki] “I have completely forgotten the existence of Compressor 4. I never liked Compressor, 3 but I really see hope in version 4.”

Gary Adcock has a great review of Compressor 4 here which is well worth reading to cut through the confusion:

https://www.macworld.com/article/161002/2011/07/compressor4.html

Simon Ubsdell
Director/Editor/Writer
http://www.tokyo-uk.com

[Drea Solan]

Thanks so much for your answer, Andy. This only makes too much sense to me too – you’ve got HD so use it. Create an HD project and burn to Blue Ray one day despite the immediate need of only a regular DVD. The wrench in the works for me is my older system – a 2.16 GHz Intel Core Duo MacBook Pro (2GB RAM max). I can only assume this is a no go for proper HD editing. Correct?

This serious limitation, further bolstered by the belief that the target audience is not discriminating by any means (unless something is way off) I believe I’m forced into an SD environment from the get go. Your thoughts?

And thanks for your thorough answer once again, Kati.

Sorry, can you add a bit more clarity to the following:

…You can nest your HD timeline, and add blur in to nested clip and then edit the whole HD sequence into SD timeline. (FCP scales the HD sequence automatically). Then you can add the sharpening. And edit you SD stuff to the that sequence.

Can you further explain the steps involved here, specifically the beginning about nesting your HD timeline. I create an HD timeline to do this? What exactly do I do? Trying to understand where the HD and SD timelines come in.

Thanks a million!

– Drea

[Kati Haapamäki]

Well.. I installed Compressor 4. Results looked quite promising when I started to play with anti-alias slider. But then I remembered why I have never liked Compressor. It is buggy and so is its newest version.

It creates quite a lot corrupted (bright colored) pixels, sometimes in rather big area. It’s totally unacceptable. Compressor 4 is not a solution. Sniff..

Kati