Downconversion issue

[Bret Williams]

I have done extensive personal tests and found that using compressor, even on its best settings, just kinda stinks for down converting interlaced. Using X to do it is the same thing essentially. It’s doing two things at once and maybe that’s the problem. Creating mpeg and downscaling.

I export an HD file and use After Effects to downscale to SD interlaced. Then I run that through compressor to make the mpeg and the results are much better.

[Bernhard G.]

Hello,

(A)
if You have FCP-7, place Your HD-file in a SD-Sequence.
(Sequence Settings: MotionEstimation set to ‘Best’, High Color Precision)

Otherwise You could try Innobits Video Purifier (same scaling quality as FCP-7):
https://www.innobits.com/purifier.html

(B)
I assume, You also have PremierePro?
If You have a Mercury-supported GPU, place Your HD-file in a SD-Sequence
(do NOT directly scale within AME!) and export this SD-Sequence with AME.

(C)
The best quality You’ll get with hardware scalers like the one of Kona3.
But still, those scalers won’t work file-based … Workarounds …

Best regards,
Bernhard

[Andrea Pizzi]

thanks a lot to both of you
i will do some tests following your suggestions…
have a nice day
Andrea 😉

Andrea

[John Fishback]

In Compressor make sure Frame Controls is ON and you select Best for deinterlace.

John

MacPro 8-core 2.8GHz, 16 GB RAM, OS 10.7.4, QT10.1, Kona 3, Dual Cinema 23, ATI Radeon HD 5870, 24″ TV-Logic Monitor, ATTO ExpressSAS R380 RAID Adapter, PDE enclosure with 8-drive 6TB RAID 5
FCS 3 (FCP 7.0.3, Motion 4.0.3, Comp 3.5.3, DVDSP 4.2.2, Color 1.5.3)
FCP-X 10.0.7, Motion 5.0.6, Compressor 4.0.6

Pro Tools HD 10 w SYNC IO & 192 Digital I/O, Yamaha DM1000, Millennia Media HV-3C, Neumann U87, Schoeps Mk41 mics, Genelec DSP Monitors, Prima CDQ120 ISDN

[David Eaks]

like method A) from Bernhards post, but in FCPX, I found that: Exporting your final HD project and bringing that file back in to an SD timeline, exporting the SD, then importing that to Compressor for DVD as normal produces results that are close to hardware scaling with either AJA Ki Pro or Matrox MXO2.

I’ve mentioned it a couple times but no one has ever replied with comments about this method in FCPX. I’m curious of others opinions.

As an alternative to the above, you can just change the project settings to SD then export. But I found a bug with that method. Where the text of a title, only if it is in a secondary storyline, will not scale down properly and words can even end up being larger than the screen size. This issue does not show up in the timeline, only on export. Simply cut/paste the title to fix it before exporting. On the other hand, if the HD project needs a lot of long rendering, better to just do it once during HD export, as in the first method. So to avoid having to render all the effects again in the SD timeline, at the same time as scaling down.

[Bernhard G.]

Hello,

some of my results (mostly on downscaling interlaced footage):
Scaling in FCP-X appears too blurry and I’ve found scaling in FCP7 better, which is nearly identical to Video Purifier.

Compressor (Scaling:Best, Adaptive Scaling) provides sharp images but suffers bad aliasing. Even setting Anti-Aliasing to 100% doesn’t fix this.

Ki Pro is a tiny bit better (more image details) than FCP7/Purifier.
MXO2 draws edges sharper than KiPro, but seems to preserve less details; but visually still better than FCP7/Purifier.
Kona3 has the best scaling I’ve tested so far on I/O-HW: preserves most details, sharp edges, but occasionally produces ghost lines (doubled edges).

PremierePro with MercuryGPU draws sharp edges but could provide more image details and interlaced scaling is not that flickering-free as with FCP7/Purifier. (Most SW scalers produce this flickering at interlaced scaling, also e.g. DaVinci Resolve.)
But I was very positively surprised after scaling progressive high-contrast material that suffered bad aliasing in all other software solutions incl. FCP-X that usually doesn’t have aliasing-problems. Beside the HW solutions, PP was the only app that performed very well on this!

Best regards,
Bernhard

[Bernhard G.]

Hello,

one more app to test for You:
https://www.squared5.com

MPEG Streamclip has a very sophisticated scaling! Sharp images without flickering nor aliasing. (Set scaling to interlaced, Better Scaling, and output 8bit uncompressed.)

But be aware: it processes at 8bit in 4:2:0 only. So on some footage you might
experience color artifacts!

One of the best options to scale interlaced for further DVD coding and it’s free!

Best regards,
Bernhard