Easy way to upres SD to HD in a FCP 7 project

[Nick Meyers]

yes you can do this, in fact i think it was suggested in your previous thread:

you need to Media Manage the sequence.
select the sequence in the browser, and chose Media Manage from under the file menu
(ori right click on the sequence and chose Media Manage)

use COPY mode
add handles,
request a new project.

i reckon 5 second handles is way too much especially if you are finishing,
12 frames might suffice.

something that want mentioned in the previous thread is the idea of using Resolve for the up-res of the individual shots rather than compressor.
as Michael mentioned it does a good job of that, and would be a lot faster than compressor, i suspect.

nick

[Sascha Engel]

Hi Nick,

that was our original plan, but somehow the HD timeline with the scaled SD footage comes in twisted through the XML: DaVinci scales it again,
because it believes it’s already HD so it scales it another time 266%.

Sascha

[Shane Ross]

I do this often. Here’s what I do.

Duplicate the sequence. Remove all HD footage, so only SD is left.
Media manage it so I have handles.
Take all the media managed footage into Compressor and upscale there. To 1440×1080 (4:3) ProRes 422. I might have to do this in chunks as Compressor doesn’t do TONS of footage at once.
Set things up so Compressor does not change the names of the media.
When it’s done, Duplicate the sequence and then relink all the SD footage to the new HD masters. Removing attributes like BASIC SCALE and DISTORTION.
Manually scale each clip to PAN & SCAN where they best frame the image.
Duplicate the main sequence again. Copy and Paste all the SD footage into it, on a higher layer, and then move down to replace the SD footage.

We talked about this before, no?

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

[Sascha Engel]

Hi Shane,

I figured since we are talking about 16 Master Tapes, it’s easier and faster to just upscale them.
The film is edited at a fast paste and it consist of more than 2000 edits, so just upscaling the master tapes is easier than each shot separately. Just eats way more storage space, but this I can handle. I have more HDs than time right now ;-).
Why you upscale it to 1440*1080?
I did it now directly to 1920*1080 square APR.
And what you mean by pan scan? Placing the image in the right place is more at hand in the other direction, HD to SD, no? Or maybe I understood you wrong.

Greetings,

Sascha Engel
TIME BANDITZ Productions
http://www.youtube.com/taikang

[Nick Meyers]

“I figured since we are talking about 16 Master Tapes, it’s easier and faster to just upscale them.”

no way!
certainly not faster, the upscale is very slow.
well it i if you do it right, and set the settings in the frame controls pane to best.
if you don’t do that then there’s almost no point in using compressor, might as well stay in FCP

alternatives to compressor include MpegStreamclip, and as mentioned Resolve.
when said why not use Resolve for the upscale, i meant just bring the raw shots into resolve, and use it like you would compressor,
as a batch converter.

“Why you upscale it to 1440*1080? ”

i think Shane was referring to 4/3 footage.
personally, i would go for 1920×1080, and pad the sides with black.
there’s a setting for that in the Geometry pane in Compressor.

if your footage is anamorphic SD, then simple 1920×1080 will work.

nick

[Shane Ross]

“I figured since we are talking about 16 Master Tapes, it’s easier and faster to just upscale them.”

Heck…tapes. It’ll be tons faster to Media Manage, and then capture them thru a Kona. Real time…and I’ll look better than Compressor. Barring that, Compressor is the best way. FULL TAPES? I’d never do that. Waste of time and space. But, less clips to upconvert. If you have the time and the space…It’ll be a long time, I warn you.

“Why you upscale it to 1440*1080?”

To keep the 4:3 frame size. Also takes up less space than 1920×1080. But, it’s a preference. Nick’s way is good too.

“And what you mean by pan scan?”

Meaning, if you zoom in to make the 4:3 fill the 16:9 frame, you are cropping off the top and bottom of the image. Some images have more happening at the top, so you adjust framing more towards the top. If more at the bottom, adjust towards the bottom. In the middle, leave it be. If you leave it ALL in the middle, and something happens at the top, you are cutting that off. So…manually panning the image.

Unless you can leave all of this 4:3 with pillarbox on the sides. I personally prefer that, but many networks don’t. they want a full frame.

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

[Sascha Engel]

Hi Nick, Hi Shane,

Funny you both answered almost identical. 😉
The upscale of the 16 Tapes is already finished: It took 15 hours.
I have a mean machine, the dark side of Hackintosh 😉
And yes, it was upscaled to 1080p since the original SD was DV-Pal Anamorphic.

But now my AE guy did some tests with new AE Uprez Plugs and I must say, it looks even better than the Upscale Algorithms of Compressor.

So, I am now facing three options: Upscale in DaVinci on output of Final Graded version, Upscale with Compressor (what I did now) or with After Effects and the detail keeping plug in .

Greetings,

Sascha Engel
TIME BANDITZ Productions
http://www.youtube.com/taikang

[Sascha Engel]

Hi Everybody,

did some tests.
And DaVinci blew everything out of the water! by far!
This is DaVinci versus Compressor 4

Greetings,

Sascha Engel
TIME BANDITZ Productions
http://www.youtube.com/taikang