K2 Upconvert/Downconvert Quality?

[Walter Biscardi]

The K2’s up-convert is not the same quality at the Terranex. The Terranex adds line doubling and some better scaling so you end up with a really clean, smooth up-convert.

The K2 does a very good job of up-converting, but you do get interlaced “jaggies” in your upconverted footage. Round items in the scene will really show this effect.

The up-convert is good for most needs, but if you need absolutely smooth and clean up-convert, the Terranex is the way to go.

Now the Down-convert quality is outstanding and absolutely clean broadcast quality.

Walter Biscardi, Jr.
Creative Genius, Biscardi Creative Media
https://www.biscardicreative.com

Now in Production, “The Rough Cut,” https://www.theroughcutmovie.com

Now editing “Good Eats” in HD for the Food Network

“I reject your reality and substitute my own!” – Adam Savage, Mythbusters

G5 Dual 2.0, AJA Kona 2, Medea FCR2X

[Sean Oneil]

Thanks, that explains it.

Sean

[Gary Adcock]

[Sean ONeil] ” The only easy solution I hear is a Teranex.”

Walter is correct, while the K2 does up-conversion equal to or better than most of the hardware up converts on the market the Teranex’s combo of hardware and software is by far the best on the market for this task.

Gary Adcock
Studio37
HD and Film Consultation
Chicago, IL USA

[Sean Oneil]

Thanks guys. But I think a lot of people are confused about the meaning of a quality upconvert. “Upconvert” means a process that involves not just scaling, but also deinterlacing. And according to Walter’s post, the Kona cannot an advanced reverse-telecine – as I expected.

To give you an example, I’m using the Algolith After Effects plugin to convert a 5 minute sequence from 1080i60 to 1080Psf24. This plugin does indeed do what the Teranex does. The 5 minute piece is going to take 45 hours to render. I emailed Algolith and they confirmed this is normal. That’s how intense this process is, and it’s why Terenex systems cost tens of thousands of dollars. So you understand why I was skeptical to hear that a $2000 capture card with a throw-in feature of upconversion could accomplish the same thing.

[Walter Biscardi]

[Sean ONeil] “, and it’s why Terenex systems cost tens of thousands of dollars.”

Try about $100,000 or more.

[Sean ONeil] “To give you an example, I’m using the Algolith After Effects plugin to convert a 5 minute sequence from 1080i60 to 1080Psf24. This plugin does indeed do what the Teranex does.”

Actually not a great example since you’re going from one 1080 format to another. How does it handle 720×480 DV Upconverting to 720p 24? That’s the kind of up-converting we’re doing here to mix DV footage with Varicam footage. Does it provide all the smooth scaling for that up-convert? If so, then the plug-in would be worth it and you just deal with the render time.

Walter Biscardi, Jr.
https://www.biscardicreative.com

Now editing “Good Eats” in HD for the Food Network

“I reject your reality and substitute my own!” – Adam Savage, Mythbusters

[Ramona Howard]

Sean,

Sorry I jumped in late here and I will try not to screw this up.

First off:
The 1080i60 material can be two ways, which are we talking here?

You either have 1080i60 that everyframe is interlaced or 1080i60 with 2:3, like what comes off a Telecine?

The K2 will allow you to capture in without 2:3 so that will eliminate all the rendering as long as the capture software supports this.

A very important item to keep in mind that the AJA boards have functionality that not all software will or can take advantage of and trying to understand it all can be somewhat overwhelming.

Actually we can do a reverse 2:3(or really any cadence) using the AJA boards and with excellent results. Here is a great paper that may help.

https://www.spectsoft.com/wiki/RaveManual/Solutions/Film/24pto2997/Understandingtheprocess

Cheers,
Ramona

[Gary Adcock]

Thanks Ramona

for reminding everyone that FCP is only part of this forum. and that on the high end there are always answers as well as the questions that people have.

gary

Gary Adcock
Studio37
HD and Film Consultation
Chicago, IL USA

[Ramona Howard]

I have to say this forum keeps me scratching my head. I have to think really hard, aren’t we doing that already because it is all so very confusing, for us laymen(or laywomen).

We have so many customers doing so many different things it’s even hard for me to keep track of good and bad info. When I get the good stuff I try to get it in the wiki asap which is where this thread led me.

I like to post in this forum not only because we are using AJA products but like you said to remind everyone that there is more than one way to skin a cat, fry an egg or is it make a dub.

Cheers,
Ramona

[Sean Oneil]

I’ve been doing alot of reading on this subject. This here more than anything explains it:

https://neuron2.net/library/filmsequence.pdf

I hate going into serious technical talk on the “Creative” Cow, but this is something very important I think people need to understand especially since interlaced displays (tube TVs and monitors) are becoming a thing of the past. I honestly wish I knew about this stuff last week.

Ramona, yes the 1080i60 footage is from material that had 3:2 pulldown applied. There were many different sources from the project. Some was 1080i60 w/ pulldown, some was 1080i60 w/o pulldown. Some of it was NTSC DV50, also with 3:2 pulldown.

To make matters even worse, some of it was 720p60 Varicam. This footage was shot at 24p but contained redundant frames making it 60p (sort of like 3:2 pulldown but w/o the interlacing).

If I could have, I would have converted all source material to one 24p format prior to any editing. But I wasn’t able to. I working from two other editor’s projects and was using the masters they made. The masters were 1080i60 with what’s known as “bad edits” – meaning they didn’t edit at 24p while they probably should have.

There’s other issues as well. It’s all very, very confusing. Yes, using a Kona I’m sure I could recapture each source tape and take it all in at 24 fps if I had their original projects – which I couldn’t get for reasons I won’t get into (one was on an Avid DS 3000 miles away).

The problem is, if a piece containing 3:2 pulldown has already been edited at 60i (be it NTSC or 1080i60), and then it was mastered to tape, and you only have acces to that tape – you’re kind of screwed. The pulldown order, or cadance (I believe I’m using that term correctly) pretty much gets destroyed since it changes at every edit point. Mixing in different kinds of footage after the fact makes it even worse. That’s the situation I’m in (by no fault of my own).

So there are only two ways to correct this. One is for a human being to actually go through and isolate each edit point that the other editor originally made. And then do a reverse telecine of each one (using Cinema Tools or recapturing at 24p using the Kona). In this particular case, it would take weeks to do that.

The other method is to use a highly advanced reverse telecine system, like Teranex or Algolith. These systems analyze every pixel to match the fields back together while detecting different kinds of pulldown used – even if more than one kind is present. Algolith takes one hour to render one second of video. Teranex can do it in real-time, which is why it’s so expensive.

Sean

[Sean Oneil]

Also, I want to stress that I’m not being some snob over picture quality or anything like that. “Jaggies” are absolutely nasty. Anyone will notice them.

Sean