Media 100 and Up-res’ing/teranex/compressor/etc

Media 100

Media 100 and Up-res’ing/teranex/compressor/etc

Posted by Jack Shepard on September 25, 2012 at 6:27 pm

I have some questions about mixing SD footage with HD footage. I am working on a documentary where there is footage from a whole ton of different sources, codecs, sizes and different frame rates.

In Media 100 Suite v2 (which I haven’t upgraded to yet) – I understand I can mix SD, HD, different codecs, and different frame rates. What are your opinions on the quality of the upres? I have been studying various means of upres – from Compressor to the Teranex. How does Media 100 compare? It is a high end feature but since it is a documentary budget it is always an issue. I have heard good things about using the Teranex for conversion, have had semi to modest success using Compressor, but wanted to get opinions on the Media 100 capabilities. Any other methods of upconversion anyone can recommend.

Also, in terms of workflow for the past several years I have had success converting all the footage to Apple Pro Res 422HQ before the edit which has served me well – especially when mixing codecs and dealing with interlacing. With this new ability to upres and mix codec within Media 100 do you still recommend this path?

Thanks in advance.

Jaeson Koszarsky replied 13 years, 7 months ago 3 Members · 4 Replies
4 Replies

Bernhard G.
September 26, 2012 at 1:49 pm

Hello,

for upscaling, the gold standard is a technology called Super Resolution.
This means, that details from surrounding frames are collected to increase details on the HD image.
If there is no motion in the image, You will gain nothing through it; therefor the basic scaler needs
to be good as well; e.g. Lanczos.

Teranex does use Super Resolution.

At the software side:
– Compressor does SR as well,
– but I found Video Purifier from Innobits to gain more details, but be aware: it only processes at 8bit RGB !!!
– the InstantHD Advanced plugin also had SR, unfortunately only in the Advanced which had been discontinued.
– if you use Media100, you could scale with BorisRed which has the UpRez filter.

For a comparison of upscaling solutions, see here:
https://www.infognition.com/articles/video_upsize_methods_comparison.html

The bad thing:
every really good plugin has been discontinued. There are few free implementations of SR; but 8bit only, 4:2:0, and so on…
And: ALL NLEs are absolutely bad at scaling.

(The only exception is Autodesk Smoke2013. But this is a finishing app. Very best scaling I saw in a software so far!)

Best regards,
Bernhard
Bernhard G.
September 26, 2012 at 1:56 pm

Only want to add that I find it astonishing that our cheap
consumer TV-sets (super resolution, noise reduction, de-interlacing, etc.)
have better image processing algorithms than we professionals have in our NLEs!

Does anyone have a theory why?

Best regards,
Bernhard
Jack Shepard
September 26, 2012 at 7:55 pm

Bernhard,

Thank you immensely! This is immeasurably helpful and I really appreciate the response and information. I have been researching this for awhile and this answers a ton of questions.

Thanks again!
Jaeson Koszarsky
October 3, 2012 at 5:31 pm

Interesting comparison article. They included a link to an updated comparison which includes Boris Uprez (which looks like one of the lower scorers):
https://www.infognition.com/articles/video_resize_shootout.html

I’ve used RED’s UpRez for a few SD projects, making letterboxed SD footage full screen SD to match other full screen shots. It’s ok for minor enlargements. I’d use if SD to HD over, better than just scaling up, but I won’t expect any magic to occur.

You might want to use RED’s Smooth Tone in combination with UpRez. It can help clean things up a little.

I used Genuine Fractals with PhotoShop for still images. It’s ok but not magic either.

Jaeson

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