Scaling Up in SD

[Rainer Wirth]

Hi Peter,

you have to edit in HD codec upscaling more than 30% (130% Total) gives you a significantly loss of Image quality.
After that downconvert into SD.

Rainer

[Peter Tours]

I am afraid I don’t get it…are you suggesting I scale the talent in the DVC PRO HD timeline and and there may be degradation, it will look good when I drop the DVCPRO HD exported movie into the DV50 timeline?

May I ask how you arrived at 130%, so I can better understand the technique you suggest?

Thank you very much, peter

Peter Tours
TnT Video Services, Inc.
Fort Lauderdale, FL

[Rainer Wirth]

What I suggest is:

Edit the Film in your original HD codec in the timeline (DVCPRO HD)
Upscale the shots not more than 130%. Your shot picture is 100%.
Then make a final cut mov. (export) of the whole show still in DVCPRO HD codec (untouched)
Drag this mov. into a DVCPro 50 timeline and render.

I hope this helps

Rainer

[Rainer Wirth]

I forgot, the DVC Pro 50 timeline must be anarmorphotic.

Rainer

[Alan Okey]

Let me offer an alternative opinion. I don’t see the logic in scaling up in an HD timeline, then scaling down the entire sequence to fit in an SD sequence. That’s introducing two iterations of scaling, and FCP’s scaling algorithm is not that great to begin with.

As an alternative I would suggest simply cutting in an SD timeline and dropping your HD clips into the SD sequence. The HD clips will automatically be scaled down to fit the SD frame. If you click on the motion tab in FCP’s viewer, you will be able to see by what percentage the HD frame has been scaled down to fit the SD frame. You should then be able to increase the scaling back up to as much as 100% with no loss of quality on any shots that require tighter framing on the talent.

Will your SD output be anamorphic or letterboxed? If letterboxed, you’ll need to superimpose a letterbox matte for any shots that you scale up or they’ll extend into the letterbox area.

[Rainer Wirth]

You are right Allen,

the only thing which bothers me, is massive render time. Perhaps working in Pro res.

Rainer

[Michael Sacci]

I would also do it the way Alan has discribed but to answer your question, how far pass 100% can you go, well that something YOU to do and look at. Normally you can go up at 115% and be in good shape. Of course your footage has to be sharp and well exposed, the closer to perfect your footage is the further you can push it. If it is a little soft to being with is will not hold up at all. But this is why we have external monitors to be able to judge quality. IF you need to push it further you can rescale in Compressor with Frame Control’s turned on. All this takes time and testing to get what you need. There is no you can go up to 135% with no problem but no further.