SD Video In HD project Input

[Michael Gissing]

One technique is to move the SD footage to layer 2 and leave it as unstretched 4:3. Copy those clips to layer one and zoom then out 30-40% and then apply a blur to all. That way you have similar edges that are soft and can with certain material look OK. If you want it to have 4:3 aspect and black edges, put a slug underneath and bring the black level up just a smidge.

That way the edges will look black but not be pure black to keep the broadcasters happy. If they are pure black then sometime boradcasters will have problems with automatic aspect ratio converters kicking in live to air. You could also use this idea to put a colored border.

Finally consider Andy Mees elastic aspect plugin which can differentially stretch the image preserving the center.
https://forums.creativecow.net/readpost/8/1077031

[David Roth weiss]

Don’t you dare degrade the HD material to make it match the stock footage. History looks older than present day, period, end of story.

David Roth Weiss
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David Weiss Productions, Inc.
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[Walter Biscardi]

Is this being delivered to broadcast TV? If so, get the style guide for that station / network as there specific rules on how to handle SD material in an HD show. PBS for example requires 4:3 pillarbox with no graphics, black only.

If you have something like an AJA Kona 3, you can upconvert the footage very nicely to HD using that. That’s what we use here. I upconvert all the SD material either from BetaSP, DigiBeta or DVCAM directly to 720 or 1080, whatever the project calls for. Usually we leave everything in 4:3, for some projects we’ll stretch it to 16:9

If you want to put a graphic behind the 4:3 video put the video on Video Track 2 and the graphic on Video track 1. The graphic will fill the 16:9 space around the 4:3 video.

Walter Biscardi, Jr.
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HD Post and Production
Biscardi Creative Media

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[Erik Naso]

This is a paid program that will be delivered to several different cable markets and local stations. I definitely want to keep it in HD and if SD is needed then do letterboxed or center cut version. I don’t have the Kona 3 only the Kona LHe. I knew I should have bought the Kona 3 but its so darn expensive.
I tried a few prores transcodes with compressor that looked pretty good but it cropped the top and still stretched it when imported into project. I used distort in the motion tab but not sure if that is the best way. I really want to keep the SD footage in 4:3 and not crop. Getting closer.

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[Erik Naso]

I made several samples with compressor and found the results are pretty good quality wise. With Frame controls all set to best and geometry to 1920X1080. The video comes out stretched. I adjusted with distort in motion tab to 80 and it looks right. Then tried padding for 4:3 and that added pillarbars that I could crop out. So it looks like this is my options. Any suggestions? Has anyone used Instant HD? Is it worth the money or does compressor work just as well?

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