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UPRES 320×240 MP4 to HDV/1080/60i
Am I crazy?? What to do?? We have some fabulous open source archival footage from archive.org, and the “high-res” edit files are just 320×240? The thing is – the original movies are from the 1940s and so are extremely grainy to begin with – and so even this very small frame size appears to capture the full fidelity of the original image.
We are already needing to upscale a bunch of SD footage to 60i and are hiring a professional conversion house to run it all through hardware up-converters. I was intending to upscale this footage to SD with compressor first – and then have it upscaled to 60i with the rest of our SD footage.
My hope is that I can somehow get this scaled up and have it appear as good as it does at its source frame size -like analog scaling, a soft image vs. creating horrible digital artifacts and pixelation.
Please advise if I’m attempting the impossible here? I’ve been advised to forget about this option and consider “postage stamping” the image – meaning not scaling up completely but instead putting the image in the middle of the frame with black all around it – I would really prefer not to do this – I am happy to pillar-box – ie. fill the frame top to bottom and leave black at both sides – but to achieve this I’m still looking at a 450% scaling!
Any advice is very much appreciated, and if I’m an idiot for even considering it I want to hear it please!
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8 Replies
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Hi Jason,
I think that your job requires many tests.
What I would do for sure is to forget about a pre-upscaling the 320×240 in Compressor.
if you have a hardware solution for the SD footage, think that the 320×240 is more in need of any good solution than the SD footage.
I guess that that picture will need also some post-enlarging treatment: Sharpening or whatever.
If the footage is that important I think that is justified to keep it in an smaller frame than the rest of the stuff.
Rafael -
[Jason O’Hara] “My hope is that I can somehow get this scaled up and have it appear as good as it does at its source frame size -like analog scaling, a soft image vs. creating horrible digital artifacts and pixelation. “
Better have them do a very small test first through a Teranex.
You are actually going to be scaling up nearly 480% to achieve the pillarbox. I just did a test with a 320×225 still in Combustion, which has sub-pixel smoothing, and while it’s not beautiful, it isn’t as bad as I’d imagined.
David Roth Weiss
Director/Editor/Colorist
David Weiss Productions, Inc.
Los AngelesPOST-PRODUCTION WITHOUT THE USUAL INSANITY ™
A forum host of Creative COW’s Apple Final Cut Pro, Business & Marketing, Indie Film & Documentary, and Film History & Appreciations forums.
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the conversion house I’m working with does not have a teranex but uses a Alchemist PHc HD converter – is this comparable?
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If I’m not wrong the Alchemist have beenlong time the professional solution for this kind of job.
Rafael -
[Jason O’Hara] “UPRES 320×240 MP4 to HDV/1080/60i”
[Jason O’Hara] “Am I crazy?”
I hate to say this but yes.
I would attempt to contact the person that originally posted the video on archive.org or you could also try and use the production info listed at the beginning of those old films to track down a print of it.
Also try a web search for the film, you may be able to find a better copy. I did a wimple web search and found this place that sells DVDs of many old videos like that.
https://www.qualityinformationpublishers.com/
Be sure to take a look at their copyright page.
Hindsight is always 1080p
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Many thanks everyone for the insights, very helpful and very much appreciated!! and indeed 3 of the 4 archival films are bundled together on one DVD for sale, further, there is no copyright restrictions whatsoever as all are fully public domain – no restrictions creative commons licensed archives. As such, I can rip a full SD version from the DVDs and run that threw the Alchemist for an infinitely better result, am I right? An SD MPEG-2 from DVD is still better than a 320×240 MP4, even though the latter is described as “high-re edit file”, right?
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It should be, unless the DVD was made from that file too!
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