upres P2 720 24PN footage to 1080 24p

[Shane Ross]

Drop the clips into a 1080p timeline, resize and render.

Do you need to DELIVER a 1080p master? Or do the clips just need to be mixed with other footage at 1080? If it is a master you are after, that can be attained by outputting via a Kona 3…it cross converts on the fly as you output.

Shane

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[James Mulryan]

Shane:

It is going to be a mixxed timeline,
40 percent P2 720 24pn footage,
15 percent DV 29.97
20 Percent DV 24P (DVX100),
10 percent HDCAM,
15 percent Beta.
Entire show is 90 minutes.

Planning to go to an 8 bit uncompressed 1080 24p timeline, final output to D5. Innital run for festival digital projection, possible film out. Final color correction tape to tape at a Hollywood post house.
inputs:
HDCAM through HDSDI,
DV footage through Sony 1500 SDI
Betacam through a component to SDI AJA converter.
Talked with AJA said the conversion from 29.97 to 23.98 might be a problem, A frame issue? Might have to transfer several times to make sure it works out right.
Seems like a nightmare.
Think Pro-Res has too many problems.

Does the resizing of the P2 footage in the timeline result in pixelation? What about transfering the P2 footage to an 1400 deck with HDSDI and letting the Kona card upconvert on ingest– would this give a cleaner image rather than using FCP software?

Also would it be better to use a 720 p timeline then uprez to 1080 when color correcting? Did not want to upres the non 720 footage twice.

Thanks.

[Jeremy Garchow]

[James Mulryan] “Also would it be better to use a 720p timeline then uprez to 1080 when color correcting? Did not want to upres the non 720 footage twice.
“

Generally, and I am speaking generally as the are always exceptions, a good rule of thumb is that you should make the timeline the size of the bulk of your footage. In your case, it’s 720p since it’s 40% of your footage. This way, the 720p footage stays native, you are scaling up the non HD stuff to 720p and not 1080 (less of a scale means less of a quality hit), and the 1080 stuff you do have will scale down nicely to 720p. Now, that pretty much handles the frame size, but I have some other thoughts that pertain to this:

Frame rates are going to be the issue for you. Is the HDCam stuff 23.98 or is it 1080i29.97? Also, is the DVX100 footage shot 24p or 24pA?

Before I attempt to help, I will wait for the answer to those questions.

Jeremy

[James Mulryan]

Jeremy:

The HDcam material is 23.98
The DV material is 24P, some 60i material as well.
Will need to present final material at 1080 24p. Don’t want to upres the SD material twice, nor downres the HDCAM and bring it back up again.
Thanks in advance.

[Jeremy Garchow]

Very logical. so the timeline is 1080 23.98. I would suggest capturing at ProRes or ProResHQ (10bit). You will be amazed at the rt. Eons better than uncompressed. What problems have you heard about?

HDCam: That material is ready to go. Capture it and edit. Easy.

DVCPro HD p2 720p23.98: What I would do is simply put these clips in the 1080 timeline, scale and render. FCP does a very decent job of this. This might hinder your workflow a bit as every time you move these clips, add a dissolve, color correction, whatever, you will have to render. There are some ways around this, such as using compressor to transcode your footage to 1080 23.98 ProRes (or uncompressed if that’s the way you need to go). That way, the clips will match your editing timeline.

DV 24p: You have a couple of options here. You can use the 1400 deck to output a 1080psf23.98 signal from the dv24p material. You can put the deck to 23/24 mode and make sure to set 480 out to 1080 (upconvert). The deck will remove the pulldown frames and upconvert for you spitting a 23.98 signal in 1080.
The next option is to capture to the highest quality SD codec you can, remove the pulldown in cinema tools, then bring those in the timeline, scale and render. Or, after you remove the pulldown, you can do the same as the p2 stuff and send the clips to compressor and let it go to work upconverting your clips. Since this material will now be 23.98 after you remove the pulldown, it should look decent in the timeline.
The last option is to get this footage processed with a Terranex or Alchemist system to 1080 23.98 and capture that. That will probably yield the best results, but it’s pricey.

DV and Beta 29.97: This will be the hardest to work with. You can go the Terranex/Alchemist route if you have the budget, but if you don’t there’s a couple of ways to get it done. Use nattress’s standards converter to do produce 23.98 media, you can then scale that and render. You can use the Kona to upconvert to 1080i and then use the standard conversion on the upconverted media to change it to 23.98. You can also look at fields kit from revision fx. They have some really nice things going within that plug in and the quality is great. Again, you can either apply the plug in before you upconvert with FCP, or after you upconvert with the KOna. With the DV material, you can also use the 1400 deck to upconvert to 1080i (you have to put the deck back to 59/60 mode) and then apply fields kit or nattress to that captured footage as well. The deck does a pretty decent upconvert, but you should see which one you like better, the deck, the KOna, or FCP. Your other option is to send this all to compressor and let it do the upconvert and frame rate change for you.

Does this stuff make sense?

Jeremy

[Dmoney1429]

So we don’t have to do anything as far as an EDL and converting the EDL to 24fps and importing the EDL to our new 1080 23.98 timeline?

Thanks.

[Jeremy Garchow]

You shouldn’t as you have nothing to really match back to. The 720p24 footage is 23.98, the HDCam material is 23.98, the DVX footage needs to be upconverted and conformed to 23.98 via the 1400 or via software or hard ware and the rest of the 29.97 footage is going to be captured 29.97 and converted to 23.98 via a plugin, or if you want, the Terranex route. At some point, most of this is not going to be simply automatic. The 720p24 material should come in nicely, the HDCam material should come in nicely, the DVX 24p footage is going to come in decently if you use the 1400 to up-convert and conform. If you get a the 29.97 footage Teranexed, you are going to have to capture that footage as 23.98 and recut it, or perhaps receive 23.98 files to recut back into the timeline.

It’s a bit of work. Does all that make sense?

Jeremy

[Darius Fisher]

Jeremy,
A very interesting thread. I may be working with James on the above mentioned project. I have some questions regarding what you have recommended that I’d love your thoughts on. In the DV footage dept.; we actually have a mixture of 24p and 24pA. Most of it was also shot with a dvx100/a generated 1.78 letterbox.

Up-conversion using the AJ-HD1400.

I’m very interested in this as I have had good experiences with other decks as far as up conversion (DV to 10 bit SDI) and down conversion, (JH3 from 1080p 23.98 to whatever desired in SD).
My first question is about the 1400’s hardware upconvert;

1) How do the results compare to say the Kona 3, or doing it in an FCP timeline, or with compressor or Teranex?

Hopefully part of the answer to question 1. was that the 1400 upconvert results are better than all the other options mentioned and nearly as good as or better than teranex ?? If so then questions 2 thru 6 are also worth asking. You said that “You can use the 1400 deck to output a 1080psf 23.98 signal from the dv24p material” with the deck in 23/24 mode and “480 out to 1080”, so far so good.

2) How would that work with DVX100/a “in camera letterboxed” DV 24p 4:3 material? Can the 1400 blow up what’s in the letterbox to full frame 16:9 HD 23.98PsF outputting it through HD/SDI?
3) If the answer is yes, then my clip timecode for all the DV 24p material is currently base 30, so to recapture/upconvert, would I create some custom preset with deck control settings at TC base 30 but capturing to 23.98 ?
4) Or does the deck convert the DV timecode to Base 24 such that I have to use cinematools to do a TC30 to TC24 EDL conversion?
5) I am assuming also that the 1400 is able to detect the p/regular 3:2 pulldown cadence and remove it from uncut camera original tapes on the fly as it upconverts?

Since the 1400 manual says that in 23/24 mode the following are among the “permissible playback formats”:
480/23.98p over 59.94i [2:3 mode]
480/23.98p over 59.94i [2:3:3:2 mode]

6) Can it also remove 2:3:3:2 pulldown on the fly (from uncut DVX100/a camera master DV tapes) and upconvert to 23.98PsF 1080p out of the HD/SDI, as well as filling the 1080 frame with what’s within the SD letterbox image?

I would be most grateful for your thoughts, experience and expertise on these questions … and then I might have a few more 🙂
Thanks

Darius Fisher

Once I knew everything

[Jeremy Garchow]

Great questions, Darius.

1a) Kona upconvert. Pretty decent, not real great on DV footage and you won’t get any pulldown removal so your 24p stuff is going to have to get retimed.

1b) FCP timeline. Again pretty decent, but your timing issue is not fixed either but that can be fixed with a plug in like REvision FX’s Fields Kit (worth it’s weight in $85 worth of gold).

1c) Compressor. I have been having fricking great luck with compressor lately. Truly. It takes a while sometimes (bit the 8 core really crunches through it) and you have to hold it’s hand through a lot of the field issues, but if you have 24p material (ie if you remove your pulldown before going to compressor) and don’t have to do any frame retiming (you’d be going 24p to 24p) I have had huge success with compressor. Seriously. And it’s free, what’s the penalty to at least give this a shot?

1d) Teranex. No doubt about it, best bang, lots of bucks. Quality is great, but sometimes 24p can be tricky. An alchemist can handle the frame rate conversion a bit better I think.

2) Yes, you can set the 4×3 letterbox to be pillarbox (V), blown up (H), or stretched (H+V). With letterbox footage the H option (I think, can’t remember off the top my head, but I am pretty sure) will equal a full frame 16×9

3) the deck handles the 30 to 24 tc conversion and you will capture 24 tc.

4) See #3

5) Yes, it can do 24p or 24pA, remove pulldown, upconvert, and spit out 24 tc.

6) Yep. Sweet huh?

Does that help?

Jeremy

[Darius Fisher]

Great answers, Jeremy, Thanks!

I’m mostly really warming to the idea of using the 1400 but … I must reiterate my first question;

1) “How do the results (of the 1400’s hardware upconvert) compare to say the Kona 3, or doing it in an FCP timeline, or with compressor or Teranex or Snell and Wilcox boxes?

You have made it very clear that the 1400 can remove either type of pulldown without a problem which is great!
Also, the aspect ratio, full frame 16:9 issue seems a non-issue, also great.

But for the other methods; i.e.

a) Software or Desktop solutions; FCP/Kona3/Compressor/InstanHD/Magic Bullet/BCC5 Uprez etc., and then

b) dedicated facility based Hardware solutions; i.e.

Teranex; (mini/VC100/300/600) or

Snell and Wilcox’s boxes; (Alchemist Platinum Ph.C, Quasar Ph.C, Ukon)

… I’m mostly concerned about how their upscaling quality compares with the 1400’s (and not so interested in their pulldown removal ability since, as you rightly said, that should be done first using RSFields kit or such like for software solutions,

(Teranex and Snell and Wilcox is a whole ‘nother ball of wax’ – each with their own strengths and weaknesses as far as fields or pulldown detection and removal)

I’d so love to do a shoot out of all these solutions and all the common sources.

But anyway, once again, how good is the 1400’s up-convert? How does it compare?
thanks again

Once I knew everything