Upscaling a DV composition

[Steve Roberts]

Uprezzing plugins

[Walter Soyka]

I’d only upres and replace the video clips, not the entire comp. To preserve detail on the vector art and text, you could try nesting the DV PAL comp in an HD comp, scale it up, and collapse transformations.

Walter Soyka, Principal
Keen Live, Inc.
Presentation, Motion Graphics & Widescreen Design
RenderBreak: A Blog on Innovation in Production

[Matt Radbourne]

Thanks Dave
It’s set up as an anamorphic comp at the moment.

I agree with you – I’d much rather do the upscaling pre-render. Something like what Walter is suggesting I think.

[Matt Radbourne]

Great. So if I nest a comp at 200% and click the collapse transformations switch then the vectors and text (obviously not video) will be rendered as if they were all placed on the final comp at 200% size individually, i.e. not pixellated?

[Walter Soyka]

That’s exactly how it should work, but remember to double-check that Continuously Rasterize is checked for each vector layer.

What’s more, if you up-res each of your video clips individually, replace the SD clips with the new up-ressed HD clips in your DV PAL sequence and scale them back down to fit in as the originals did, Collapse Transformations will preserve your resolution. In other words, a 400% blowup of a 25% reduction will look like the original at 100%, instead of a hideous pixellated mess.

Walter Soyka, Principal
Keen Live, Inc.
Presentation, Motion Graphics & Widescreen Design
RenderBreak: A Blog on Innovation in Production

[Kevin Camp]

in theory, yes… but it doesn’t always work out that easily. collapse transformations can change how some effects look and, if you have 3d layers, it can effect their properties in unexpected ways. but you won’t know until you try.

Kevin Camp
Senior Designer
KCPQ, KMYQ & KRCW

[Matt Radbourne]

Argh. One last thing:
I have 3D camera paths. As soon as I collapse the transformations, the camera work is ignored. Any way to preserve this?

Matt Radbourne
Media Designer
CEM, UK

[Matt Radbourne]

Hopefully found the solution: https://forums.creativecow.net/thread/2/960672

Matt Radbourne
Media Designer
CEM, UK

[Walter Soyka]

That looks like a great tip — please let us know if it works out for you.

Walter Soyka, Principal
Keen Live, Inc.
Presentation, Motion Graphics & Widescreen Design
RenderBreak: A Blog on Innovation in Production

[Michael Szalapski]

You mention you’ve got a 3d camera which reminded me of one way I uprezzed a few projects I was working on.

What I did was duplicate the composition or save it as a different project (so you can always go back if/when you screw up). Then make your composition the size you need.
Then I went to all the AE-created solids in the comp and resized them (by highlighting your shape layer and pressing ctrl+shift+y).
Then simply use the zoom on your AE camera and zoom in closer.
It won’t work for every situation, but it worked for me. I only had to tweak one or two other things. It saved me hours of work.

– The Great Szalam
(The ‘Great’ stands for ‘Not So Great, in fact, Extremely Humble’)

No trees were harmed in the creation of this message, but several thousand electrons were mildly inconvenienced.