use Kona 2 card or blow up video?

[Thom Obarski]

I’m not familiar with kona2, but at out shop we have several systems, some with kona3, some with blackmagic breakout boxes. When you upconvert thru your capture card you are basiclly doing the same thing as scaling it up in FCP, however you are having the hardware do it, which means you get:

1. Captured footage already at the size you need
2. Zero software goofs
3. Zero render time down the line, imagine any complicated things you do to your footage having to render on top of a software upscale.
4. Your footage will already be in the right color space/pixel size aspect for laying off to HD your final output.

The quality may not look that different, but try looking in zoomed at 100% or more (or on an hd monitor) there are some subtle pixel differences, and as i mentioned before you’re already in the correct color space and everything for final deliverable of HD material.

Hope that helped.
~Thom

[Walter Biscardi]

[Thom Obarski] “When you upconvert thru your capture card you are basiclly doing the same thing as scaling it up in FCP, however you are having the hardware do it, which means you get:”

I don’t know about other cards, but with the AJA Kona boards it’s not remotely the same thing up-converting through the cards and scaling the video up in FCP. The AJA Up-convert process is much much cleaner than what FCP can do.

Walter Biscardi, Jr.
Biscardi Creative Media
HD and SD Production for Broadcast and Independent Productions.

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[Thom Obarski]

Yes that is true, you have the hardware doing algorithms and accurate pixels and everything else that it is doing. So quality is def. much better, I thought the essance of the original question was is there technically any difference in running with one workflow over the other, which i tried to answer yes, you get all these added benefits plus additional quality at the pixel/subpixel level.

~T

[Phil Yunker]

Thom, Walter, thanks.

[walter biscardi] “I don’t know about other cards, but with the AJA Kona boards it’s not remotely the same thing up-converting through the cards and scaling the video up in FCP. The AJA Up-convert process is much much cleaner than what FCP can do”

Walter, that’s what i thought, that the video would be cleaner and it’s not really much cleaner at all. At least not enough to re-capture all the footage that we would have to capture. Could there be a problem with the Kona 2 card? I do know that every time I open the Kona Control Panel the settings get switched back from the settings for 525i to 720p upconvert to 525i to 525i ?

Thanks again.
btw, I have learned a lot from your Color DVD!

PHIL

[Paul Escandon]

Phil,

I’ve done similar things (capturing SD via Kona 3 as DVCPRO HD vs. capturing SD native and upscaling on an FCP timeline) and both Thom and Walter are making good points. However, I would not categorize the Kona process as “MUCH CLEANER” – I mean it is definitely the better way for reasons that Thom explained… but visually the difference is not HUGE in the end.

I think you might be expecting too much and I am sure that there is no problem with your Kona 2 card whatsoever. The general rule of thumb is that it’s better to let hardware to do scaling – but these days the way software does it is really not that bad.

* * *
Paul Escandon
Producer | Director | Editor
Apple Certified Trainer – Final Cut Pro
Oremus Productions
http://www.oremusproductions.com
– –
Adjunct Professor of Media
John Paul the Great Catholic University

[Walter Biscardi]

[Phil Yunker] “Walter, that’s what i thought, that the video would be cleaner and it’s not really much cleaner at all. At least not enough to re-capture all the footage that we would have to capture. Could there be a problem with the Kona 2 card? I do know that every time I open the Kona Control Panel the settings get switched back from the settings for 525i to 720p upconvert to 525i to 525i ?”

Are you scaling up DV or DVCAM material? Depending on how it’s shot and which camera was used, this material can have a serious case of the “jaggies” especially when upconverted to HD. I find that about 75% of this material upconverts very nicely through the Kona, but the rest has to go to a teranex facility. The teranex adds line doubling and really cleans up the footage. I’ve tried to blow up the DV material in FCP, but I’m not happy with those results.

With BetaSP, DigiBeta and DV50 material, the Konas outperform what I see in FCP’s own scaling. For whatever reason, FCP’s scaling is not very good. If you have After Effects, that is much cleaner at scaling.

Walter Biscardi, Jr.
Biscardi Creative Media
HD and SD Production for Broadcast and Independent Productions.

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[Chris Borjis]

Digital Anarchy “Resizer” is a scaler for FCP that does an even better job than After Effects.

I would dare to say its just as good as a hardware converter, getting very close to the teranex in quality.

[Thom Obarski]

One other thing, if you do upres during capture to 720, that will also allow for a very clean upres on the output all the way up to HDCam 1080p 10bit, i’ve had some very nice results with that.

[Stuart Simpson]

If you’re working with PAL material – I have to say that the FCP scaling is really good. We’ve done tests using the Kona3 upconvert compared to FCP scaling, and we think the difference is really slight…

-Simmie
1 MacPro – Kona 3
2 G5 – Kona LH
2 G4s – Cinewave
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https://www.speak.co.uk

[Gary Adcock]

[walter biscardi] “The AJA Up-convert process is much much cleaner than what FCP can do.”

you forgot to mention that it is real time – no rendering necessary

gary adcock
Studio37
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