[Nicholas Natteau]

Hi Jeremy,

Can you specify the exact procedure in Compressor?

OK I imported this time through Kona LHi as Pro Res NTSC 525i29.97

What Compressor setting do I select in the settings menu?

Pro res 422 for interlaced material?
Pro res 422 for interlaced material (high quality)?
Pro res 422 for progressive material?
Pro res 422 for progressive material (high quality)?

In the inspector tab under Frame controls, what should my settings be?

Thanks very much in advance,

– Nick

[Nicholas Natteau]

Hi Jeremy sounds very interesting. I will try this today and upload a couple seconds of footage like you suggested. Thanks very much for your help.

[Nicholas Natteau]

Does it matter whether you select “pillar box” or “anamorphic” in the aspect ratio tab of the Aja Settings panel for up conversion? Since you can change the aspect ratio of your unconverted footage in the FCP settings tab to “33.33” to get the pillar box look if you selected “anamorphic” in the Aja settings panel…which is what I did.

[Nicholas Natteau]

Hi Jeremy,

I ordered these newsreels from NARA on mini-DV NTSC tapes. I know the footage was originally shot 24p at the time, but they’re playing back at 29.97 fps from my Sony M35U tape deck and being upscaled to 720p59.94

If understand correctly then. I should instead be using Compressor to upconvert and select reverse telecine to 24p in Compressor and I might see an even better upconvert as a result of doing reverse telecine and 24p?

[Nicholas Natteau]

Hi Jeremy,

I chose 720p59.94 as my upconvert destination because I shot all my HD footage with my HVX200 in 720p/24np and with my GH1 at 720p60.

[Nicholas Natteau]

Hi Jeremy,

Actually I have over 13 hours of SD footage. It’s all WWII newsreels that I’ll be using in two different documentaries.

I upconverted my SD footage with my LHi card selecting “anamorphic” for aspect ratio, because I didn’t want black bars on the sides. But if I need to pillar box it at some later date (because a client might prefer the pillar box look), couldn’t I just go to the “distort tab” in FCP and select “33.33” which would then give me the pillar box look?

You mentioned Teranex. Where you thinking of the mini-UDCSN up/down/cross converter? B&H sells that for $2,536. I definitely couldn’t afford the bigger Teranex units that run into the tens of thousands.

How much better would you say the Teranex mini-UDCSN is at upconverting 480i to 720p than Kona Lhi?
Would the upconversion be noticeably better if I used Teranex mini-UDCSN?

[Nicholas Natteau]

Hi Shane that’s what i thought…25% lost of the top and bottom of the 4:3 image if it’s blown up to fit the 16:9 frame.
So if understand correctly you select “pillar box” in Aja’s control panel aspect ratio tab
and in FCP you take your unconverted pillar boxed image and scale it up manually a further 33% (133 in the scale tab) and then you determine
how far up or down you position the scene.

You said that you are losing more than 33% as you are also losing the black bars on the side. But does that matter?
I mean are you losing any information in the picture by losing the bars? Does getting rid of the pillar box bars amount to a loss of resolution and is that ok for broadcast?

[Nicholas Natteau]

Hi Shane,

I have a question relating to your article that you pointed me to.

At one point you say:

We ended up capturing most of the footage ZOOM LETTERBOX, but with a few shots as Pillarboxed, so that we could either cut it into the show that way as a stylistic choice (network OK’d that option), or we could zoom in on the footage after we added it to the timeline, and adjust the framing manually so that we controlled where the cropping of the image would occur.

I tried the “zoom letterbox” option, but as I end up with my 4:3 footage being zoomed in all the way to fit the 16:9 frame, I am not able to control where the image can be cropped. Do you know how much the 4:3 image gets zoomed in on to fill the 16:9 frame when you select “zoom letterbox”? I am trying to determine how much of the top and bottom part of my 4:3 footage I will lose if I select “Zoom letterbox” as opposed to anamorphic.

If I’m not mistaken, “zoom wide” applies half of both methods (half zoom and half stretch to get the 4:3 footage to fill the 16:9 frame. I’m also trying to figure out how much of the 4:3 frame I will lose if I select zoom wide.

[Nicholas Natteau]

Hi Shane,

My final delivery will be DVD (both standard and blu-ray) and broadcast TV. But I will be using the same upconverted WWII footage for another doc-film I will begin later this summer for which I hope to have theatrical distribution.

All HD footage for my film was all shot with the HVX200 at 720p/24np and the GH1 at 720/60p.
That was another reason I had chosen 720p59.94 as the upconvert. But DVD and broadcast is the ultimate destination for my first film and hopefully theatrical distribution for my second film.

The point is that the WWII upconverted footage will be used in both films, that’s why I’m unsure what format to upconvert to: 720p or 1080i. (Personally I prefer progressive to interlaced).

Thanks again for your advice and help,

– Nick

[Nicholas Natteau]

Hi Shane,

Thanks again very much for your help. You say that your destination was 1080p. 1080p24? If so, is that because the film is for theatrical distribution? I take it if it were going straight to TV or DVD you would have chosen 1080i29.97 then, correct?

I had chosen 720p59.94 because after trying to upscale to 1080i (225% larger frame size than 480) it seemed to me that the picture looked better if it were only blown up 150% to 720. I was afraid i was losing too much resolution at 1080. I may be wrong of course.