[Nick Natteau]

Hi Rafael and thank you for helping. I already made all those selections.

But is there no way to select 1080p? Am I missing something?

Or can I manually enter 1920 x 1080?

[Nick Natteau]

Hi Shane and Gary,

Thanks for replying. I chose to get the Aja HA-5:
https://www.aja.com/products/converters/converters-hd-ha5.php
.

I just wonder if I should not instead be getting the Sony HVR-M35U.

[Nick Natteau]

Youre right that was abd idea. Someone had advised me to do that, but I won’t.

But in your opinion, is upscaling from 480i to 1080i too much of an upscale?
Should I not go beyond 720?

[Nick Natteau]

Hi David,

I agree. I just purchased the Matrox MXO2 and I’m using that hardware it to upscale my clips from 480i to 720p. But I still wind up with a pillarboxed image unless I scale the image up further in FCP (actually 135%) to fill up the 16×9 screen.

The problem with scaling up to 135% is that I would have to readjust the framing. Not a big problem. I just thought that stretching the upscaled image horizontally would fill up the screen with less hassle (not having to reframe everything). I’ll go ahead and download Andy’s stretch filter.

Is it OK to upscale WWII footage inside FCP? So far everyone told me to use hardware if possible. But upscaling inside FCP would save me a huge amount of time. I would not have to offline and recapture everything.

[Nick Natteau]

Hi John,

To stretch it horizontally, I simply changed the aspect ratio to -33.33 which took my 4:3 pillarboxed image and stretched it until it filled up the 16:9 frame.

[Nick Natteau]

Hi David,

Thanks very much for your feedback. So then what’s the rule for 4:3 footage in an HD program?

Scale it up until you fill the 16:9 frame or stretch it slightly horizontally?

Someone suggested filling the sides with blur, but I’ve only seen that on news networks like CNN and Fox.
To me that effect (blurring the sides) looks a bit cheesy and quite distracting.

Thanks,

– Nick

[Nick Natteau]

Hi Shane,

Thank you very much for your continued help. It turns out that the split screen may actually be due to my component Y cable. For some reason whenever I plug the Y (not Pb or Pr) cable out and back into my MXO2, the problem goes away. Weird.

I just had another question: Is it better to upconvert via a single HDMI cable than via the three component cables? I was told that HDMI is usually the best way to go. And since I happen to have another Sony deck that has an HDMI port, should I not be upconverting with MXO2 via HDMI instead of component from my tape deck?

Thanks very much in advance,

– Nick

[Nick Natteau]

Hi Shane,

Thank you again for taking the time to share your advice and help. The only problem I keep having with my MXO2 is the split screen I keep seeing in the Log and Capture window. I called Matrox tech support amd e,ailed them a snap shot and they couldn’t figure out why it was doing that. Perhaps I received a defective unit. I’ll wait to hear back from them or call them tomorrow.

But basically every time I open the log and capture window to import a 480i clip and upconvert to 720p, I wind up with the split video image. This is driving me nuts.

Thanks again for all your help across these forums.