Trevor Ward
Forum Replies Created
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Hi Warren, I haven’t yet done this, but you didn’t mention if you put the fan back in or you are running with one less fan.
-Trevor Ward
Director of “I Met with an Accident” the movie.
https://www.imetwithanaccident.com -
Thanks for the input. I understand the according to people who have traveled down this road, they hardware upconvert is the best. Terranex is the best of these. My film has an extremely low budget and there is no need for such expenses as of yet (unless HBO comes a knocking). If I knew someone with a Matrox or other hardware upconvert, I’d consider the time investment. If I had even a little extra money even, I’d consider the financial investment.
90-95% of the SD footage is being mixed with some beautiful 720p HD footage. And since the film is showing on at least one big screen, I wanted to keep that 720p looking as good as it is. So, I opted for a software solution.
Here is my take:
1. FCP Scaling wins. It’s the easiest to do in terms of workflow. And the results for MY footage were visually the best.
2. Compressor is a bit of a pain because you have to take clips out of the timeline and upconvert outside of FCP.
3. Boris UpRez looks ok. But the workflow isn’t very practical for a 90 minute film like mine. I suppose I would lay out footage on tracks and “lay off” video track 1 and then video track 2 etc. But it’s not like you can just add the filter to a clip, change the settings, and then copy that filter to every SD clip. You have to use either nested sequences or slugs. It’s not a complete show stopper, but it’s a little messy.
4. Red Giant Instant HD is similar to Boris FX, but is even less flexible. These filters have to work this way because of the way FCP handles scaling or some other technical software reason. I don’t really care other than it’s not very clean. I think Graeme Nattress might have a plug in that upconverts but I didn’t explore this option.So here are the visual results. Judge for yourself. click on each image to download the full size image because by the time it gets squashed to display here on the cow, each image looks different.
Here is the original clip. miniDV captured through firewire FCP log and capture:
Here is my choice for winner. FCP scaling (the SD video clip was dropped into a 720pProRes timeline and then I used 200% scaline using the Motion tab in the viewer):
This is a screen shot of the exported BorisFX UpRez filter applied:
This is a shot of the clip with the Red Giant Instant HD filter applied:
And lastly, this is a copy of the clip upconverting going through Compressor:
So, I’m sure someone here will argue with these results. Ok. Whatever. I did what most experts here agree to do: TEST, TEST, TEST on your own footage and make up your own mind. Good luck to you all. And thanks Shane and Walter for everything you guys do help us all out.
-Trevor Ward
https://www.Imetwithanaccident.com
I Met with an Accident – The remarkable, inspiring story of Benedict. -
Uh, thanks Shane. Although I appreciate your contributions to the cow here, I feel like your last post came out sounding condescending. If so, then that’s not very polite and not very professional. I think everyone knows that SD footage shot on miniDV won’t look HD. The point is to compare the various methods of up rezing as described above. People have needs to uprez their SD footage to fit into an HD program and I’m exploring some of those options. I’m just try to be helpful and share some of MY experiences with other people.
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Ok. so I did it the manual way. Took me over 3 hours! uggh. So tedious. Seriously, Final Cut Pro 7? We’re at 7 and they haven’t been able to implement this simple function?
-trevor ward
Red Eye Film Co.
http://www.redeyefilmco.com
orlando, fl -
Yeah, I think. It’s a 90 minute doc. about a 1/3 of it has subtitles. I think I can do 3-4 clips in a minute. So yeah, maybe 45 minutes. Of course, it will probably take longer because it seems like everything does.
-trevor ward
Red Eye Film Co.
http://www.redeyefilmco.com
orlando, fl -
Don’t take this the wrong way. I HAVE a work-around. I’ve actually already done it because it took 1 minute. But I’m looking for the right way to do it. someone must know. Going back to autosave only works if you haven’t done any other work you want to save. This is a large project. that’s only one sequence I wanted to undo.
I hate STP.
-trevor ward
Red Eye Film Co.
http://www.redeyefilmco.com
orlando, fl -
But, the skew is exactly what I’m worried about. This is very fast paced water action. Think surfing, snowboarding, and motocross. Doing slow pans and/or lock down shots aren’t an option. the sport is wakeboarding, if that helps any.
-trevor ward
Red Eye Film Co.
http://www.redeyefilmco.com
orlando, fl -
No. I didn’t duplicate the sequence. I don’t like this workflow a bit. It’s totally cumbersome. Besides, what if i had to make changes and had to do a conform in STP. I don’t think that’s the recommended workflow.
worse case scenarios, I’ll match frame each clip and bring it back into the timeline. It’s only about 20-30 clips.
-trevor ward
Red Eye Film Co.
http://www.redeyefilmco.com
orlando, fl -
I’m using a 2 1/2 year old MBP 2.16 intel core 2 duo. I use AVCHD. I’ve got the new FCP 7 and it allows you to use the ProRes LT or ProRes Proxy when transcoding. This takes less space and less time. I can transcode 20 minutes of footage into ProRes in about 20 minutes. I can transcode it into ProRes Proxy in less than 10 minutes.
As far as quality, I’m not an engineer, so I can’t really comment from personal experience. Image quality is not only a factor of the codec, but also of the camera as a whole: imager, lens, etc. borrow the two cameras in question, and do a side by side comparison.
As far as cameras, go, I agree with the other person who said you should get the camera that offers the features and performance you want if you don’t care about workflow.
-trevor ward
Red Eye Film Co.
http://www.redeyefilmco.com
orlando, fl -
Not that this can help you, but I just upgraded yesterday from FC 6 to 7 and all my favorites are there. By favorites, I’m assuming under the effects tab, the folder called favorites. I have about 10 favorites from color correcting, to filters, to transitions to audio effects. Also, my other favorites like keyboard preferences and column preferences.
I didn’t do anything special. Just ran the install from the disk and 20 minutes later was using the new FC.
-trevor ward
Red Eye Film Co.
http://www.redeyefilmco.com
orlando, fl