Scaling UP from SD to HDV

William Boehm · February 6th, 2010, 11:14 AM

thankyou robert for your input. i shot all the footage on a canon gl1 which i guess is analogue...i am going to copy all the footage from that and the canon xha1 hi def through cineform to a hard drive..then work with the intermediate codec from there. this is the first time for me to edit...thus my question..is it worthwhile to change some of the excellent wildlife footage i have to 16:9, and will virtualdub make a fairly decent digital form? bill

Adam Gold · February 6th, 2010, 12:19 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by William Boehm

i shot all the footage on a canon gl1 which i guess is analogue

No, of course it isn't. It's DV. The D in DV is digital. It's all digital. It's just not HD.

Robert M Wright · February 8th, 2010, 01:29 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by William Boehm

thankyou robert for your input. i shot all the footage on a canon gl1 which i guess is analogue...i am going to copy all the footage from that and the canon xha1 hi def through cineform to a hard drive..then work with the intermediate codec from there. this is the first time for me to edit...thus my question..is it worthwhile to change some of the excellent wildlife footage i have to 16:9, and will virtualdub make a fairly decent digital form? bill

As mentioned, by Adam in the previous post, the footage from a GL1 is digital.

Whether or not it is worthwhile to change some of your footage (presumably shot as 4:3 footage with the GL1?) to 16:9 depends on the footage and your purpose in doing so. I don't know what you mean by "will virtualdub make a fairly decent digital form?"

William Boehm · February 8th, 2010, 09:14 AM

well excuse my lack of knowledge as i thought the camera shot digital..but then somewhere in one of the posts i read'analogue' . i have some interesting wildife shots in Glacier bay and denali witht he kids and would like to convert some of this for hd viewing on a big screen. maybe i am stuck with allowing the black pillars on each side of the image in a 16:9 format. i am just beginning to transfer 8 years of images in cineform neoscene to store, and begin to edit..possibly with vegas 9. i am looking for simplicity, but good capture.

Robert M Wright · February 8th, 2010, 12:12 PM

Generally, I'd suggest keeping it as 4:3 with pillars. Cropping to 16:9 and then upscaling can get pretty rough. You essentially wind up with 360 horizontal lines of detail when you crop 4:3 DV to 16:9. Upscaling that to HD is never going to look real hot.

Robert M Wright · February 8th, 2010, 12:23 PM

Are you shooting interlaced or progressive video with the H1? If you are shooting 1080i60 with the H1 and want to cut that together with footage from the GL1, what could potentially work quite well, would be to deinterlace everything to 60p using YADIF (deinterlacing filter), and then scale it all to 1280x720 using Lanczos resizing - yielding 720p60. That does get a bit involved though, to do it well. A good tool for doing that would be Avidemux (freeware, that includes YADIF and Lanczos resizing filters).

Robert M Wright · February 8th, 2010, 12:37 PM

How many hours of footage do you have total? What CPU do you have in your computer?

William Boehm · February 8th, 2010, 04:06 PM

well i have a basic computer to begin the transfer of about40 hours of good sd from the gl1, and i was simply going to use neoscene to get into a lossless codec on two lacie 1.5 terabyte external drives. i have another 40 hours of hdv 16:9. i am saving for a computer that will facilitate editing, and as yet hadnt quite decided on vegas 9. i had looked at speededit and opted not to go that route because of their poor support. so basically i am looking to cut and delete a lot of footage first, then edit with a program that is as simple as possilbe..looking for transistions, some anti shake (sea otters whales videoed from kayaks up close) and family. bill

Robert M Wright · February 9th, 2010, 01:07 AM

There's really no point in transcoding the GL1 footage to Cineform's codec, before you do something with it. Simply capture it as DV and save the files, as is, until you want to work with the footage. 40 hours of DV should take up about 500GB of hard drive space. 40 hours of HDV will take up almost exactly the same amount of hard drive space. HDV transcoded with Cineform's codec will take up something like 4 times as much HDD space. I'd suggest you simply capture the HDV and save it (as is) also. Btw, Cineform's codec is not lossless, although it is known as a "visually lossless" codec - essentially meaning that the compression quality is very high, enough so that the images look essentially the same, visually, after compression.

What kind of CPU do you have in your current computer? It doesn't take a boatload of CPU power (by today's standards) to edit HDV, especially if you transcode it using Cineform's codec. Standard definition DV (from the GL1) doesn't take much CPU power at all to edit either. If you do need a new computer for editing, you don't need to spend a fortune on it.

I'd suggest downloading a trial copy of Edius Neo 2. It's lesser known than some of the others, but a very nice and solid NLE for basic editing, and about as about as stable as it gets for an NLE on a PC. The trial version is fully functional for 30 days - not missing anything or anything disabled, like trial versions of other NLEs.

TingSern Wong · February 9th, 2010, 01:37 AM

Has anybody tried this one?

Topaz Enhance - Video Quality Enhancement Plug-in

I wondering how good this is?

Ervin Farkas · February 9th, 2010, 06:39 AM

Probably one of those people that take free Avisyth or Virtualdub filters and turn them into for-profit commercial products... they can't even design a decent website... look at the navigation icons spilled all over the screen in IE.

TingSern Wong · February 9th, 2010, 07:12 AM

It looks perfectly fine on Firefox. Maybe it is M$ IE that is breaking the rules.

Ervin Farkas · February 9th, 2010, 07:22 AM

... and that's a perfectly BAD idea to only make it compatible with FF when 67.27% of the world is on IE... as of December 2009.

See Web Browser Market Share

William Boehm · February 9th, 2010, 09:13 AM

robert...do i lose any info transfering the tapes to dv...and what do i use to do that? simply transfer the files in windows? my apologies upfront but i am just starting the editing info gathering. bill

William Boehm · February 9th, 2010, 09:32 AM

well i will be a little more specific. i have the firewire ability to transfer dv from the canon xha1 directly to a lacie d2 quad hard drive, and i am hoping i can download WinDV to the external hard drive to transfer files without loss of info. my pc does not have a firewire connection, only a usb connection. will that work? bill

February 9th, 2010, 06:39 AM	#26
Ervin Farkas Inner Circle Join Date: Aug 2005 Location: Atlanta/USA Posts: 2,515	Probably one of those people that take free Avisyth or Virtualdub filters and turn them into for-profit commercial products... they can't even design a decent website... look at the navigation icons spilled all over the screen in IE. Attached Thumbnails __________________ Ervin Farkas www.AtlantaLegalVideo.com

February 9th, 2010, 07:22 AM	#28
Ervin Farkas Inner Circle Join Date: Aug 2005 Location: Atlanta/USA Posts: 2,515	... and that's a perfectly BAD idea to only make it compatible with FF when 67.27% of the world is on IE... as of December 2009. See Web Browser Market Share __________________ Ervin Farkas www.AtlantaLegalVideo.com

February 6th, 2010, 11:14 AM	#16
William Boehm Regular Crew Join Date: Feb 2007 Location: Bothell, Washington Posts: 195	thankyou robert for your input. i shot all the footage on a canon gl1 which i guess is analogue...i am going to copy all the footage from that and the canon xha1 hi def through cineform to a hard drive..then work with the intermediate codec from there. this is the first time for me to edit...thus my question..is it worthwhile to change some of the excellent wildlife footage i have to 16:9, and will virtualdub make a fairly decent digital form? bill

February 8th, 2010, 09:14 AM	#19
William Boehm Regular Crew Join Date: Feb 2007 Location: Bothell, Washington Posts: 195	well excuse my lack of knowledge as i thought the camera shot digital..but then somewhere in one of the posts i read'analogue' . i have some interesting wildife shots in Glacier bay and denali witht he kids and would like to convert some of this for hd viewing on a big screen. maybe i am stuck with allowing the black pillars on each side of the image in a 16:9 format. i am just beginning to transfer 8 years of images in cineform neoscene to store, and begin to edit..possibly with vegas 9. i am looking for simplicity, but good capture.

February 8th, 2010, 12:12 PM	#20
Robert M Wright Inner Circle Join Date: Jan 2006 Location: Minnesota (USA) Posts: 2,171	Generally, I'd suggest keeping it as 4:3 with pillars. Cropping to 16:9 and then upscaling can get pretty rough. You essentially wind up with 360 horizontal lines of detail when you crop 4:3 DV to 16:9. Upscaling that to HD is never going to look real hot.

February 8th, 2010, 12:23 PM	#21
Robert M Wright Inner Circle Join Date: Jan 2006 Location: Minnesota (USA) Posts: 2,171	Are you shooting interlaced or progressive video with the H1? If you are shooting 1080i60 with the H1 and want to cut that together with footage from the GL1, what could potentially work quite well, would be to deinterlace everything to 60p using YADIF (deinterlacing filter), and then scale it all to 1280x720 using Lanczos resizing - yielding 720p60. That does get a bit involved though, to do it well. A good tool for doing that would be Avidemux (freeware, that includes YADIF and Lanczos resizing filters).

February 8th, 2010, 12:37 PM	#22
Robert M Wright Inner Circle Join Date: Jan 2006 Location: Minnesota (USA) Posts: 2,171	How many hours of footage do you have total? What CPU do you have in your computer?

February 8th, 2010, 04:06 PM	#23
William Boehm Regular Crew Join Date: Feb 2007 Location: Bothell, Washington Posts: 195	well i have a basic computer to begin the transfer of about40 hours of good sd from the gl1, and i was simply going to use neoscene to get into a lossless codec on two lacie 1.5 terabyte external drives. i have another 40 hours of hdv 16:9. i am saving for a computer that will facilitate editing, and as yet hadnt quite decided on vegas 9. i had looked at speededit and opted not to go that route because of their poor support. so basically i am looking to cut and delete a lot of footage first, then edit with a program that is as simple as possilbe..looking for transistions, some anti shake (sea otters whales videoed from kayaks up close) and family. bill

February 9th, 2010, 01:07 AM	#24
Robert M Wright Inner Circle Join Date: Jan 2006 Location: Minnesota (USA) Posts: 2,171	There's really no point in transcoding the GL1 footage to Cineform's codec, before you do something with it. Simply capture it as DV and save the files, as is, until you want to work with the footage. 40 hours of DV should take up about 500GB of hard drive space. 40 hours of HDV will take up almost exactly the same amount of hard drive space. HDV transcoded with Cineform's codec will take up something like 4 times as much HDD space. I'd suggest you simply capture the HDV and save it (as is) also. Btw, Cineform's codec is not lossless, although it is known as a "visually lossless" codec - essentially meaning that the compression quality is very high, enough so that the images look essentially the same, visually, after compression. What kind of CPU do you have in your current computer? It doesn't take a boatload of CPU power (by today's standards) to edit HDV, especially if you transcode it using Cineform's codec. Standard definition DV (from the GL1) doesn't take much CPU power at all to edit either. If you do need a new computer for editing, you don't need to spend a fortune on it. I'd suggest downloading a trial copy of Edius Neo 2. It's lesser known than some of the others, but a very nice and solid NLE for basic editing, and about as about as stable as it gets for an NLE on a PC. The trial version is fully functional for 30 days - not missing anything or anything disabled, like trial versions of other NLEs.

February 9th, 2010, 01:37 AM	#25
TingSern Wong Major Player Join Date: Jan 2004 Location: Singapore, Rep of SINGAPORE Posts: 749	Has anybody tried this one? Topaz Enhance - Video Quality Enhancement Plug-in I wondering how good this is?

February 9th, 2010, 07:12 AM	#27
TingSern Wong Major Player Join Date: Jan 2004 Location: Singapore, Rep of SINGAPORE Posts: 749	It looks perfectly fine on Firefox. Maybe it is M$ IE that is breaking the rules.

February 9th, 2010, 09:13 AM	#29
William Boehm Regular Crew Join Date: Feb 2007 Location: Bothell, Washington Posts: 195	robert...do i lose any info transfering the tapes to dv...and what do i use to do that? simply transfer the files in windows? my apologies upfront but i am just starting the editing info gathering. bill

February 9th, 2010, 09:32 AM	#30
William Boehm Regular Crew Join Date: Feb 2007 Location: Bothell, Washington Posts: 195	well i will be a little more specific. i have the firewire ability to transfer dv from the canon xha1 directly to a lacie d2 quad hard drive, and i am hoping i can download WinDV to the external hard drive to transfer files without loss of info. my pc does not have a firewire connection, only a usb connection. will that work? bill