720p upres to 1080i
 

I'm wondering if anyone can suggest a workflow for uprezzing 720 material to 1080. I'm familiar with the Teranex (just took my doc from SD to HD with this) but was wondering if there were better alternate methods for going 720 to 1080. I'd like to shoot 720 for the variable frame rates, but I need 1080 for most film fests that take HD, hence the need for the upres. I think once I get this cam I'll be cutting on FCP, so if the workflow leverages this platform that would be best. Thanks!

Peter

I believe Graeme Nattress is working on an uprez plug-in. His plug-ins are excellent.

The alternative might be the Algolith software.

www.nattress.com

http://www.pluginz.com/product/12124?from=rlist&

I know the built in FCP scalers aren't great, but for a festival copies they're probably good enough. If they aren't it might be worthwhile looking at scaling in After Effects, which offers very good quality but is rather slow.

I take it that you really mean you're going from 720p to 1080p (say, at 24p) rather than going from 720-60p to 1080-60i, which is a much trickier proposition.

What format were you outputting to for the Festivals?

Scaling in FCP5 is now decent bi-cubic - perfect really until you want to get into highly specialist stuff. My software is still in development.....

Graeme

Thanks guys. Dylan: The fests that take HD require (at least all the ones I've run into so far) 1080i, 29.97, drop frame. That is the real question, I guess: how to get 720p stuff to 1080i. The project I'm working on now was a 24P project (23.976) in the Avid. For this project, I output from an Avid Adrenaline and it reinserted the 2:3 pulldown automatically on output. I then took the project to a Teranex and did the upres. However, in FCP, if you had a 720P project and needed to both:

1. Reinsert 2:3 pulldown to make it 29.97
2. Upres to 1080

How would you do that? I'm guessing it would be best to do the upres first, on the progressive frames, so you're not dealing with field issues. So let's say you use FCP's scaler (I don't know how this works in the program). Does this just scale your entire project? If so, you could just scale your entire project, then ouput the project to tape. My understanding is that, at least on SD material, FCP automatically reinserts the 2:3 pulldown on 24P material, just like the Avid does. Can anyone confirm that it does this on HD material as well?

Last question, if going out via FW800 to Panasonic's DVCProHD deck, can one only ouput 720P or can you do 1080 as well? Thanks!

Peter

You can output 1080i via FW 400 to the Panny 1200a. You might try outputting your 720p timeline as a single QT DVCPROHD clip. Bring it into compressor and convert to 1080i DV100. You will recompress the material again, so it might be noticeable, but then you can output that clip to 1080i.

I would think the festival will want HDCAM, as that's the dominant HD format. If so, that's a whole new set of issues.