up resing
 

I've got a project I've been working on for about 12 years or more. I started it back in the days before high res cameras etc, and so I'm stuck with standard resolution footage. Just wondering if there is a way to up res standard resolution finished files to a higher resolution, and if so, if anyone has had any experience in doing this.

Re: up resing
 

Yes there is, just search for Video Enhancer, it's something I looked at before I got my first HD camera. I also vaguely remember there was a tutorial on how to do it free in, I believe, VitrualDub.

Dave

Re: up resing
 

I have pondered this recently too, am just finishing up a documentary from 4:3 standard definition footage that I shot 15 years ago on a Sony VX-2000. My current thinking is that there isn't much point in converting it to HD for my purposes.

I'm using the Mac, so the tools are different, but the principles should be the same on Windows. My first priority is to have the highest quality for digital projection on a large screen. And I am getting results that I like by rendering with highest quality motion compensated deinterlacing and exporting as uncompressed standard definition. I have used a lot of color correction and other effects on this project, and exporting as uncompressed looks a lot cleaner than DV.

Now this creates some big files - over 100gb for my one hour film - but that doesn't matter much since I will be connecting my laptop directly to projectors or large screens. For online distribution, I will just use H.264. My current version is about 700MB. It looks good on my 46" Sony TV, but certainly not as good as the uncompressed version.

As for the resolution, most modern TV's seem to do a pretty good job of scaling. At some point I may do some experiments with up-rezzing to 720p but not sure if it will be worth it.

Re: up resing
 

At this point I'm aiming at DVD as my final destination for the project...

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Doesn't that limit you to standard definition anyway? Sorry, I stopped making and using DVD's about five years ago...

Re: up resing
 

Hi Renton,

I cannot offer any suggestions it you are going from DV to DVD other than the normal color correction and desharpening FX. But I can offer you mu expereince. I have been processing in HD and this year went to UHD. But, in the spring I had some old Super 8 film digitized and brought it in to Vegas to render out a 14 minute home video.

I spent about 3 weeks messing around with various methods and trial applications to uprez. It was aggrevating, time comsuming and at the end I had little improvement to show for it. That could have been my fault, but I think I gave it a good shot.

When I went from SD to HD, I would often render to DVD (I had a lot of DVD disc) as test productions, as well as for those folks still wanting DVD's. I already had a Bluray player, but last year I replaced the old flat screen with a new Sony 1080p 60" flat screen. Between the Bluray p;ayer (nothing special) and the Sony 60" (now that is nothing special), my DVD's seem to pop! The modern players and TV's do thricks with contrast and edge sharpening and that seem to do wonders on DVD's.

It didn't help improve the poor quality Super 8 source on YouTube, but there is a marked improvement when I view DVD's on my home system. Just a few thoughts.

Re: up resing
 

I don't know. I've just started down this track...

By the time I've finished the project (I have just finished episode 8 of 13) it may be easier to improve the resolution. Realistically I've got a couple of years to go...unless I'm able to put more time into it...

Re: up resing
 

I would like to deliver to the TV the best quality I am able to...thanks.

Re: up resing
 

DVD is certainly not the "best quality" since you must re-compress the video in a different, more compact format. Whenever you do that, something is going to suffer so you are looking at some trade-offs. Often it will be "good enough" however.

One hour of original standard definition DV results in a file that is about 12gb. It depends on how you create a DVD, but IIRC an hour is about 2gb using high quality DVD compression. So something has to give.

If you are doing things like color correction and effects while editing your project, even using the original DV format may not give you the best quality, as I mentioned above. This is why I am going to use uncompressed video for output, but that will result in around 100gb for a one hour video. A DVD only holds 4gb.

I would really question whether there's any advantage in converting to HD for what you describe. IMO, the only time this makes sense is if you are using SD footage in an HD project.

Re: up resing
 

+1 boyd's observations...

Re: up resing
 

The reason I am going for DVD is that I am hoping to sell this project so average people can buy it and readily view it in their own homes on their own equipment...

Re: up resing
 

You said it will be a couple years before your project is complete. Do you think people will still be using DVD's then? ;)

Regardless, DVD's are for standard definition video, not high definition. And as I said above, they cannot even deliver the full quality of the DV footage you already have. There was something called the "HD DVD" a number of years ago, but it never caught on. I never actually saw one of these, and it required a special player.

I shot a lot of performance video going back to 2001, and burned it to DVD at the highest quality (using DVD Studio Pro on the Mac) after editing, I think I could only get around 1.5 to 2 hours on a DVD. Since I was shooting video of operas, I needed to use two DVD's for a full show.

Recently all my original DV tapes came back home and I have started a project to capture them all and get them on a hard drive to preserve them at full quality. Anyway, looking back at this after all these years, the quality of the DVD's I made is very noticeably worse than my original DV footage. My old DVD's are also inferior to compressing the original footage directly into an H.264 file at high quality.

Now there are some tricks that can be used to improve the quality of DVD video. There's something called "compression markers" IIRC that allow you to specify different types of compression in different parts of the video. Commercially made DVD's of major films manage to get better quality. I never dug very deeply into that, it gets very complicated.

You might consider some form of online distribution, that has the potential to reach a much bigger international audience. I realize you aren't in the US, but here I really don't know very many people who use DVD's anymore.

Re: up resing
 

This might help: https://www.redgiant.com/products/instant-4k/

Re: up resing
 

Thought I would follow up on this old thread since the topic is relevant to my current projects. Here's a little two minute montage remembering a special person that passed away a year ago. The original footage was anamorphic 16:9 480i60 DV from my Sony PDX-10 back in 2003 for use in large screen video projections for the Opera Il Trovatore.

PDX-10 footage is a mixed bag. Some of it looks surprisingly good, some of it is horrible. The lighting has a lot to do with it, and the low resolution viewfinder and LCD screen also made it hard to get critical focus. Most of the footage I shot on this particular day turned out pretty well though.

So I used Apple Compressor with highest quality settings to convert the 480i60 to 720p30. The results are kind of soft, but that seems to fit the mood. I did some tests converting 480i60 to 480p30 and didn't like the results as much, I could still see interlace artifacts.

Anyway, here's my little two minute video so you can judge the results of the 480i60 to 720p30 for yourself.

Re: up resing
 

I just realized this thread is in the Vegas forum and I am using Apple Final Cut Pro, sorry for taking things off topic, although I am more interested in the value of converting SD to HD video as opposed to the nuts and bolts of how to do it. So here is another example from footage I shot of the opera "The Pearl Fishers" in 2004 with the same camera. Can't post video due to contractual/union issues, but here is a still 480i60 frame compared to an up-res'ed 720p30 frame.

Getting rid of the interlace is good, but I'm not sure that the results look any better than just letting a TV/monitor automatically scale the video....