SD to HD blow out

[Katerina Papa]

Hello everyone! I have a rather stupid question to ask, please bear with me I am a total newbie.

I recently finished working on a documentary (mini-dv) which i entered in a film festival. Turned out they like it and now they are asking for a HD digital version of it for screening. How do i turn SD mini-dv to HD? And now the stupid question: what's the point? since the movie was shot in SD is the quality going to upgrade by transfering to HD??


Thanks >.<

[Doug Okamoto]

Not a stupid question at all!

They may have presumed that you shot on HD and just presented it in DV (I don't know why).

Some film festivals have 'standards' that they adhere to in format and presentation. Recently it's been that HD (rather than film) has been that standard.

It's possible to up-res the film to HD from SD-DV but how good it looks depends on the DI (Digital Intermediate) house that does it. It's not as easy as some think it is. To do it well it actually take a fair bit of manipulation, knowledge, and a lot of rendering. I don't recommend it for someone that doesn't have experience but if it is something you want to try, go ahead. Quite a few compositing software packages can do it, but the operator is the key to make it look very good.

I have seen some up-res footage from DV to HD that was phenomenal, it all depends on the expertise and time given to it.

[Katerina Papa]

Doug! thank you for answering!

so when they say they need 'a Hi-Def digital version' of it, what do they mean? do they mean it has to be 1080p? or can it be 1080i too? and how many frames per second? perhaps they need the true filmlike 24p? could it be a hd dvd or digibeta?? or?? so confused and they are not providing much help!

[Dufu Syte]

Strictly speaking, the definition of HD is anything with over 720 lines of vertical resolution.

You should ask them if they have more specific specifications. Otherwise, feel free to deliver anything with over 720 vertical, interlaced or progressive.

They may fail to provide you with more specific specifications, and then they may reject the format you eventually provide, and only tell you what they want after they have rejected what you give them. This is an indication you are dealing with incompetent people.

[Igor Ridanovic]

Originally Posted by Katerina Papa

Doug! thank you for answering!

so when they say they need 'a Hi-Def digital version' of it, what do they mean? do they mean it has to be 1080p? or can it be 1080i too? and how many frames per second? perhaps they need the true filmlike 24p? could it be a hd dvd or digibeta?? or?? so confused and they are not providing much help!

Katerina,

some festivals tend to prefer 1080i over progressive. This may seem weird because temporal cadence of interlaced video is very different from what people are familiar seeing in a theatrical presentation.

The reason for this is upconversions. Lots of films are shot in SD video and upconverted to HD. Keeping the HD interlaced as in 1080i results in fewer artifacts.

The process of transferring SD to HD is called upconversion. Digital Intermediate (DI) is something different and it typically does not involve scaling up the picture as in scaling SD to HD size.

The cost of a DI job can run in tens of thousands of dollars. The cost of an upconversion of a feature length project is certainly under $1,000.

Upconversions require little operator assistance unless there are problems or shots that need to be dealt on individual basis.

Going from Mini-DV to a high definition format like D5 for example is very easy to do if you keep it interlaced (1080 59.94i in the U.S.).

Going from Mini-DV to 1080 23.98p is easy to do but the results may not look as good. This is where a good upconverter like Teranex may make a lot of difference. There is no rendering involved. All these boxes are real time.

Find out from your festival which HD standard they need and call a couple of post facilities to get a good rate. Ask them what equipment they are using too. You may even be able to go in and do a semi-supervised session where they'll show you a couple of key scenes and have you dial in sharpness, noise reduction and such parameters.