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  • Hey all, just changed over the backend after 15 years I figured time to give it a bit of an update, its probably gonna be a bit weird for most of you and i am sure there is a few bugs to work out but it should kinda work the same as before... hopefully :)

HELP : upscaling SD footage to HDCAM...

Bastien Tribalat

Bastien Tribalat

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Hi,
I know it sounds kinda weird but here is my problem :
we shot a 16mm film and we were supposed to have a telecine to HDCAM. Every other team (in my school) did so, but my producer thought it was too expensive so he asked for a telecine to Digital Betacam. (in fact, our laboratory said it was the same price.....)
The screening WILL BE in HDCAM, and ONLY in HDCAM via a digital projector (that, as they say, will only accept a full HD source at least, no 720P, no SD).

So I have to upscale my footage to 1080P the problem being that it's 16/9 aspect ratio and Digital Beta is 4/3... I looked in Final Cut Pro and the upscale is about 272%, which is huge and destroy too much the image.

So I was wondering if there was a trick, a program, any way to upscale it without losing too much ? (I thought maybe using Compressor with some resizing options BUT I can't manage to crope the footage right to be 16/9 or 1.78 aspect ratio)
 
Sadly no.
It would cost near 800€ (around 989 US$) which we can't afford (the school obliges us to have a budget limit of 4500€ and we are currently at 4400€).

I also asked if I can put it on a Digital beta Tape for the screening (the HDCAM VTR we'll be using also read that format) but they don't want, plus the projector want 1080P minimum !

I think I'm kinda stuck here....
 
only other way is to go to a dub house and have it down, you can have it scaled through a teranex, or do a hdcam to hdcam upconvert, they have built in upconvert cards. (and they play back digi betas) you are going to get a cropping factor, and a loss of quality no matter what you do, some devices just do it better than others. Or a cheaper way (perhaps) capture into FCP via pro res, and scale it out via aja or blackmagic to HDCAM. But coming down to SD has already done all the damage, you've lose physical pixels, and color information, and as good as technology is to reinterpret and estimate, duplicate, and blend pixels, along with stretching them, there is no gaining back everything you've lost.
 
I really doubt the projector will not upscale an SD signal, and it sounds right that some HDCAM deck could play a Digi-Beta tape.
They just want you to follow the rules.

There is no magic software/hardware that can make the SD footage look even close to a HD scan. Some do better jobs than others, but none can really invent resolution. If they could, we would not need RED.

Looks like you have already blown the budget requirement no matter what you do now. What do you want to do with this footage other than the screening?
 
Bastien Tribalat said:
Sadly no.
It would cost near 800€ (around 989 US$) which we can't afford (the school obliges us to have a budget limit of 4500€ and we are currently at 4400€).

I also asked if I can put it on a Digital beta Tape for the screening (the HDCAM VTR we'll be using also read that format) but they don't want, plus the projector want 1080P minimum !

I think I'm kinda stuck here....
Click to expand...

On the windows side there's a piece of software (free for 30 days) called video enhancer. It processes AVIs (at 24bit RGB) and is compatible with plugins for virtualdub (another freeware video tool).

I would try running the footage through that, it claims to increase spatial resolution by analysing adjacent frames. I does a nice job of upscaling, and doesn't produce artifacts. Whether there is more spatial resolution or not I can't measure, but I used it convert SD to HD, as it certainly doesn't hurt. I'd get a 3x out of that, then aspect convert/crop down to HD. Then compare the results with a non-video enhanced version.
 
Ryan Sims said:
I really doubt the projector will not upscale an SD signal, and it sounds right that some HDCAM deck could play a Digi-Beta tape.
They just want you to follow the rules.

There is no magic software/hardware that can make the SD footage look even close to a HD scan. Some do better jobs than others, but none can really invent resolution. If they could, we would not need RED.

Looks like you have already blown the budget requirement no matter what you do now. What do you want to do with this footage other than the screening?
Click to expand...

The footage is intended to be put on the school's 2011 DVD and on sites like YouTube and so on.

The VTR we use CAN read Digital Beta, so maybe I can negotiate to have it anyway on that tape and not on HDCAM (but the "funny" fact is that the guy using the projector don't want to have to switch tapes... lol).

I'll try what RONX said just to see.
 
To be honest your producer messed up let him deal with having it projected, thats his job.
The HDCAM deck should and can playback and upscale it for you.
 
you just have to make sure the guy in charge of the deck as all the upscaling options turned on, and there still might be a cropping factor involved with the upscale... a
 
Thanks everybody:thumbsup:

I'll try to find a way to test the maximum of the tips yo gave me. I probably won't be able to rent a Mac Pro with a Kona 3 (but as we actually have the Mac Pro, maybe I can find some place to rent only the card... Don't know) but I'll try everything I can to the better image possible at the screening.
 
Just to keep you guys informed.

After strug(g?)ling with our blackmagic card and some bugs with Color1.5 on our Mac Pro Station, it seemed that the HDCAM VCR, even with the upscale option, could'nt do it in hardware (well he could but with pillarboxes).

So we were asked to do the upscale directly into Final Cut Pro.
It was crappy but ok.
At the screening the image was obviously a bit to blurry, and the colors were very noisy. The cherry on the cake beeing that I was blamed for that and had 5 points retired from my evaluation, the teacher said for that "we ask you to do a certain output and quality, you didn't do it !"...

If someone finds a way to have magical HDCAM footage from Digibeta without any loss, I'll surely pay him/her a beer or two at the local Irish Pub !

Anyway, that was just to keep all the people that helped me informed.
 
Last edited:
DigitBeta is not only 4:3.

Your Producer / Telecine House cropped your 16mm footage. I am just pointing this out because if they didn't do that then it would have been easier to scale up.

"If someone finds a way to have magical HDCAM footage from Digibeta without any loss, I'll surely pay him/her a beer or two at the local Irish Pub !"

That will never happen.
 
Bastien Tribalat said:

At the screening the image was obviously a bit to blurry, and the colors were very noisy. The cherry on the cake beeing that I was blamed for that and had 5 points retired from my evaluation, the teacher said for that "we ask you to do a certain output and quality, you didn't do it !"...
Click to expand...

So you were blamed for your producers decision? Screw 'em!
 
Well, there is always Redgiant Software's Instant HD and Instant HD Pro. They're After Effects plug-ins and they're supposed to be good. I actually have Instant HD Pro because I wanted to re-master some of my old Mini-DV projects and have the option to scale my 1080P stuff to 2K if need be. However, I haven't had the chance to use it yet (been too busy on new projects) but it is an option nonetheless.
 
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