DV & HDV - best upres to HD?

the film output of the doco i've been working on for so long is getting close.
our proposed path is to up-res to HD, tape grade (on HD-D5), then go to film.
so i'd like to know if anyone has some insights regarding the up-res to HD from both DV and HDV

any tricks to optimise the quality of an FCP up-res?
maybe a compressor up-res?
thoughts on up-res vs re-capture?

there are reasons for our HD grade & out to film path, but i am interested if someone feels strongly there'd be a better way.


thanks,
nick

Have you checked out miranda.com ? It was recrommeded to me by a Sony tech at the LA DigiExpo for upresing HDV to full HD. I'd be curious to know what you think of this system. I know it's a bit expensive at $3,000, but maybe it can do what other systems can't (?)

yeah, that takes in HDV from a camera or deck's FW output
and spits out HD at the other end.

i'm wondering if there's any real difference between that and just up-resing the HDV?

now here is a real dumb question,
but does anyone know how 1440 HDV gets up-resed to 1920 HD?
is the disparity in the pixel dimensions made up for in the different pixel aspects?
or are there just more lines?
and how does that get figured out.
would line interpolation be required on the up-res,
anyone got a link to some simple explanations, perhaps?
sorry if its too dumb.
the light in my head just hasn't switched on to this stuff...

but mainly i'm after the best path:
up-res or capture?
for DV,
and HDV

oh, and why?

thanks,
nick

Just scale it up in FCP. Works fine.

Graeme



[www.nattress.com] - Plugins for FCP-X

Nick - did you work in mixed DV and HDV? What was your workflow? Did you cut with HDV or an intermediate? I'm with you on this stuff - still trying to grasp all the numbers and what they mean, with a HDV doco on the horizon..

thanks graeme.

do you mean drop the shots into an HD timeline, and let them scale themselves up?
i don't think that's an option for me, as i have mixed DV and HDV,
plus a fair few motion fx

the workflow has been to cut everything as DV.
the HDV tapes are numbered so we can isolate them easily.

we are hampered by a lot of the DV media from early in the process being so badly logged that we can only up-res a lot of it, not recapture.

but we CAN recapture all the HDV, and a certain amount of the DV.

were we are headed is HD-D5 tape, then film.

possible plan:
use Media Manager to up-res the DV timeline to HD
isolate the HDV shots,
recapture as HDV,
up-res to HD,
reconnect

possible plan #2
use Media manager to create a trimmed version at DV res,
then MM again to create an offline HD version
up-res the DV to HD,
reconnect
isolate the HDV,
recapture as HDV,
up-res to HD,
reconnect.


so a no-frills up-res will be OK?
nothing to be gained by adding a smoothing filter or whatever prior to the up-res?
any Nattress magic to help the end result?

Graeme,
is the timeline a better place to scale up due to the motion filtering settings?

any tips on getting my head around the pixel dimensions?

thanks,
nick

On the DV, I'd certainly want to do the chroma fixing. On HDV it's not critical as FCP doe do a fair bit in th eplayback of the 4:2:0 anyway.

I'm finding the timeline is the best place for the scaling yes. Even exporting HDV in quicktime to another codec is buggy due to it not handling the 4:2:0 correctly.

Graeme



[www.nattress.com] - Plugins for FCP-X

"I'm finding the timeline is the best place for the scaling yes."

well that doesn't make my life easier!
(i guess i can re-build the motion fx if i have to, i was just hoping to avoid it.)

any idea why that is?

as to the scaling, these are the figures i've got:

HDV - HD:
scale = 133.33
aspect = -33.33 (familiar figures!)

DV - HD:
scale = 266.67
aspect = 42.22

do these sound right?


thanks,
nick

> well that doesn't make my life easier!
> (i guess i can re-build the motion fx if i have to, i was just hoping to avoid
> it.)

Any way you can leave the original clips in their own timeline, then import into the HD timeline as a nested clip? That way the original Motion parameters can stay put while you implement a universal blowup/reposition.

Yup, you can bring in a nest. That might work. Values sound reasonable.

Graeme



[www.nattress.com] - Plugins for FCP-X

Sorry if this is totally dumb :-) But I once changed the 1440 to 1920 and it automatically raised the 1080 to 1440. So is that a way to up-res ?

1920/1440 is 4:3 and 1440/1080 is also 4:3

So if you want to upres just change the value of the HDV parameters.

Is this what you meant, Graeme, when you said, "just scale it up in FCP"?

You've got to set the aspect ratio of the timeline to 16:9 which it currently is not, then it will allow you to enter the right numbers.

Graeme



[www.nattress.com] - Plugins for FCP-X

hadn't thought of that, but no, nesting wont work.
dont forget its DV *and* HDV,
so it;s not a case of "one size fits all" as far as the upscale goes.

(ive no idea what the DV & HDV will look like when they're up against each other.
if i went the route of using Media Manager or a Batch export to do the up-res, i could very easily change some shots back to DV if it was too jarring)

anyway there's a bit less motion FX than i thought as we're saving quite a few of them for the "second on-line"
first we'll do this compile/up-res,
then grade,
then re-import to FCP to add all our text and a fair few motion fx.

so Graeme, what *is* the magical difference that the timeline makes?
thanks for helping out, you;re obviously very busy.

cheers,
nick

Scaling on the timeline, FCP uses some new scaling routines that look like bicubic filtering to me. Other scaling in Quicktime etc and older FCP uses bilinear which isn't half as good.

Graeme



[www.nattress.com] - Plugins for FCP-X

thanks for that.

as for nesting, i suppose i could seek out the motion effect shots, and nest the DV ones,
but something irks me about that.
i don't entirely trust it to look as good.
prejudiced?
it'd be worth taking a look at, perhaps.

all the best
nick