Video quality

So I'm having an industry screening for my documentary that I shot on SD. I know when it gets projected on the big screen, it's gonna look like crap.

I'm hoping there is some program that exists that will somehow sharpen the SD video. Am I dreaming? I tried Red Giant Instant HD last nite and it was awful. All it did was stretch the video frame.

I would appreciate any advice all you pros have.

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I tried Red Giant Instant HD last nite and it was awful. All it did was stretch the video frame.

You'll need to play with the settings for Instant HD and make sure you have the latest version - I have seen some very good upscaling from it.

What SD format did you shoot? If you shot consumer DV then you really are up @#$%& creak without a paddle.

However if you shot DV50 or Digibeta then you are going to get much better results.

Compressor will do a really nice upscale but with all the settings on highest you might wait several hours or even days for it to render.

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some program that exists that will somehow sharpen the SD video

Any upscaling will involve guessing what picture information "should" be there by extrapolating the neighbouring pixels and filling in the gaps. This usually leads to a softer look and then sharpening can add strange artifacts.

I would persevere with Instant HD as it has produced the nicest upscale I have seen so far.

Maybe Joey can wade in here and comment as he has used it and achieved good results.



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Since you only need to convert your finished show, it might be worth finding a post house that uses an Alchemist or a Teranex to unconvert SD material to HD. They'll dub your show from Digibeta (or whatever) to HDCAM (or whatever) by passing it through the upconverter. The results are guaranteed to be better than anything you could get in software alone, and it's a real-time operation so the cost should be reasonable.

Before you spend all this time or money, i'd find out exactly how your film will be shown on "the big screen". Why go to HD if the projector is only SD? Can you give them a Beta master or do they only have DVD playback?

You need to find out the theaters capabilities before you fret about the sharpness of your source...

I teach a summer program for high school students... they shoot DV anamorphic, and the premiere is at a film festival, on the big screen. While you wouldn't mistake it for 35mm, it's not as bad as you'd assume. It really looks quite nice.

If it's a documentary, the content is king.