Converting SD project to HD 720p?

[GrassValley_BH]

Unfortunately interlaced footage doesn't translate well to progressive, while the opposite, progressive to interlaced, is better, though the motion won't appear as fluid.

[Mike Truly]

Brandon,

Thanks for this. I will not be using this SD footage in the 720 30p over 60p project so it won't be a problem in this case. But I had never seen anything look this bad so thought there might be something happening incorrectly.

Thanks again.

[GrassValley_BH]

Well, since you're in a 30p project setting, the SD stuff will not only need to get upscaled to 720p, but it also needs to get deinterlaced.

Deinterlacing 60i to 30p isn't as simple as combining pairs of fields, because, as the previous terminology shows, the sampling rate is different. Simply combining pairs of fields will cause edge artifacts when there is motion.

So, most times the interlaced frame would get line-doubled with some interpolation, but now that effectively limits the vertical resolution making the image softer to begin with, which is then further enhanced by the upscaling.

I would try adding a slight Sharpen filter on the upscaled SD footage to see if it enhances things.

[Mike Truly]

Back on this subject again.

OK, Ideally I would like to be able to convert any type of project to any other type of project but it seems that there are restrictions imposed. I have made some selections in the past that have limited me in converting one project type to another so I am trying to pick correctly this time.

Currently, I am working on a project that is SD 4x3 and it looks like the client may want me to redo the project in HD 1280x720. So since the edit is basically done but I will have to re-render everything at higher rez... I want to preserve the exact edit but change the type to 1280x720 and replace each clip with it's hi-rez counterpart.

So since I am rendering the animations at 1280x720 progressive (no fields) at 30 frames per second as TGAs and then making an HQ AVI of the animation, I should choose the 720 30p over 60p setting... correct?

I tried this and it sucessfully converts the project settings and I have my edit... great.

But I notice that the SD video when upconverted to this setting looks horrible. Extremely blurry... almost as though the images were being scaled down... not up. I will not be using this SD video in the HD project but I just wonder why it looks so bad when I changed the project settings... any idea?

Thanks!

[Mike Truly]

Vaughan,

Thanks for this. I'll keep this in mind.

[Vaughan Wood]

I have only done one HD project, and didn't have a burner (until today) to get it off the computer, but the other things I noticed that needed re-doing were any P-I-P videos and any region effects.

Although it is a few weeks since I did the project in HD, I seem to remember that I got the TP titles in the right position by putting them in a video track, instead of a title track. Then when you changed projects they automatically resized themselves.

Someone might like to try it, see if it works!

Cheers, Vaughan

[Mike Truly]

Brandon,

It definitely will for the current setup, but I am loathe to use the same filenames for anything... old habits. In the long run, I would love to see an automated replace function so I could use different filenames but replace quickly.

The 'Re-link' is almost there if it would let me put in some parameters similar to how a renamer dialog does and also show the preview list of what the relinking would look like (again similar to a renamer dialog).

Thanks!

[GrassValley_BH]

Clip Restoration will be much faster/easier if you use different folders, but the same filenames.

[Mike Truly]

Kevin,

Thanks for the ideas. This might work although I haven't worked extensively with the clip restoration dialog. I was actually thinking of a 'clip replacement dialog' that could be triggered anytime while in the app. I am currently operating where both the SD and HD titles reside in the same folder on disk for both the SD and HD versions. But a workaround may be that I should use separate title folders on disk and rename the SD folder temporarily when opening the HD project. Definitely have to do it in such a way as to not mess up the SD version too much when updating the HD version.

Thanks again.

[kwshaw1]

It would be nice if when you know your going to be generating different titles for different versions (one SD and one HD) if there was an automated way of replacing the titles.

How about moving the title files before you switch resolution so the clip restoration dialog kicks in?

[kwshaw1]

I would normally produce the project in the method you mention but there is a concern with my clients needing the fullscreen (not letterboxed) 4x3 SD version for their courtroom playback.

Makes sense, but even when converting from widescreen to 4x3 it may be possible to achieve that using the project settings, depending on your particular requirements. For example, use the Layout tool to set all clips to fill the height of the screen and then you can switch back and forth from widescreen to 4x3 at will - the left and right edges get clipped in 4x3 mode. FYI for those who can benefit from that...

[Mike Truly]

Hmmm... this brings up another desire.

It would be nice if when you know your going to be generating different titles for different versions (one SD and one HD) if there was an automated way of replacing the titles.

For example, you've created an SD version and all your titles are named something like:

title_01
title_02
title_03
etc.

You use File Explorer or other app to copy all the titles and rename the copies to be:

HD_title_01
HD_title_02
HD_title_03
etc.

I would like to have a command in Edius that would auto-replace each SD title with it's HD title counterpart. In a file renamer-type of dialog, you specify the format to be replaced and the format of the replacement files and they are all replaced automatically.

Of course, you still need to edit each HD title to the proper size location but the files are already in place on both the timeline and on disk.

Sounds like one for the wishlist.

Thanks!

[Mike Truly]

Kevin,

Thanks. I would normally produce the project in the method you mention but there is a concern with my clients needing the fullscreen (not letterboxed) 4x3 SD version for their courtroom playback. So for this particular project, I got it in the bag in fullscreen SD 4x3 first for them... then re-produce the project in HD 720p for their possible use instead. The two results are different enough that simply outputting to SD 4x3 letterbox from HD is not good enough in this case. That's why it was done this way.

Thanks again.

[Mike Truly]

Pat,

Thanks. Yes, I will be redoing the titles to fit the HD format.

Thanks again.

[kwshaw1]

...I see I can change the project settings to HD within the SD project itself.

For future reference, you can use this feature to do all the editing in HD and then simply switch the project setting to SD for generating the SD output. You have to check title placements and some effects to make sure they look right after the switch, but other than that there's no need to have two separate versions of the project. Or you can edit in HD, render out to an HQ video file and pull that into a blank SD project to render the SD output. In theory you could output to SD directly from an HD timeline, but there have been encoding issues with that in the past which may not have been fixed yet.