De-interlace and upscale?

farss wrote on 4/27/2008, 7:12 AM
Footage shot on DB camera, ingested using Ppro as it just doesn't work with Vegas but that's another story. So bravo I've now got 10bitYUV into Vegas 8.
Now the hard part. This is steaming hot food. The "steam" bit cost a lot to add to the shoot, they could have saved thousands if they didn't need that damn steam.
Now as they didn't think ahead this was obviously shot in 16:9 SD and it needs to be upscaled to at least 720p25 if not 1080p25. My problem is finding a de-interlacer that'll work before I upscale it. I've tried the Smart De-interlacer and for this task it really is making a mess of it and one that's going to look worse when upscaled and shown on a big screen. The problem is the damn steam and that's all that moves anyway.
Basically it cannot track the stuff properly so what happens is part of it gets field merged and part interpolated and the difference in loss of texture of the steam is immediately obvious even before I upscale it.
I guess I could run this through AE and also pay for a better de-interlacer plug for that but I'm left wondering if:

a) Anyone got any better ideas without going down the AE path.
b) Even if I do have I set an impossible task.
c) What the heck, take a still frame where there's no steam and composite in steam in HD after I upscale.
Bob.

Comments

Coursedesign wrote on 4/27/2008, 8:05 AM
Upscaling a still frame and composite in steam while in HD should generate the best quality, but which steam?

I found it very difficult to shoot practical steam and make it look good enough for food.

Trapcode Particular would be my choice for the steam, but for top quality it would take some tweaking (as it can't just look good, it has to look appetizing too).

For deinterlacing, my top choice is FieldsKit Deinterlacer (download $85.00 at toolfarm.com or $89.95 from RevisionFX).

It has all the automatic and semiautomatic features, as well as key manual controls.

See the link above and click on "Features":

8 and 16 bits per channel processing.

The last two features (selective deinterlacing and vertical blur) should be instrumental for you.

I would try this first on the whole clip, it may even make the steam look good.

If that looks nearly good enough but not quite, you could retime the clip to half speed to create new intermediate frames using Optical Flow (in AE CS3), and see if the generated frames look better than the original.

There are many ways to skin this cat!

fldave wrote on 4/27/2008, 9:39 AM
This method has been pretty good, you might give it a try. Virtual Dub with deinterlacing/unfold then resizing with Lancos3, then re-folding the fields back again.

http://www.sonycreativesoftware.com/forums/ShowMessage.asp?ForumID=4&MessageID=354140
Coursedesign wrote on 4/27/2008, 10:01 AM
...and regardless of the resizing algorithm used, it makes a big difference to scale in small steps, as suggested by BJ_M in that 2005 (but still current) thread.

That was the most valuable thing I learned from B_JM (aka BJ_M) in this forum, with Laurence's chain for resizing being also an MVP contribution!

farss wrote on 4/27/2008, 2:02 PM
Thanks,
some very valuable input there. What's also probably compounding the problem is this was shot with a very shallow DOF so the steam wafts in and out of focus.

And oh yes, you don't have to look too closely to realise that the steam isn't coming from the food but from underneath it. They used what seems to be sintered magnesium pellets to create the steam.

Bob.
farss wrote on 4/29/2008, 6:10 AM
Took a bit of head scratching but looks like I've cracked it.

First problem was the Smart De-interlacer wasn't getting a fair shake as the field order going into was wrong. The 10bitYUV is not PAL DV, it's PAL Standard i.e. field order is reversed. Once I got the project sorted then I could tweak the de-interlacer and render out perfect 8bitYUV.

Howevere trying to directly upscale to 1080p in the same project just refused to work. The project needs to be interlaced otherwise Vegas will de-interlace itself before the de-interlacer and for some reason I was still getting interlace going into the scaler, yuck and big globs of it too. Tried the triangle thingy both ways but no joy.

I could have render to 25p 8bit YUV but I've already eaten up 100GB just capturing one and a bit tapes at 10bit YUV. So, nesting to the rescue. One project outputs the de-interlaced SD into a parent project progressive project and that renders out to 25p HQ MXF. And it don't look half bad either. It is quite hard to pick it wasn't shot in HD. The 4:2:2 source really helps. Once the graphics are composited at full HD it'll fool anyone outside of this forum :)

Hope this helps someone else who needs to make SD look like HD.

Bob.
DJPadre wrote on 4/29/2008, 11:14 AM
Now the hard part. This is steaming hot food. The "steam" bit cost a lot to add to the shoot, they could have saved thousands if they didn't need that damn steam.

((Coulda called me mate, i coulda added it with Combustion or PI for abotu a grand or so... depending on the shot of course.. ))

Now as they didn't think ahead this was obviously shot in 16:9 SD and it needs to be upscaled to at least 720p25 if not 1080p25.

((Hmmm.. stick to 720, but if going up to 1080, throw it on an AXIO system. Contact NewMagic, tell em pete sent you, Mark will send you to a studio who use Axio and jsut pay them to transfer to DVCPRoHD100, or Cineform even.. ))

My problem is finding a de-interlacer that'll work before I upscale it.

((Magic Bullet... theyre upscaler is the best ive seen. Slow as buggery, but works a treat.. even smoothes out DV/DB aliasing)

I've tried the Smart De-interlacer and for this task it really is making a mess of it and one that's going to look worse when upscaled and shown on a big screen. The problem is the damn steam and that's all that moves anyway.

((LOL, i know sorry mate, cant help but laugh coz i know how corp jobs cn really fekk up ur week... lol if u need steam, drop me a line mate, we can add some as we go along, or i can crate some black mattes you can overlay. Let me know if i can help))

Basically it cannot track the stuff properly so what happens is part of it gets field merged and part interpolated and the difference in loss of texture of the steam is immediately obvious even before I upscale it.

((Yup, thats why i dont use smartdeinterlacer anymore.. motion jsut sucks bad.. that and the fact that any config ive treid jsut fails dismally.. ))

I guess I could run this through AE and also pay for a better de-interlacer plug for that but I'm left wondering if:

((Dont bother with AE, too slow. PI is at least realtime. let me know if you want the SE.. I dont know what codecs SE can handle though.. ))

a) Anyone got any better ideas without going down the AE path.

((PI3 use the inbuilt compositor, or create some masks and resuse them by flipping and warping the frames.. ))

b) Even if I do have I set an impossible task.

((No, just tedious and bloody annying.. I still reckon AXIO is your best option.. maybe even an RTx2 but AXIO works better with these bitrates))

c) What the heck, take a still frame where there's no steam and composite in steam in HD after I upscale.

((Possible.. there are plenty of scaling plugins for Photoshop... but a still LOOKS like a still.. it wont look the same.. ))

Sorry cant help any more.. this is all i can think of at 4.13am...
DJPadre wrote on 4/29/2008, 11:24 AM
"And oh yes, you don't have to look too closely to realise that the steam isn't coming from the food but from underneath it. They used what seems to be sintered magnesium pellets to create the steam."

With the way technology has gone.. i really dont understand why people still insist on doing it the hard way...

a quick tweak of an emitter, and a realtime render woudl have sorted out the issue..
I mean considering how much this shoot would have cost them to set up and execuate in the first place, its just baffling..
farss wrote on 4/29/2008, 2:35 PM
Why do it the hard way?
Because it's what people know.

Why do these people still get the work?
It's based on what they've done, not what they could do.


Well it only took 3.5 hours to process 40mins of footage. That's on a 2.4GHz core duo and coming from a firewire drive. Can't complain about that! The upscale looks pretty good. Starting from 4:2:2 with less compression than DV no doubt played a part in that. Also there's not a lot of fine detail in the frame and most of the frame is out of focus due to the shallow DOF.

Bob.
DJPadre wrote on 4/29/2008, 2:55 PM
curious, did u sharpen this material on the upscale? whats the noise and aliasing like?
farss wrote on 4/29/2008, 3:35 PM
No sharpening applied. Noise and aliasing very minimal. Even though SD this was shot on a DB camera with serious optics, it was ingested with Ppro as 10bit 4:2:2. The 10 bit thing was probably just a waste of disk space, could have used 8bit but I wasn't certain if I was going to do any grading before the upscale. Keep in mind too that the rest of the final frames will be mostly graphics which will all be done in HD. That's the trick.

I suspect trying the same thing with DV wouldn't have been so good. But here's the thing and don't laugh. The demo job that I did that got me the job I didn't have the camera tapes, just a SD DVD. I pulled the footage from that, did a very dirty upscale and replaced all the graphics in HD. Despite the measurabators like me the eye seems to judge image quality by the best part of the frame, in this case the graphics.

This is pretty much in line with what I hear from the broadcast people. SD 16:9 DB is still viable, it survives upscaling well enough for OTA HD ENG. Of course shooting HD in the first place on something of EX1 or better quality is way more viable.

Bob.