Not open old wounds, but does supersampling help in uprezzing to HD. I just went over the old threads, saw a lot of insults and name calling, but still don't know for sure. If it does, what settings should I use?

Also, isn't supersampling only work in conjunction with motion blur? It doesn't make sense to be sharpening and blurring at the same time, but then again I've seen stranger things that work!

Does anyone have an actual detailed workflow for uprezzing to HD? Id be interested in trying it with some material.

Supersampling benefits the frame if you're shifting framerates, ie; going from 60i to 23.978 fps or changing speed. It won't benefit spatial resolution if things don't change in the reesolution of the frame. When changing pixel aspect it also shows benefit, which apparently Sonisfear is seeing.

There is one in the (hopefully soon) forthcoming Vegas 6 book, and B_JM has written some info here on the Sony and DMN sites about uprezzing in small increments.

Does supersampling help going from SD 60i to HD 30p?

It seems to me like a supersampling value of 2 and a minimum motion blur might make use of the fields that would normally be thrown away as a little motion blur and smooth out some edges that might otherwise look jagged.

I have done experiments in the past where I could see no benefit to supersampling, but then again, I only recently saw one of my projects blown up on a 60 inch screen for the first time. I saw all sorts of focus problems and artifacts that I had never seen before. I have no doubt that even the slightest improvement that supersampling may offer would be very obvious on one of these big screens.

DSE, so you mean that supersampling can improve the quality when transforming standard 4:3 to 16:9 video (and the other way around)? Which settings do you recommend? (I live in pal-land.)

Joran

I am NOT Spot but as I said in the other thread on the topic in my case supersample did make a noticable change. I used a setting of between 2 and 4. I ran some tests on the same footage and from say 4 to 8 I couldn't see a change. From 2 to 4 I could, but keep in mind it depends on what you are doing. going 4:3 > 16:9 *and* 60i > 24p you will see more of a change than, say, 16:9 60i > 16:9 24p.

In your case being in PAL land you already are close to the 24p so supersample may not matter much for the frame rate, but for the 4:3 > 16:9 upsample it should work. Take a short part of footage and try it at 2, 4 and 6 and compare.

Thanks filmy.
I'll do some tests.
Joran

How much motion blur did you add?

>>> How much motion blur did you add?<<<

As a general rule I bypass it. So the direct answer would be: "none"

It is my understanding that the whole point of supersampling is to add a little motion blur generated from the fields you would otherwise be throwing away. If you set motion blur to none, as far as I know, there is absolutely no reason to even bother with supersampling.

I just ran a bunch of test renders on a 60i source project. Sharpening of around 75% works well on uprezzing. To my eyes though supersampling and motion blur take away more than they add though. Once I add the least little bit of supersampling, I see interlace artifacts show up on the blowup. Footage that was nicely deinterlaced shows wavey interlace artifacts again. Add even the smallest motion blur to the situation and it looks even worse. It's bad enough on single shots, but the supersampling and motion blurs wreak absolute havok on crossfades. I'm of the opinion now that supersampling is only useful for adding subtle motion blur to generated animations and nothing else.

On the positive side, I'm finding that 60i cropped and uprezzed to 1440 x 720 doesn't look half bad! When you add the benefit of the higher resolution titles and photo animations, it is well worth doing for a documentary style project.

Try setting your properties to interpolate the fields and/or if you can try using 30p footage.

Well Vegas uprezzes 60i SD to 30p HD just fine, deinterlacing as it goes. I checked single frames uprezzed this way with what I am able to do in Photozoom Pro and the results were amazingly close. Once I turn supersampling on however, the situation changes and partial interlace artifacts start turning up regardless of properties and deinterlace settings. This starts happening with a supersampling rate of 2, and higher numbers look exactly the same as 2. It kind of makes sense when you think about it. Adding motion blur just seems to blur these newly generated interlace artifacts.

As long as I avoid supersampling and motion blur however, I can get some pretty good uprezzing. High sharpen amounts seem to help a lot as well. Sharpen amounts that would be much too extreme without an enlarge look quite subtle when the footage is being blown up at the same time.

>The Sharpen plug works really well at 70-90% when upconverting to 720p.

I've always been able to better the sharpen tool with the convolution filter->sharpen->tweek, but I've never worked on HD. Perhaps you could try it out:

1) Add the convolution filter, then select the sharpen setting from the drop down.
2) Its always way too much, so increase the number in the middle of the 3x3 fields. The higher the number, the less the effect.
3) For more control, duplicate the track and put the convolution filter sharpen filter on the top track, then adjust its opacity.

My eyes track right to the halos around the edges now, so I cannot stand the sharpen filter. With the convolution filter and the extra controls, I can add a signficant amount of sharpen without the result screaming SHARPENED! :-) Perhaps it could do well at HD as well.