SD clips to match HDV project

CClub wrote on 8/13/2008, 6:07 AM
I know there have been some posts on this in the past... just wanted to make sure I had the most current thought on rendering SD into HDV.

I've been working for about a year and a half on a documentary on a Holocaust survivor. After about a year of planning schedules, one of the scenes I was finally able to tape was this man/wife getting together for a meal and discussion with his children and grandchildren. I had hired a 3rd cameraman who had a Canon XL-H1, and he asked me at the beginning if he should shoot in 16:9. Not being familiar with the camera I didn't know that there was a switch giving him the options of "SD, 16:9, or HD." My other two camera are HDV, so I assumed (wrong on my part, I know) that he was asking did I want him to tape in HDV 16:9 or HDV 4:3. But he chose the 16:9 option out of the 3, but it's not HDV.

So I have this amazing gathering of a Holocaust survivor with his two generations after him, but the only camera with footage of his granddaughters is in SD. Now the whole remainder of the documentary is HDV. What would be the best method to up-rez that particular footage: 1) just import it into the veg and when it's rendered, allow the render setting to up-rez it into 1440 x 1080, 2) when I capture the footage via Cineform HD-Link, capture it as HDV? Or is there another option I'm not aware of?

Comments

farss wrote on 8/13/2008, 7:05 AM
I'd have some doubts about 2) even working and wouldn't achieve anything much anyways.

What I've done to uprez is to just render from SD to a HD codec so I have a new master. Need to do this at Best obviously. In my case I was going from 10bit YUV shot on an expensive 2/3" camera with lens to match. Results don't look too shabby at all and the subject matter (food) is devoid of much fine detail to give the game away and it's composited into a screen that's full of real HD graphics that are tack sharp which helps to pull it off.

The only possibly better tool for uprez is Topaz, was on special at Digital Juice. Only runs in After Affects. I've held back parting with my money because although I've been following the technology it uses since it started out as a thesis paper the results are not that spectacularly better than you get with type of scaling that Vegas does anyway. Then again if you really need to wrangle as much out of your SD as money can buy it might be a good investment.

Bob.