best way to rescale 720-Footage to 1080?

[Thomas Nibler]

Hey everybody!

i got a clip filmed in 720 (50p) wich i now need to scale up to 1080.
Of course i could simply use the "Scale"-Setting in Premiere/After-Effects, but are there any plugins, wich give better results/sharper images?

thanks for tipps! :-)

[Paul DeBaets]

I have had great success with Cineform codec, now part of GoPro. You can download a trial
version for a few weeks & try for yourself. It will appear as a option in Media Encoder, choose .avi or .mov for your final output. Works great for me.

[Al Bergstein]

Yes, I just ran into this as well, needing to add a 720 clip to a 1080 workflow. The 720 was really macroblocking when viewed on a large monitor (42"). I ran it through Cineform out to 4:2:2 and it really helped. At the end I then rendered the whole project to Avid's DNxHD codec and reran it through Handbrake to render it to 720. Results were startlingly better. All macroblocking has vanished from the 720 footage. Even the 1080p footage that was 4:2:2 and 4:2:0 Canon came out looking better than when I rendered directly from the Adobe world. Not saying it was bad, but it just looked cleaner and sharp to my eyes.

[Thomas Nibler]

Thanks for your response!

I downloaded and installed the GoPro Studio and now "GoPro-CineForm HD/4K/3D" is available as video-codec. Can i simply convert the file I want to rescale in Adobe Media Encoder and set the output-settings like this?

(1920x1080, Square Pixels, 25fps, Maximum Depth; i left the "Codec Settings" the way they were - everything unchecked)

[Thomas Nibler]

When I compared the results, it seems to me that the GoPro-Codec just brightens and sharpens the image a bit.
When I scale the 720p Footage to 150% in After-Effects, the GoPro-Codec seems much better. But when I apply the "Unsharp Mask"-Effect, i get very similar results. I'd even prefer the "After-Effects + Unsharp Mask"-Method over the GoPro-Conversion, because i got more controll over the sharpening Process and the result of the GoPro-Codec seem a litte more "digital" und "sharpend".

Here are some example-Pictures of a crime movie I'm working on.

[Alister Chapman]

DaVinci Resolve has very good quality re-sizing processes as well as the ability to adjust the sharpness scaling. Plus it's free!

[Andrew Smith]

I'm a bit worried about the footage. He doesn't look very dead to me. Or ... way too happy for a dead person.

Just saying. :-P

Andrew

[Thomas Nibler]

Originally Posted by Andrew Smith

He doesn't look very dead to me. Or ... way too happy for a dead person

Thats why we have the miraculous wonders of postproduction... better? ;)

(jeah, i know he doesnt really look dead... its kind of a parody anyways)

[Andrew Smith]

Much better now. :-)

BTW, the Matrox MXO2 has a very good hardware upscaling/downscaling engine in it. You could always play the footage through and capture from the HDMI output (to a Ninja or something) and get your 1080 version of the footage that way.

Andrew