SD- HD Upconversion

Director_by_nature

Director_by_nature

Ok, Its time i told you, I have never shot in HD before, unless you count the time I worked as Cameraman on an HD stduent film?

However, my upcoming film Im wanting to shot in HD, but Dont have the time nor money to do it. This Panasonic SDX-900 camera claims that you can run it through a "Up-conversion" Process to HD. I dont know how much I want to think thats true or not. I know it wont get me HD quality, but will it help the resolution or anything any?

Thanks,
Landon
 
There is one option for an "upconversion" but I am not sure it will work yet:

Buy LizardTech's "Genuine Fractals" plugin for Photoshop. Export the video to photoshop and then run a batch encode -> render.....

Still don't know if it would work but it could in theory (though it would probably take _forever_ unless you have more processing power than you desktop computer). Theoretically you could then scale the entire thing up to 600% without loss of quality.
 
When you shoot on SD, the information is encoded within the confines of the SD specs. No matter how good the upconversion program is, you can’t create what’s not there because you never recorded it in the first place. It will never look as good as shooting in HD. Just look at how poor a SD broadcast looks on a HD set. It’ll probably look better than that, but it won’t look as good as something shot on SD. The lines of resolution just aren’t there so the program has to extrapolate to create what is missing. This isn’t an exact science and it may create stuff that it’s not supposed to; so I predict you could get some serious artifact problems depending on the composition of the picture. But I’ve never done this, so I don’t know for sure. I’d do some test shots and see.
 
Im looking for somthing like the IMAX DMR process... where they can run 25mm films through a scanner, Save the image as a HIGH res image, then Transfer it to 65mm IMAX film with VERY little lose of Quality. Im looking for somthing like this it through.

I contacted IMAX, and as expected, they are stuck up, and refuse to allow me to use there DMR Process.
 
Just curious, but how would you use their DMR process anyway? It's for film, yes? And you are shooting SD video?

Like film8ker said, when you blow the image up you won't be able to suddenly find details in the image that were not there originally so SD will never look like HD. What is theoretically possible, that I suggested, merely allows you to increase the resolution (not the amount of information contained therein!) by 600% so you could play it on a large screen without it going fuzzy or pixilated.
 
Thats the point. I know you cant get more than what you captures... I intend to blow to film up to film, And I want it to look its best on the big screen.

And DMR is NOT just for film, Star wars ep.2 shot Video, and was ran through it...

Landon
 
Ok, then how did my local theater show it? Its not equipe with Digital Projection? I know it was. It had to have been for the reason that most theaters in the US dont have a good enough Digital Projector to Transmit it.
And I know IMAX dont have a Digital Projects to project it. Yes, It was transfered to both IMAX and 35mm film for theaters. It had to have been.

This link will prove it: http://www.starwars.com/episode-ii/feature/20021011/
 
I quote from that site:

"The majority of Star Wars fans saw Episode II in a 35mm film format. This means that each film frame is 35 millimeters across"

"In less than a month, select IMAX ® theaters across North America will play Star Wars: Episode II Attack of the Clones in its largest format ever. This is not just a re-projection of the standard-sized 35-mm film print onto a larger screen; through the revolutionary IMAX DMR ™ process, the movie has been re-mastered and the image enlarged to occupy up to eight stories of screen and the sound enhanced to include 12,000 watts of uncompressed sound. "
 
Well, on the DVD Goerge mentions, repeatedly, that the film was shot digital and remained digital...and never changed format, never was printed to film, etc....then again, he could have been speaking only of the movie as seen on the DVD.
 
Of course it was transferred to film for distribution, but it was shot, edited, and mastered on DV using a Sony HD prototype. But you have to understand the camera he used had a higher resolution than HDTV. It was intended as a film replacement camera, and I think it did a pretty good job. Add to that the multimillion dollar empire - Skywalker Ranch and some of the most technically skilled people in the world, and it looks great on film. What’s more applicable for people like us who don’t have more money than your average small nation is to look at 28 Days Later. I’ve been told that was shot on an XL1s, edited and mastered on DV, and then transferred to film for distribution. That’s technology you and I can get our hands on.
 
My understanding is that Episode II was shot on Sony HD 24p. When it was released into theaters, there might have been only 10-20 digital screens nationwide (now I think that there are 10 or more just in NYC!), so yes, it was printed to 35mm for release.

But, bear in mind that it started out as HD, not as SD (or DV, for that matter).

Upconverting well shot SD or DV to HD will not look as good as well shot HD, but it shouldn't look bad, either.
 
I'm not sure how to quote, So I'll use ".

"the camera he used had a higher resolution than HDTV"
No, he used Panavision Modified Sony HDW-F900 Cinealta Cameras. You can rent the same cameras from Panavision for about $1,300 a day.

"That’s technology you and I can get our hands on."
We can get our hands on this Technology already. As I said, you can rent the camera from Panavision for not a whole lot more than the cost to rent a Basic HDW-F900 Camera.

Sony or anyone is yet to invent a camera with more pixels than the HDW-F900, with 2.2 Million it is the Highest amount of pixels so fare. and the 2.2 Million Pixels is even in the standard camera.

I have heard Sony is working on a Prototype Camera in which they may deliver to Lucas on the next Star Wars film though.

The only thing different about the HDW's that Lucas used, and the ones we use, are the fact that Panavision modified them to accept there series of Primo-Digital Lenses, and also made changes in the body desgin to be more helpfull to film makers.

Hi Def Dude
 
I have heard Sony is working on a Prototype Camera in which they may deliver to Lucas on the next Star Wars film though. [/quote said:
They used a new prototype 950 series with Fujinon lenses instead of Panavision. Star Wars III also recorded to the hard drive UNCOMPRESSED 4:4:4 to maintain as much resolution as possible.


Star Wars Episode II was shot on HD, edited in HD, and released both on 35mm print from HD transfer, IMAX from HD remasters (in a very edited format, about 20 minutes cut), and also released in HD to theatres with DLP projection.

If you ever saw the 35mm prints and compared to the DLP projection it was a HUGE difference in sharpness and colour. Similarly several pritns of ONCE UPON A TIME IN MEXICO, also shot HD looked horrible in colour and picture from the 35mm print from HD, but the DVD and other film prints of the same movie looked great.

If you shoot Mini DV and then blow up to 35mm film or even HD, the image quality will not get better. Look at a JPG picture and use a program to ZOOM in on it versus an uncompressed BMP picture that's even bigger to begin with. The JPG will have soft edges and lose detail the bigger it gets whereas the BMP will stay sharper longer before you see the pixels and the detail lost.
Click to expand...
 
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