Here’s a really nice look at the Apple ProRes codec that we are now adapting as our own. According to Gary Adcock’s tests, there are very few instances where using the HQ version is necessary. Click here to read his entire post. Bottom line… great looking video at very small data sizes.
Great thing about the blogworld is whenever you’re thinking about writing a post, chances are someone has already written about what you’re thinking, especially in this production/post-production world.
I was working on a HD project the other day where I had 4 stock shots from Getty. 1 of the shots was SD so of course I was confronted with that issue of having to upconvert the SD shot to HD. I tried every which way to do it.
1. Compressor
2. Magic Bullet Instant HD in Final Cut Pro
3. Magic Bullet Instant HD in After Effects
4. Kona 3 Hardware.
Not having used Instant HD I had high hopes that this could be done in software. While the process of using the plug-in isn’t very intuitive, it did give decent results but I noticed interlace issues in both Final Cut and After Effects. With Instant HD you’re meant to work with progressive footage only and as the file I was upconverting was downloaded from Getty in the Photo JPEG codec, I assumed it was already de-interlaced. Compressor was having the same issues as Instant HD. It wasn’t a frame rate issue, the software conversion just couldn’t give me decent frame blending on the slight panning motion in the shot. So last but not least was the Kona 3. Since the shot was originally a download, I had to output the shot to Digital Betacam first then capture using the Kona 3 hardware upconversion. I brought it in 2 ways, once with the image zoomed to fill the 16:9 frame and once with pillar bars left and right. I ended up using the zoomed version and when edited into the final sequence, it played great with the other 3 HD shots.
So this all leads me to this… Shane Ross on Creative Cow goes into great depth about using the Kona 3 to do your upconversions for you. Thanks Shane and now I know whenvever I’m given the challenge of upconverting SD to HD, I’ll always think of hardware first. If you’re lucky enough to have a Kona 3 in your workflow Shane’s article is a must read for hardware upconversion.
