DVCPRO50 480i upscaling to 1080p60

Have an old camera archive of DVCPRO50 720x480 29i footage, 16:9, that I need to run through Compressor from FCPX to deliver to a client. I would simply spit out a 480i file for them, but knowing most people, it would end up on air being torn apart by zipper monsters. On the basic resizing controls in Compressor settings, what would be the best for accomplishing this...I am currently playing with Lanczos3 and Best (Motion Compensated) with the other options disabled.

Paul

1080 P60. Is it being broadcasted or stream over the internet?

I can see old episodes of the Golden Girls on different networks. Sometimes I see cropping sometime I see resizing. In the end every other one network has rabbit fur as opposed to hair follicles. Some networks are horrible. There is only so much you can do with VHS. With DVC PRO DV-50 you should easily be able to have an end result where hair looks like hair as opposed to rabbit fur. The video might be worth watching. You can skip towards the end.

Will be destined for probably 1080i broadcast or Netflix docushow streaming. The best results I can get just converting to SD h264 are tossing the DVCPRO50 file into Handbrake and selecting Decomb/Bob option, the jaggeds and interlacing artifacts sort of go away. I've got a few DVD rips on my PC, and playing them back they almost look HD quality, but I cannot get my DVCPRO50 stuff to look in any way close to that, it always looks like VHS when spit out of FCPX or Compressor. I have tried selecting deinterlace in FCCPX, but doesn;t help the jaggies. I'll just have to give a DVCPRO50 copy to them if I can;t figure a way to get a clean 1080p production worthy file out of my system.

I've also got a DVCPRO Firewire injest, DV AVI format, that Apple simply refuses to recognize at all.

Paul

Maybe I am being too critical. Here is a straight DVCPRO50 clip on a 1080p60 FCPX timeline with deinterlace checkbox enabled. Does this look "OK"? Macbook Pro screens are difficult to evaluate details as they have thaty weird scaling going on at all times.

This clip is from the DVCPRO50 archive, and is a good "torture test" clip for interlacing artifacts.

Looking at Interlaced video on a computer screen is never a good idea. That being said FCPX does not work that great with the Intensity Shuttle (Neither does DR). Your video does not look horrible but you should be able to get a better result with a DVC PRO video file. Don't use Hand Brake or any other software. Try dropping the native DVC PRO video file in 1080 P60 timeline and do not select de-interlace.

For Broadcast drop the DVC Pro video files in a 1080i timeline. Render to 1080i. It should look fine on broadcast compliant hardware. I use Premiere Pro as my main editing system so I cannot be sure what the end result with FCPX will be.

DVC PRO video files should scale up full screen really good. That being said don't be afraid to manually scale the video. With my Intensity Shuttle I can tell exactly when the hair follicles turn into rabbit fur.

Do you have the native interlaced DVC Pro video file? I would love to see what results I can get.

Compressor with the settings you mentioned is your best bet, it'll do a better job than FCPX.

Her is an almost RAW copy of the clip, as imported into FCPX library, not optimized, so it's still DVCPRO50 480i wraped in mov. I can get the raw P2 file from my home later if needed

drive.google.com/open?id=1Nj7TvPmWWPfNJ3xYwKTZePitjPWWgCRy

I clicked on the link and seen the video playing. The video that was playing cannot be the native DVCPRO video file. It was way to compressed to be DVCPRO. I would need the native file from the camera. If you have the camera you could just record and post a real quick 15 to 20 second long clip and I will see if can get a better result.

Well, you have to download it, did it give an option? It's a Google Drive file, so Google is part of YouTube so it will generate a YouTube video for playback over the interweb unless you download. The download button should appear in the upper right of the window.

Paul

I will download it. Thanks.

I think my end result is about the same as yours. I can zoom out Hi-8 more than I can the DVCPRO. I think the fact that it is 16:9 vs 4:3 makes the pixels get stretched out more. It is also super dark. That being said the first clip is playing at 100% the second clip is 224%.

I am not sure if the P2 file would make a difference or not. That being said if you output to Blu-ray it will probably look a lot better because YouTube always makes things a little bit worse.

I'm guessing that DVD's mostly start out as much higher resolution...my SPX800 P2 camera had a 30p mode, but in that mode you could not drop shutter to 1/30 or use the digital extender, so unfortunately, I got stuck with interlaced raw for that. I guess I will ship a 1080p60 and offer the raw P2 clip to see if they would be happier dealing with the raw SD interlaced material. BTW, I also tried spitting out a 4K to downsample back to 1080p, but results looked the same as straight SD to HD.

Thanks for your help.

Paul

You are welcome.

I am always interested in trying new codecs.

So I found a way to get the footage to look "nice" and clean for HD output. I had to set the project timeline in FCPX to 720x480 29.97p...the clips on inspector insist they were shot at 29.97p, which is an option on the SPX800 camera they were shot on, so makes sense. From there, they were sent to Compressor, which is where I select my final output resolution of 1080p29.97p. I selected Anti-Alias (best) resizing filter, and checked off adaptive details and dithering, then simply slid the anti-alias and detail sliders to max. This got rid of most of the jaggies, and makes the output look respectable for SD.

Being 480p, there was no way to test 59.94p timeline, as FCPX doesn't even offer a 720x480 59.94p custom option that will allow the framign to be correct, the result is always letterbox. and clipped sides.

Paul