In My Image --> HD remaster?

[mattias]

that's my point. iirc the oiginal transfer was pretty good.

[Scotness]

The initial transfer was fairly good - but I no longer have all of the original tapes (don't ask - inexperience!) -- my reasons for wanting to go to HD are:

- I want to crop it into 16:9 so don't want to do that to a source file that is already only 720x576
- I want it to stand up to projection so need the extra res
- also want to be able to sell it on blu-ray
- I want more resolution for the image stabilisation sotware to work with
- and also more colour depth for extra room in post


I know I'll never make the money back on it - but I want it to look as good as it can - and it's all a bit academic as I can't afford to get it done now, but might be able to by the end of the year

But what we're discussing here is good - I think wherever I get it done I'll have to sit in on it and choose the cropping first - Woods that's an interesting idea about pillarboxing it - but I'd rather do it at 16:9

Anyway we'll see what happens!

Scot

[Scotness]

I have approached a few local places for quotes -- but there's always the ADR to start working on in the mean time

Scot

[mattias]

mostly good reasons, except:

- I want it to stand up to projection so need the extra res

pal resolution works fine for projection, even at theatrical sizes. many mainstream movies have done it even.

- I want more resolution for the image stabilisation sotware to work with

why? if an algorithm has a problem tracking motion in pal it's not going to get any easier if you add pixels. rather the contrary since you'll have more grain. or do you mean to crop without losing too many pixes? you're letterboxing anyway and jitter is vertical, and even if you weren't it's just a few percent, not likely to matter much.

- and also more colour depth for extra room in post

what do you mean by color depth? more bits? that only matters if you want to do major corrections, 8 bit material holds up fine for basic color correction. the difference in gamut, color subsampling, and whatever other differences there might be, is negligible.

just trying to help. :-)

[Scotness]

Yeah Id' say you're right on the first 2 points there Matt - but in the last one what I mean is subsampling 4:4:4 not 4:2:2 or whatever miniDV is.

But anyway I don't have all the original avi's anymore from the original telecine so it doesn't really matter I guess -- if I want to do any new work on it I need a new telecine - so I thought HD rather than SD would be the best choice

Scot

[Uppsala BildTeknik]

...but in the last one what I mean is subsampling 4:4:4 not 4:2:2 or whatever miniDV is.

MiniDV is not even 4:2:2, it is 4:2:0. But if you are going for a 4:4:4 you need to stick to the absolute highest end telecines, and plan for extreme colorcorrections I guess.

Not even the FlashscanHD has 4:4:4, it has 4:2:2 (4:2:2 really should be enough, unless you plan for a filmout or something...).

Aim for Spirits, I guess?

EDIT: By the way, Blu-ray is also 4:2:0, and so are all the TVs available today. So you will just throw away the 4:4:4 in the end (unless doing some extreme corrections in grading).

[Scotness]

Thanks for clarifying Kent

Scot

[mattias]

Yeah Id' say you're right on the first 2 points there Matt - but in the last one what I mean is subsampling 4:4:4 not 4:2:2 or whatever miniDV is.

4:2:0 as kent says, but either way that won't help you the slightest bit. 4:4:4 looks better but it doesn't give you any more color to work with. it's just higher resolution, so it's like saying there's more color depth per se in a high def image. there isn't really. the limiting factor for how much you can color correct an image is the s/n ratio, both of the film, the telecine, and the capture format. an 8 bit image will break from banding and noise long before you could possibly see any effects of the low color sampling. and if you're afraid of the jaggies, just apply a chroma resampler or just blur the channel a bit. most dv codecs are designed for preserving generations rather than give you the best possible image.

here's a trick for you though: i've graded one feature from hdv, a highly compressed 8 bit format, and one from d90 mjpeg, an even more compressed 8 bit format, and both were blown up to 35mm with amazing results. what you do is you add high frequency noise to dither the image to 10/12/16 bits, then apply corrections. some post houses, this is where i got the idea, like to capture hdv using analog component to get this dithering, but a simple "add noise" in final cut pro or after effects works just fine too. if you look at the scopes while doing this you will see how the otherwise very obvious banding disappears as if by magic, and you have a full 10 bit signal to work with (even though the s/n obviously doesn't improve since the noise increases by the same amount). i believe this is what modern audio d/a converters do too in order to avoid quantization noise.

[Scotness]

That's cool Matt - I'll remember that, thanks

Scot