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BEST METHOD TO UPRES FOOTAGE


omar robles

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So I just bought a calibrated LG CX TV and watching a Roger Deakins film Goldfinch made me envious of the visuals.  I realize I don't have the resources that Deakins had in that film but I would love to be as in the ball park to those images.  I am shooting with the Arri Alexa classic on Sony PL lenses and grading in Davinci.  The only thing I have yet to fully dabble in is doing an up res.  On the Alexa I am shooting arri raw 2.8k and I am looking at the best way to up res it to a slightly sharper cleaner image.  Since I dont own the full version of Davinci I haven't been able to use Super scale option.   Is this the best method to achieve a higher res look?

Thanks 

O.R

 

 

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I mean what goes in is what goes out. You can't magically make more resolution from what your source file is. 

Resolves upresing is good, but its not going to make your 2.8k look any better. 

Where a great trick for streaming online is to present a 4k file, it's only because the 1080p streams are so low quality comparatively. So a lot of people simply edit in a 4k timeline and upres everything to make it look better for web streaming. 

I haven't seen Goldfinch, but I have seen most of Deakins other digital and film work, I'm a big fan. His framing and lighting is so great, plus he has a great crew, I think that's the big trick. The Alexa helps of course, but the magic is the man and his crew, rather than simply the piece of hardware. 

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7 hours ago, Raymond Zananiri said:

Topaz Labs has a very good product for that:

https://www.topazlabs.com/

Yea, its just a toy. We've done extensive testing with it and never found it to do much but add a sharpen mask. Nearly all of their tests are fake as well, including the old film footage that was miraculously converted to 4k! Truth is, that footage was scanned at very high resolution and then knocked down to 4k for release. If you actually use their software on old material, it will screw it all up and make it totally unwatchable. 

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You just have to try things to see how they look. It is not that upscaling makes things magically better. It is upscaling can smooth things out some. Or give the specs required without losing too much quality. As far as smoothing things out. Since you lose res when you upscale , it may smooth out pixilation problems associated with low res. (to a small degree.) Similar to descreening a halftone image. All the descreening does is blur things.

To Upscale or not upscale? – Daniel D. Teoli Jr. Archival Collection (wordpress.com)

They had a thread here awhile back about upscaling to fool the client. How it is unethical. I've had some artists do that to me. They provide a small size of art or animation and I ask for higher res and they upscale it. Does me no good. 

Here is a piece I upscaled. Yale would not give me the hi res version. There was no hi res versions on the web unless you had a connection. So I upscaled a few hundred % and it sill looks pretty good. I also sharpened and contrast graded. That made a big dif. Of course, the original was relatively low res. So you can only magnify upscaled version so much. But same thing with original...low res is low res.

A Nightclub Map Of Harlem E. Simms Campbell D.D.Teoli Jr. A.C. : Daniel D. Teoli Jr. Archival Collection as archivist : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive

Here is a very rare piece. The original was very low res, maybe 200kb. I upscaled it. It looks OK, but if you magnify it is poor. But no other option, I couldn't afford the original. I upscaled to 1.3mb. Why? Didn't harm it. The original was crap if you magnify. Contrast grading and sharpening made it look doable at normal viewing size. Plus it is kinda a loss leader when someone does a Google image search. My image comes out on top due to the 'hi res.' 

Ruth Snyder Electrocution Daily News Jan 14,1928 D.D.Teoli Jr. A.C. : D.D. Teoli Jr. Archival Collection : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive

OP, like I said, just try stuff. Either it looks good or not. I'm still waiting for the magic bullet software. There is probably no one in the world that needs a magic upscaling software than me.

Edited by Daniel D. Teoli Jr.
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