Upscaling Software Comparison

"Integrating DV Source Footage into HDV Projects, Part 2" by Jan Ozer

Need to incorporate some standard-def footage into a high-def project? Then check out this article. It compares results of upscaling standard def footage to HD with 5 different packages, including FCP. The long and short of it is that it looks like spending $99 on Red Giant Software's Instant HD provides some nice improvements over the built-in scaling of FCP and Premiere Pro.

The article has some very handy comparison shots of the results from different packages. Click on the image with this post to see a larger view of a comparison of Instant HD and FCP. The image shows at the top, Instant HD, and below it, FCP. The handy red circles gives you points of comparison. Instant HD doesn't help with every shot though, and it doesn't create miracles, i.e., make your SD look as sharp as if it was actually shot in HD.

Not included in the comparison is a workflow mentioned by the author in another article that I posted about earlier--using Compressor. I think a good deinterlace from Compressor would have helped with some of the jaggies that showed up in all of the FCP examples of up-rezing. On the other hand, Compressor's good deinterlacing is very slow and the workflow is more complicated than just popping on a filter, like Instant HD, right in Final Cut.

The clear winner in the comparison, Algolith by AlgoSuite, is no longer available. The company has decided to discontinue the software to focus on dedicated hardware that does real-time processing. Not tested in this article is hardware-based upscaling like the AJA Kona 3 does or the Terranex.