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How much can I reasonably scale footage?

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How much can I reasonably scale footage?

Postby Briantho » Wed Apr 11, 2012 2:35 pm

My delivered product is to be a DVD.

I recorded a string quartet (so the action, as such, is fairly calm) using four HD camcorders with each recording at 1920 x 1080.

Three of the camcorders were static/unattended and set to cover different angles. It occurred to me that when editing (using multi-cam), to make these angles more interesting I could keyframe slow zoom ins and outs whenever I switch to one of them. I've only tried scaling between 100% to 115% so far and I'm very pleased with the result - no discernible pixilating.

Then I had another thought and I created a sequence set at 1280 x 720 into which I dragged the clips. I scaled all those down to 66.67% so that the frames are perfectly filled and I've tried key framing all the way from 66.67% up to 120% and the results, when played on an average set top box, seem just fine. Again no discernible pixilation.

I'm quite excited about the possibilities for my static camcorder angles as this will begin to look as if I have people actually working them BUT can it be so simple? Is there something I'm overlooking?
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Re: How much can I reasonably scale footage?

Postby Dave McElderry » Wed Apr 11, 2012 2:49 pm

Seems to me that it's basically the same process as a pan and zoom on a still. As for how much, well I guess that depends on the quality of the original and how discerning your eye. If it looks good to you then go for it. I've done the same thing even with SD video and found that I can get away with quite a bit of zoom.
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Re: How much can I reasonably scale footage?

Postby Briantho » Wed Apr 11, 2012 3:43 pm

"and found that I can get away with quite a bit of zoom"

As a point of interest and off the top of your head, can you recall roughly what sort of percentage/whatever that might have been..? I'll certainly experiment further to find what the upper tolerable limit might be and as long as a pan or zoom is taking place then that figure, thanks to the movement, will be higher than simply zooming in and 'holding' the image. In parallel with all this I'm kicking myself for not having thought of this before! OK, it's going to be a lot more work setting up key framing for many of the clips coming from the static camcorders but the results so far make it all worthwhile and infinitely cheaper and more reliable than having others behind my camcorders during the shoot.
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Re: How much can I reasonably scale footage?

Postby Dave McElderry » Wed Apr 11, 2012 4:01 pm

Briantho wrote:"and found that I can get away with quite a bit of zoom"

As a point of interest and off the top of your head, can you recall roughly what sort of percentage/whatever that might have been..?


Sorry, no. I don't think I was worrying about percentages. I just looked at the output fullscreen and decided if I liked it or not. If it was acceptable I went on. It is a great technique for fooling the audience though.
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Re: How much can I reasonably scale footage?

Postby Briantho » Wed Apr 11, 2012 4:08 pm

"It is a great technique for fooling the audience though." I can hardly wait - next theatre gig in a couple of weeks!
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Re: How much can I reasonably scale footage?

Postby Chuck Engels » Wed Apr 11, 2012 4:30 pm

I would recommend adding all of your footage to a 720p project.
Do not scale to frame size and the video will already be large for that project setting.
You can turn on the scale to frame size if you want most of the footage to fill the 720 screen and uncheck the ones that you want to be larger than that.

You can then decrease the size of the video to bring it down to 720 size or keep it at 1080.
You can adjust it anywhere in between without worrying about scaling up too high.
The export to DVD should work just fine and look great.

Give it a shot with a few clips to get an idea of how it will look.
I just did this on a project with only 2 cameras to make it look like there was a third, closeup, camera.
Worked great :)
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Re: How much can I reasonably scale footage?

Postby Briantho » Thu Apr 12, 2012 3:34 am

Thanks Chuck, that's roughly what I had in mind. In fact there will be four clips (one for each camcorder) and I'll scale them all to 66.67%. Once I've synchronized and finished the multicam editing I'll then go through the 'static' clips and keyframe as appropriate. Good thing I (we all?) like editing!
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