Upscaling 1920x1080p to 2k and beyond

[nateo200]

I recently made some short films. Part of the film was shot in 720p @60fps and part of it was shot in 1080p @24fps. Pretty nasty combo so I just outputted as 720p at I think 24fps either way it came out looking great but I got thinking what if I just up-scaled the 720 clips....so I ran some experiments using Adobe Premiere! I up-scaled 1080p @24fps to 2560x1440 (still 16:9 ratio) and to my great surprise the quality was still spectacular even displayed at full 2560x1440! Obviously that high of a resolution has no purpose so I tried some other things. I up-scaled 720p @60fps to 1080p @ 60fps and I didn't notice any difference in quality again at full resolution and it still looked excellent! I then went to extreme's and did 1080p to 3k @ 16:9 ratio; that is 3072x1728....VLC wouldn't play it but Quick time would just not in full resolution....interesting results...I think I'm going to stick with always outputting 1080p (but no higher than that for lack of application reasons).

Anyone else have similar results? If not give it a try! I took some just 30 seconds clips and upscaled them for the sake of time....I'll post links as I uploaded a few to YouTube unlisted and if you have a iMac or cinema display you'll be able to better compare.

 

[MisterMe]

You're kidding yourself. Upscaling does not add data (resolution) to your video. The sole purpose for changing the resolution of your video is to change all of your source clips to a common format.

As for how good your video looks on your computer--well, you simply cannot put too much into it. My personal experience is that even progressive DVD (480p) looks great on my computer display. Video shot at 720p, I would expect to be spectacular on the tiny high-quality screen that is a computer display. Video shot at 1080i/1080p; awesome.

 

[THX1139]

and to my great surprise the quality was still spectacular even displayed at full 2560x1440!

You're not seeing accurate results because you aren't looking at it on the intended source. It's rather subjective. If you look at the uprezzed stuff on a big theatre screen and compare it to stuff that was shot at the correct resolution, you'll see a big difference.

 

[nateo200]

You're not seeing accurate results because you aren't looking at it on the intended source. It's rather subjective. If you look at the uprezzed stuff on a big theatre screen and compare it to stuff that was shot at the correct resolution, you'll see a big difference.

Well I did actually display the upscaled stuff on native screens (Toshiba 46" 1080p native TV with native 48 and 120hz support) as well as an iMac 27". Obviously it did not look like I shot the stuff with a RED Epic but still admirable. Seeing as I've shot stuff at native 1080p I can easily compare the two.

You're kidding yourself. Upscaling does not add data (resolution) to your video. The sole purpose for changing the resolution of your video is to change all of your source clips to a common format.

As for how good your video looks on your computer--well, you simply cannot put too much into it. My personal experience is that even progressive DVD (480p) looks great on my computer display. Video shot at 720p, I would expect to awesome on the tiny high-quality screen that is a computer display. Video shot at 1080i/1080p; awesome.

Well obviously you can't add something that isn't there...and yes I said my original intent was to get all my source clips at 1080 since 24fps is something I (and allot of others) prefer to look at but for some shots can be inappropriate for things like say fast moving objects or slow motion.