Redoing an old video

this image is full Hd aspect ratio ( 16:9) and the white square is approx 4:3 ... and shows roughly the SIZE you'd be using of that 1080p image in a 4:3 sequence when you scale it down to match old footage.

the old video (720x480) us 4:3 aspect ratio, non square pixels, probably 30fps interleaved.

I would start new project with the old video so that your timeline is that size and specs.. ( match old video).

Now, when you put in new video ( shoot it with a lot of room around main characters at 30fps, so you can scale down later ), you just scale that DOWN to your SD size... Your final export will be 720x480 PROGRESSIVE, SQUARE PIXEL ( 1.0 ), which will NOT BE FOR DVD ... but for web instead ( youtube, vimeo etc.).  To make a DVD you would have to export interleaved and you don't want that these days...unless making another DVD.

That would be under NTSC specs for DVD if you want to research it ( for DVD) but I don't think you should make one.

If you just export h264 , 720x480, 30fps, square pixels, it will look nice... You can't UPSCALE stuff without it getting junky and blurry and so on.

🙂

good luck.

P.S.   maybe consider shooting NEW stuff ( 1080p) black and white or some other manipulation to make it look OLDER ( to match old video better ).

Would the Detail-Preserving Upscale feature in After Effects be helpful here?

https://helpx.adobe.com/mt/after-effects/user-guide.html/mt/after-effects/using/detail-preserving-upscale-effect.ug.html 

(Of course, only if you have After Effects or the whole creative cloud.)

I have no connection to these guys at all, other than seeing their ads continuously on Facebook. I am curious about it as I have some old transfers from Video all at SD obviously. They say they can upRes successfully.

https://topazlabs.com/video-enhance-ai

My preference is similar to that of Peru Bob. Downscale the 1080 image to 480i/29.97, then export the video as standard definition. You will not achieve high definition, but television sets almost always do a better job than software or computer monitors at upscaling video.

If on the other hand that exported video is going to be displayed on a computer, then you will have to accept the lousy image quality, whether through software or the monitor's poor-quality upscaler.

The reply by Stan Jones is a good one, but my preference would be to use a 720 X 480 sequence and scale the 1080 video down or crop as necessary.

I'll share a few thoughts. I understand your wanting to reuse the old video.

Is the old audio usable and high quality? I would consider creating a new video, 1920 by 1080. and then mxing in still images, and the old video, picture in picture, in its original pixel resolution so that it does not lose quality. For me, the question would be what archival/memory I would want for all the grandchildren.

Stan

You can resize either video. You can create a 720 X 480 sequence or a 1920 X 1080 sequence. A 1280 X 720 sequence might work best.