Should I scale up small footage or scale down larger footage?

[SWINGBA]

Hi so I have a video I shot both with 3840x2160 (which is the majority of the video) and 1920 x 1080 (for slow mo parts). My question is, should I be setting the project to 3840x2160 or 1920 x 1080? When I set all the footage to the same size, Which one is bound to give me a better looking image?

[rodneyb56060189 · Accepted solution]

I think you should scale down to 1080p.

[SWINGBA]

Cool appreciate it May I ask why?

[John T Smith]

Take an empty balloon and use a wide felt marker to draw a line on the balloon

Now blow the balloon up and look at how the 'solid' line you made is stretched and 'fuzzy'

That is what happens when you try to upscale video... your smaller video is going to be fuzzy

[SWINGBA]

Ok right but what about drawing a line on a blown up balloon then making it smaller, the line will change in any case right?

[Meg The Dog]

When you downscale, Premiere removes unneeded pixel info to fit the new format. The remaining pixels are all pristine, from the original source file - there are just fewer of them - so sharpness/apparent image quality is maintained in the rescaled image.

When you upscale, Premiere has to create new pixels to add to the source content. It does this by attempting to guess what the pixel should look like, based on the pixel information that surrounds the new one it is creating. This leads to smeared imaging and blocky artifacts in the image as the newly manufactured pixels are embedded between the original ones - so sharpness and apparent image quality are degraded in the rescaled image.

MtD

[rodneyb56060189]

Casey, the interpolation that goes on to scale stuff is historically complicated. You are re-sizing things and programming tries to use the best code to understand the real data and then make it 'better' if someone wants to change the size. Going UP scale is doomed. You can't duplicate the exact pixels and color and hues and tones and in a larger size ( creating new pixels from the original ones) and you won't understand that process until you get way more into the mechanics of what it is. Think of shooting a 35mm film picture (one single frame ) at 1080p and blow it up to 4k. The info just isn't there to interpolate that many pixels...even for ONE IMAGE.  If you try to do that with MOTION (many still pictures at say 24 frames per second ) it's like impossible.

You line on balloon smaller will be thinner , like the rest of the balloon, and it will pick up a tiny bit of black tonality probably. Nothing to worry about. But it will look 'sharp' and not 'blurry'. That's the bottom line.

[rodneyb56060189]

With still images there is a history of up-scaling things. You shouldn't confuse that with motion stuff.

For example, you want to put an image of ME on a giant billboard on the freeway leading into Chicago. I am saying, " HI, you can make a giant image ! "

To do that there are steps to make negatives ( from the original 35mm to 4x5, to 8x10 ) and THEN use stuff to print or paint the billboard ( one single frame ) at a HUGE SIZE !  They probably go up to 16x20 after 8x10.  Anyway, it looks blurry if you get close to the billboard. It looks better if you are far away, on the highway.

Anyway, adobe does better at downscaling than upscaling in my opinion.

Make sure you got the preferences right if there's a choice how it's done.

[rodneyb56060189]

Just a crazy idea, but now that you are cool with that, how will you deal with importing and using the slow mo stuff that is at higher frame rate ??

If you want it all slo mo I guess the editing program would want to deal with that when putting stuff on timeline.

??

My opinion is that about 120 fps makes nice slo mo stuff in general …

Looks pretty to see people smiling at each other in slo mo.