How Do I...

So you want to ruin the original aspect ratio and blow up the picture of an amateur movie so it fills a whole HD-TV? This is your plan?

They key here is the "without compromising resolution". Can't be done. And even if it could you're going to stretch the image on the sides which will seriously affect the look of the movie.

Seemed odd. Thought I was reading it wrong.

Just crop the top and bottom in Final Cut. That's it.

This falls into the middle ground between "impossible" and "technically possible but super pointless."

4:3 minidv (with the exception of some material shot on the dvx100, xl1, gl2, any camera with 24p, 30p, or "frame mode," or a telecine from 16mm or something) is interlaced. What this basically means is that even though the footage is technically 720X480 pixels encoded at 29.97fps, it's REALLY 720X240 pixels at 59.94fps--because every other line of pixels is 1/60th of a second ahead of the rest. This sounds confusing and stupid because it is, but basically the video looks like this:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:In...car_wheel).jpg

Look in particular at the wheels.

The way tvs are designed, though, interlacing is invisible on playback (this isn't technically true but for the sake of this discussion it is). When you scale up to "true" 16:9 on a computer for either anamorphic dvd or like blu-ray without proper de-interlacing, you're stretching the interlacing out in a way where it is visible on tv (when you rescale it it's no longer every other pixel so the tv interprets it wrong), so first you have to de-interlace and then re-interlace your footage to do a proper conversion. If you're like Lars von Trier and send Dancer in the Dark to a professional post house, this is trivial: a post house can easily convert the footage to 24 de-interlaced frames per second, crop it, scale it up (slightly) and output it as 24fps widescreen on either DVD or by printing it on film for exhibition.

You can do this, too (other than outputting on film, of course), on your computer, with a few hundred dollars worth of software--and with reasonably comparable results to what a professional house does (plus you can choose either "cinematic" 24fps or to retain your 60fps original just with a bit more interpolated resolution)--except it will take FOREVER. Also, it doesn't look very impressive, just barely better than the original material except it's framed correctly.

The flip side is, a good television will do this automatically and with only slightly worse results if you burn a 4:3 DVD and hit the "aspect ratio" or "zoom" button. Of course, not all tvs will do this and you can't crop it yourself shot-by-shot this way. But depending on what dvd player you're using and what aspect ratio options your tv has, this can look pretty good, basically indistinguishable from having it done professionally.

If your footage is from 16mm, which was commonly output to minidv for cheap old telecines, and you still have the original film, you can pay for an incredibly expensive 2k telecine and crop to taste for 1080p output--but I figure this isn't that kind of situation.

It's definitely possible but probably not worth it. I don't think re-framing is heresy; 80% of Mulholland Drive was shot for 4:3--but it was shot on 35mm, which is (usually) 4:3 to start with so there was zero loss in resolution there, just a note to projectionists to reframe certain reels slightly.

Either a post-house or tech-savvy friend could get you a decent anamorphic dvd, but you wouldn't get significantly more resolution than you started with. There are fancy things like temporal super-resolution, lanzcos and fractal-based upscaling, and de-convolution, all of which actually kind of do something. But I only know what these things are because buttons on my computer say them.

If the release is big enough that you can pay a friend or really cheap post house to do this for you, maybe consider it? Otherwise rest assured that the image you have now is about as good as you'll ever get.

I REALLY doubt it's worth it; the change in image quality will be a trivial increase at best and a noticeable decrease (in many cases) at worst. Post houses charge a lot for this kind of nonsense, too.

The only scenario wherein I can see this being worth it is if you're dead set on an anamorphic dvd release and also interested in adding more of a "film look." In that case, a 60i (59.94 half-frames per second) to 24p (true 24fps, which is actually 23.976 on ntsc) conversion and an anamorphic stretch might look okay. But the difference between that and just adding letterboxing to a normal 4:3 DVD will go unnoticed to 99% of viewers, whereas a new sound mix or decent color correction will be apparent to anyone. I just think this is a silly way to spend money unless distro is demanding an anamorphic 16:9 release.

That said, this software (for 60i to 24p conversion) was all the rage a while ago:

http://dvfilm.com/maker/index.htm

And this seems to be the standard consumer "super resolution" program, which also de-interlaces and does 4:3 conversion:

http://www.redgiantsoftware.com/prod...nstant-hd-adv/

Most of this software is just bullshit, though. I've tried some of it but generally just avoided situations where I'd want to use it.

That question was answered in post #2.

There's a reason film geeks like hearing the words "original aspect ratio." If you didn't frame your shots to be cropped like this in the first place, they're not going to look right jammed into a new aspect ratio. I'm talking composition, not resolution. I don't know the quality of your film, but any film I love that's worth a damn and 4x3 (Adventures of Robin Hood, Universal Horror, etc.), I'd be pretty pissed to see the original framing tampered with.

Maybe I'm missing something here, but is the intention to repackage the film on dvd/bluray?

Do you have the 22GB+ raw dvi file(s)?

This is such a pointless argument. "Film geeks" like seeing "original aspect ratio" on box art--but they like seeing a lot of dumb stuff and they're a small, easily vexed market. There's a long history of totally fine aspect ratio conversions and no one else is outraged; barely anyone notices.

Granted I've seen widescreen Preminger ruined by a 4:3 conversion and I avoid "fullscreen" dvds, but a mindful conversion is usually fine. And, let's be honest, this movie probably isn't Preminger. Most Kubrick movies are shot for 4:3 and cropped; most of Mulholland Drive was shot for 4:3 and then slightly reframed (on a per-reel, not per-shot basis) and cropped by the projectionist; the restoration of Touch of Evil was cropped; a whole host of older movies were released in 1.66:1 in Europe and 1.85:1 in America or when transferred to dvd. It's fine to be a purist but it's stupid to impose that on others, particularly if this is a movie being converted by or with the approval of the director.

I've had stuff I shot in 16:9 converted to 2.35:1 for theatrical (anamorphic) release; I've had stuff I shot at 2.35:1 converted to 4:3 for tv. Like I give a shit, the original is still there. There are valid reasons not to bother with a 16:9 conversion--but getting in a huff over the sanctity of the aspect ratio is so far beside the point.

He asked "why not?" I gave him a reason to think about why not. It's not about the sanctity; what are the odds that this student film's composition is going to magically work as well (or better) in a new aspect ratio? On top of that, the tech solution examples provided look about a hundred times worse than the DNR nightmares on Blu we've been decrying lately.

*crosses fingers for an upconverted, reformatted theatrical release of Urine Tune*

Haha sorry for being peevish; it's been a rough week. In general I prefer the original aspect ratio, too, though with Kubrick's later work I'll take whatever fills a given screen.

In all seriousness, I actually am planning that and it's part of the reason I researched up-conversion software. It's my next project. It's going straight to youtube and maybe a few dvds for friends, though.

That was mean. I apologize.

But not for my original suggestion that MightyWorm think about what exactly will be gained by going through the time and expense of making his non-HD, non-widescreen student film HD and widescreen. I've been in his shoes and thought those thoughts and unless it IS frigging Preminger, probably not worth the time, energy, and money. Spend it on the next one.

What I was going to suggest, if he has gone through the trouble to store the raw DV file and has the computing time, is to use one of the free solutions to do a quick n' dirty to see what he's in for.

What was the source format of your project? Like PC said above, if you shot on film, even 16mm, you at least have some options available to you beyond pixel-wrangling.

Stretch the image sideways and tell everyone the characters got fat. Vertical resolution solved!

For quick n' dirty, try virtualdub with warp resize.

For, still free, and more tweaking for quality, look into avisynth and NNEDI.

Even you're still hungry for more, and aren't disabled by the leather suit and ball gag, then look into ICBI and maybe even MEDI, but which will require some programming ability.