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Edit Review: Red Giant Instant HD 1.0

Aug 1, 2006 12:00 PM, Reviewer: S.D. Katz

Image editor upscales SD footage into HD clarity.

We have all upscaled images in Adobe Photoshop, Autodesk Combustion, or other image editors, so we expect enlarging PAL or NTSC footage to HD to produce big, soft video. In Photoshop, applying Unsharp Mask is usually part of the recipe to increase the perception of detail, but if the images are video (as opposed to film archive material transferred to NTSC or PAL), the ringing at the edges of objects and other artifacts are accentuated. Fortunately, Red Giant's Instant HD 1.0 provides an inexpensive alternative to the standard (high-quality) bi-cubic sampling when upscaling, improving the way you enlarge your SD footage to HD.

Red Giant is best known for Magic Bullet, the look-development software that processes video source material to apply a “film look,” one of several contemporary, stylistic color treatments provided as a preset. One step in the “film look” process is de-interlacing the video to produce 24p frames. From the beginning, Magic Bullet has received well-deserved kudos for its excellent de-interlacing algorithm, which produces far better results than de-interlacing filters that are typically bundled with compositing programs and NLEs.

With the Instant HD, Red Giant continues pushing technology to process bits for maximum quality. The product works with progressive frames, which means de-interlacing video source material that is not natively progressive. This is the case for all rescaling products on the market. You will need to de-interlace any video that is not progressive, but this is typical of other rescaling products.

It raises the issue, though, of why Red Giant didn't include de-interlacing in Instant HD, which is standard operating procedure for competitors Algolith and Digital Anarchy Resizer 2.0. Instant HD's product manager Sean Safreed says that a de-interlacer was not included in version 1.0 because Magic Bullet and Instant HD, while both developed by Red Giant, have different development deals that made “borrowing” one part of Magic Bullet difficult. Safreed says that adding a de-interlacer is planned for a future release.

Instant HD's interface is simple to use. In addition to format presets, there are two sliders for custom frame size and width. Below the sliders, there are four image control parameters: filter type (draft, quick, better, best), sharpness, quality, and antialiasing. The lists of source and HD formats also make Instant HD simple to use, but it's complicated by NTSC's and PAL's aspect ratios, which differ from HD's. You must decide whether you want to fill the HD frame and lose some picture material, or have vertical black bars on the sides.

There are default set-tings that are recommended by Red Giant in the PDF manual, and that's what I used when I tested the product. As you might expect, higher-quality settings increase render times, but it was hard to see much improvement above therecommended settings. As evident in the images above, Instant HD provides clearly superior edges when resizing, but there is no magic here — SD footage has half the information as 720HD and approximately one-third the information of 1440×1080 footage (the pixel count of the F900 HDCam). The point is that while Instant HD provides clearly better resizing, the inherently low resolution of SD source is still apparent.

Footage supplied by Red Giant also has significant ringing, but Instant HD is not meant to remove this artifact. It's another reason why you should not expect miracles when trying to use SD footage in an HD project. However, if news or historical footage was shot in SD and is required for an HD program, Instant HD provides good results with reasonable rendering times.

Using both our own footage and Red Giant's, we rescaled shots using After Effects and InstantHD. The main difference is the way Instant HD handles diagonal edges. While the difference seems subtle, the overall effect of this improvement on an entire image is clearly visible. However, as you can see in the comparison footage, compression artifacts remain apparent. Of the various limitations apparent in SD footage, Instant HD only corrects one of them.

To put this in perspective, Instant HD does not provide any exotic algorithms to increase resolution; it simply scales video footage more cleanly by not introducing edge stepping typical of bi-cubic sampling. You can use sharpening functions on SD footage after processing with Instant HD, but this will also make other video artifacts more apparent, depending on the shot. It's definitely worth experimenting with a sharpening routine.

While Algolith provides higher quality rescaling routines and includes a de-interlacer, it is also very, very slow. In addition, the software suite for format conversion is far more costly than the $99 Instant HD. A two-second clip scaled up to 1280×720 took 1min., 47sec. using a Dual 800 G4 Mac, or about a second per minute in Instant HD. Large projects would take a few workstations running for a few days, but since Instant HD is most practical when used to rescale occasional shots in a larger project, rendering speed is a minor annoyance. Instant HD is recommended within the narrow confines of providing high quality edge preservation during upscaling rather than actually producing HD material.

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bottomline

Company: Red Giant
Fort Wayne, Ind.; (260) 625-5343
www.redgiantsoftware.com

Product: Instant HD 1.0

Assets: Simple-to-use format lists and interface, no edge stepping when upscaling.

Caveats: De-interlacer not included, no ringing removal.

Demographic: Video editors who want an inexpensive, though still high-quality, system for upscaling SD footage in an HD project.

PRICE: $99

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