Help "mixing" high and low resolution videos.

[ricardouk]

Hi everyone!

I was asked by a friend to edit some videos and photos of her wedding in a short clip to celebrate their 4 year anniversary, i accepted the challenge but was surprised to see that her videos are dvd interlaced mpeg2 files, thats the only videos she has, no acesso to original files. the photos are High resolution.

Im trying to find ways of creating a video where i can mix photos and the low res video, i thought of playing with the opacity values and overlaying them on top of the photos, has anyone encountered this problem and managed to create something watchable? Anyone has any ideas on how to use the videos (resizing makes quality worse, probably not a lot if only resizing to 720p).

Thanks for any ideas, i'm doing this for free to a friend.

[manono]

You might take a look at DVDSlideShowGUI. It seems to fulfill your requirements.

[budwzr]

Hi everyone!

I was surprised to see that her videos are dvd interlaced mpeg2 files, thats the only videos she has, no acesso to original files. the photos are High resolution.

Convert to progressive and see what you get. You have to come up with something creative. Yeah I guess some kind of PhotoStory? You can Upsample MPEG2 to mix with high rez stills. Just split the difference between the both them.

[ricardouk]

Hi manono e budwzr, thnks for the advices, not a lot i can do with that resolution, im planing to sync a music and video/photos, im planing to use a nle (hitfilm/openshot/davinci resolve), i thought of asking here because i couldnt come up with anything "creative", probably use small "unused" areas in the photos to overlay the low resolution videos, it wont look as bad as resizing them.

[budwzr]

HitFilm is a good choice.

It's a 3D environment, and that's a good thing.

[Cornucopia]

@ricardouk,
Is your friend expecting the resulting video to also be a dvd? because if so, you would just need to use an NLE and resize DOWN your hirez photos when putting them in the timeline, leaving your dvd assets alone. That's kind of the opposite of what you seem to be attempting. If I'm wrong, ignore.

Scott

[ricardouk]

@budwzr it will be a simple cut/sync audio beat kind of video, ive tried them all and it seems simple to do, the biggest challenge is the creativity to display all of it.

@Cornucopia, never thought about it but my goal is 1080p with a creative way to display the low resolution videos, good idea.

[DB83]

I may be wrong here but overlaying dvd resolution mpeg2 on to a larger frame could change the resolution of the video since the original AR is not retained (you simply get 720*576 rather than the 4:3 or even 16:9 than is currently there)

You probably know this but it's worth repeating for anyone else who stumbles on the topic. Editing the lossy mpeg2 is going to reduce the quality so you would be better converting these to an intermediate lossless format first (and the higher bitrate might even allow you scope to upscale but I am with Scott and work to the lowest common denominator)

[ricardouk]

@DB83, thanks for the info on the original AR, but im probably cropping them after overlaying them so that they can fit the area where they will be placed, for example crop to a aproximate 2.35 aspect ratio to fit the low res video on to "4x2 brick rectangule" on a wall in the photo.

i did that, ive converted the videos using the batch function in virtuadub2, deinterlaced and exported to cineform.

Thanks for the ideas.

[Cornucopia]

If I were you I would decode (w assist from dgmpeg tools), into avisynth, deinterlace minding color sub sampling, convert color to yuy2, resize correcting for anamorphic sd shape into square pixel hd of equivalent rez to photos or hd/uhd whichever is lower, then pass that to an encoder into lossless form. Then edit.

Scott