[Kdenlive-devel] Advise on using NTSC 4/3 material in PAL 16/9 project

[Dan Dennedy]

On Sun, Mar 23, 2008 at 3:26 PM, Mads Bondo Dydensborg
<mads at dydensborg.dk> wrote:
> Hi there
>
>  I have some footage taken with a helmet cam in 640x480 @30 fps (4/3), that I
>  would like to use in a PAL DV 16/9 project.
>
>  What is the best way to get the highest quality of the headcam footage in
>  kdenlive? Should I transcode it using some external program, or just add it
>  as a clip to kdenlive?

The simplest is to just add it as a clip. MLT does framerate
decimation and image resampling automatically. However, to get more
quality, you need high quality temporal interpolation. Zachard Drew
wrote the motion estimation module[1] in MLT that can use in an inigo
job to transcode it prior to use in kdenlive. However, I do not have
any experience using motion estimation for this. After making sure to
build the module (it is opt-in), try this as a hint to get started:

$ inigo -profile dv_pal_wide slowmotion:some-ntsc.avi speed=0.8342
-consumer avformat:my.dv ...

It's just that 0.8342 is an approximation, and I do not know how good
the results will be. Sharing your experience would be valuable. There
is a trick to get kdenlive to do this for you without transcoding. You
can convert the above into a westley-based "virtual" clip and load the
.westley into kdenlive:

$ inigo -profile dv_pal_wide slowmotion:some-ntsc.avi speed=0.8342
-consumer westley:some-ntsc.westley

[1] http://www.tc.umn.edu/~drew0054/video.html
-- 
+-DRD-+