Is hardware upscaling 480i SD to 1080p too much of an upscale?

Question

Is upscaling from 480i to 1080p way too much of an upscale?
I tried upscaling some old newsreel footage from 480i to 1080p, and the upscaled footage looks more more interlaced than the original SD footage. I notice I did not have this problem when upconverting to 720p.
Please see these (720p and 1080p MXO2 upscaled versions) of 480i SD footage taken from my FCP viewer window:
http://gallery.me.com/nicholasnatteau#100339
I wanted to upconvert from 480 to 1080 for a 720 timeline for the following reason:
I was told that if I wanted to scale up my 4:3 footage to fit into a 16:9 frame (without distorting the image horizontally), it would be better to upconvert all the way to 1080 via my Matrox MXO2 and then downsize the 1080 4:3 upscaled footage to 67% which would make it fit into a 720p 16:9 timeline without having to use FCP to upscale.

Answer 1

But here's my problem. I plan to use a good number of animated charts and maps and many graphics in my film as well. I thought my graphics and animated maps would look even better in 1080p than in 720p.
OK...but what is your final sequence going to be? 720? You seem to be alluding to that as you talk about upconverting to 1080 then down to 720. So if your sequence is 720, how on earth will your graphics look better at 1080? Sure, they might, but then you are putting them in a 720p sequence? So your logic there escapes me.
Pardon...I'm getting snarky. But if your goal is 720p, why are you even THINKING about 1080? Put it out of your mind unless you want to deliver 1080. If you are going to 1080, why did you mention 720? You are really confusing me.
What I don't understand is my upconverted 480i footage looks so much worse when upconverted to 1080p than to 720p.
YOu don't? You don't understand that going to 720p is less of a blow up than going to 1080? You are blowing it up another 50% or more...so it will look a tad worse. But what gets me is that you aren't viewing ANY of this on an external broadcast HD monitor, or even a good HDTV. You are judging the quality of the blow up on your COMPUTER monitors, which is the LAST place you judge quality. Absolute last.
That's why I was very interested to know how things worked out for you when you upscaled your footage from SD to HD for Nat Geo? Did you upscale to 1080p or 1080i?
1080i, because our delivery spec required a 1080i 29.97 HDCAM SR master. So going from 480i to 1080i was easy.
since 1080p is progressive like 720p. Why am I seeing terrible interlacing on my computer monitor when I upscale to 1080p but not when I upscale to 720p?
Because you aren't viewing the footage properly...judging on a proper monitor. Without that you can't make any critical assessment of your footage.
But I understand that a computer monitor cannot be used to judge the picture.
You understand that, yet keep doing it...I find that a tad baffling.
If my destination is 1080p, why is there interlacing going on?
The source footage is interlaced. Unless you DE-INTERLACE it, it will be interlaced. There is a filter for that. You need to also make sure that your FIELD ORDER is set to NONE in the sequence settings.
OK...BACK UP. Start from the beginning. The bulk of your footage...what is it? 1080p? 720p? What codec? What is the FINAL HD OUTPUT MASTER that you are trying to achieve? 1080? 720? Output to what? What settings are you trying to work in? Because you are throwing out 1080p as a master, but then also 720p...so you are confusing not only yourself, but me as well.
Shane