Resizing pixel art video without affecting the pixels with blur.

Question

Hello everyone,
First I would like to mention that I did searched for an answer to my issue on the forum but only found a thread by Rowby Goren from Jan 4, 2010, who asked a similar pixel resize question regarding to still images in CS4. He was answered to use Photoshop for this kind of task. My issue on the other hand is for handling a video that can only be edited in Premiere. I'm using CS6. My issue is as follows:
I work a lot with pixel art animation in 320x240 resolution. Usually I'm making a 320x240 scene of background and characters and the final result should be a doubled sized. So each pixel is actually 2 times larger. Just like old adventure games from the good old days that most of us remember. It works great with old style games creation engines however when I want to make a video with my pixel art creation in Premiere, I couldn't achieve an exact and clean doubled pixel when resizing the source by 200%. It always gets blurry. Does anyone knows if Premiere has any switch off option for scalling blur?
I have created an image that describes the issue. It's just a simple pixel art image that I picked up on google search. I saved and uploaded it as PNG for best quality, I just hope it won't get compressed after the upload. Any assitance will be appreciated!
Thanks,
Gal Shemesh

Answer 1

Thanks Jim, I am aware of the fact that it's a degraded image that doesn't have any antializing effect on it. And that's what I'm trying to achieve in Premiere, although it's currently impossible. Until now I'm doing exactly what you suggested, which is to double the size in Photoshop or other tool that doesn't affect any antializing on the image and then I import it into Premiere. However this also makes a problem when you want to move objects on the screen as the imported images which are doubled size, won't show well on the 1:1 pixel grid when you move them around the screen. So let's say each move on the X axis to the left or right (which represents a move by 1 pixel) should be moved twice in order to meet the doubled sized images pixel grid.
Take a look on the picture I created to see what I mean. I've duplicated the box image and I'm trying to position each box one next to another in a 3d space look. The left boxes is the original image of the 2 boxes, and the right image is the doubled sized image that was created outside of Premiere. Please note that I've the entire screenshot twice larger so you could see the difference. And please ignore the fact that there is no antializing on the right image as I made this simulation in Photoshop so the pixels will be clean to show the problem.
So, if you aware of how a pixel grid looks like, check the left image. The position of the boxes on each other is the way it should be as each pixel from each box keeps the relation of a 1:1 pixel grid. However on the right image I first doubled the original box image to prevent 'blurring' effect when scalling up in Premiere, put it on a 1:1 pixel canvas (where the image has 2:2 pixel grid by now) just like how it will be in Premiere, and tried to position the boxes one next to another. See that there's a confusion between the pixels on the 1:1 grid as they got merged one INTO another without saving the relation of a doubled pixel grid. Where if there was any option to work in doubled sized pixles in Premiere, it would have look like this:
So importing a doubled size images into Premiere like you suggested is way hard to keep tracking the moving objects in the scene, as you must remember to move them twice the times to each direction. Which means that if you want to move an object from one side of the screen to the other side, you'll have to do it frame by frame in a move of 2 pixels by frame, rather then positioning it in one place, make a keyframe, and then go to where the movement should end and place another keyframe.
Hope now my issue is clear.
All the best,
Gal Shemesh