Blackmagic Forum

I'm considering investing in a Teranex converter for our edit suite.
Our primary goals for media conversion are:
1/ The remastering of PAL and NTSC 4:3 tape and file archives to HD
2/ Down-converting 4K masters to HD for exhibition and delivery.

Despite the obvious benefits of real-time conversion, streamlined workflow, push-button operation etc., how do conversions with Teranex compare in end result quality to software encoders, particularly Media Encoder, Resolve Studio, and FFWorks?

The vast majority of our software-based conversion work renders to ProRes 422HQ, or high-quality H264/H265.

The best upscaling for SD (interlaced in particular) to HD you can get these days is Video Enhancer AI by Topaz Labs. But it's slooow if you don't have a very capable GPU. Teranex is RT, but not as good.

Downscaling 4K to HD can be done in very good quality by DR. It an be faster than RT with good hardware.

Thanks for your reply Uli.
Just out of interest, what is the 'DR' that you refer to for 4K to HD downscaling?

DaVinci Resolve.

Teranex is old tech (+ there were reports about quality problems). Noting special these days at all. Whole setup is convoluted, realtime at best and requires a lot of manual labour.
You can do way better in software world and also faster assuming you have fairly good machine (doesn't need to be crazy good).
UHD to HD down conversion is rather trivial (specially when UHD is always progressive). About any tool can do it. Resolve with GTX 1080i and 10 cores i9 does it at 100fps+.
SD to HD is more difficult and whole result depends a lot on good deinterlacing. Easy way- Resolve with Neural Engine deinterlacing and scaling. Best result- avisynth or vapoursynth with QTGMC deinterlacing. Requires knowledge, but you can do about everything in automated way (including smart edges cleanup etc.).
Topaz may be also good but unpractically slow (even very good GPU doesn't help much), specially when you have hours of footage.

If I were you I would probably not even bother touching SD. Just store in good format (with correct aspect ratio flags) as is and let TVs do upscale. Most modern TVs are quite good with it. 2nd option is to do good deinterlace and store at square pixels, but not to do upscale to HD as it's simply not worth it (specially on very old footage).

Avoid Adobe Media Encoder for SD->HD as its deinterlacing is crazy poor. For downconversion should be fine, but Resolve gives you more control (you can choose resizing method).