Avid FrameFlex vs. Resize
24p by Michael Phillips
Avid FrameFlex is a new feature in Media Composer v7 that allows for image re-framing. The FrameFlex parameters go back to the original high resolution master using more pixels to create the new frame rather than resizing an HD frame to the new size. One result involves more pixels being used and scaled down, versus the latter which takes pixels and blows them up. Scaling tends to result in a higher quality image compared to the reverse. So with this in mind, and knowing that only FrameFlex uses the original source file resolution, and any scaling operation that is not FrameFlex is restricted to the HD resolution of the project, I set out to compare the different methods of re-scaling versus extraction.
- FrameFlex
- 3D Warp Effect with HQ active
- Standard Resize effect
The image above is a 4K (quad GD) R3D file. As you can see from the FrameFlex bounding box, it is a rather aggressive “punch-in” for the shot. In FrameFlex terms, it is 50%, as far as resize goes, it is 200%. The results were really surprising. In the end, I did not see 200% of “wow” difference. For the most part, it was very difficult to see the differences between the two operations. While there is some very slight softening, it was not as much as I thought it was going to be. And just to be sure, I did the same extraction in RedCine X Pro to use as reference. In that frame there is a difference in the gray area of the shirt which could be attributed to the 12bit to 10 bit transcode. In all tests, the R3D was done as a FULL debayer to an uncompressed HD MXF file.
Here are the resulting frames exported as TIFF. Click links to download each file.
- RedCine X
- FrameFlex
- 3D Warp with HQ active
- Standard Resize Effect
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