Charley R. answered • 06/02/19
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Set or Scale?
You should not ever have to make this choice with video, but because many people do not feel like they have time avoid this very important step in the editing process and so it is forgotten.
This is for all editing all the time.
Transcode your footage before you edit.
Codecs have been created to put footage into the propper packaging for the different stages that they are in. Shooting, editing, coloring and viewing.
Before you edit you footage, you need transcode all footage into the same codec. That codec will be different than what it was shot on. By doing this it will also make all your footage the same too, this eliminating the need to scale you're image and greatly diminish the quality of the image.
Codecs for editing differ from shooting. Depending on the editing program you're using you need to look up to see the prefered editing codec that you will transcode all your footage into. I will not go into that but my point is.....when you change your footage into the same codec for editing you avoid problems like having to resize your image.
Which brings us back to your question. Scale frame will alter the quality of your image a lot. Transcoding will to a different size will do it much less. But there are limits.
Scale means you change the size of your image to the size of the frame. If you have a frame size that's much bigger than your original image your image will look pixelated and bad.
1st alternate
I you need to scale up, you are better off transcoding your footage before you import it. Transcode means covert.
This will degrade the image much less. Conversion programs upres the image, and then create a new frame.
If you do not have a conversion program you can use the editing program, this will not be as good of a solution as a transcoding program such as DaVince or Media Encoder...but it will be better than editing your content while it is also scaling you're footage.
Create a new timeline and make sure that the frame size is set to the footages frame size, lay in footage into the timeline. Got to export settings and change to match bigger frame, then export and you will have created footage that fit on original timeline.
Bring footage back into project and lay into original timeline. No need to scale.
