Editing with GH4 4K in Premiere Pro CC. Workflow?

[Walter Biscardi]

We haven’t edited with the 1080 proxies, just the full 4k files from the GH4. I haven’t found the proxy workflow necessary yet, even with a MacBook Air and a single USB3 drive. I turn the resolution in the Source and Program monitors down to 1/8 for most of the editing.

Walter Biscardi, Jr.
Editor, Colorist, Director, Writer, Consultant, Author, Chef.
HD Post and Production
Biscardi Creative Media

Craft and Career Advice & Training from real Working Creative Professionals

Blog Twitter Facebook

[Christine Edwards]

Hello, so are you editing GH4 4K natively in Premier? I’m trying to decide if I should rent a GH4 and dive into 4k or stick with my GH2 for a short film shoot. I’d hate to spend the extra $ on the GH4 then end up having to convert all the ftg with some 3rd party software and possibly have quality issues.

Also can my machine handle the 4k files if I run them off a G Drive thunderbolt / USB 3 external drive?
The specs on my machine are:
Macbook 2.7 Ghz Intel i7
16GB Mhz DDR3
Intel HD graphics 4000 1024 MB

Macbook 2.7 Ghz Intel Core i7 / 8GB 1600MHz DDR3 / NVIDIA GeForce GT650M 1024 MB graphics / Apple Thunderbolt Display /
OS X 10.8.4

[John Stockton]

I have a pretty beefy machine however, as soon as I start to add extra video tracks and add Lumatri effects then the timeline starts to get very sticky. So sticky in fact that it’s a real issue, unusable in fact. It’s at this point I needed to start and find a solution. I could have gone the proxy route and transcoded all of my files to 1080p but that’s no good as I need the extra resolution that 4K gives me for re-framing etc. You may as well shoot in 1080p in the first place in my view. I know it’s 200MBS vs 50MBS but seriously I know that not many people if any can tell the difference between the two. And the 1080p 25fps is pretty good so why not. However I shoot C4K 24fps 24KHZ and like to use the 4K for re-framing and slider shots etc etc. So I realized that when you use the “Render and Replace” option on the timeline that Premiere automatically uses the new Cineform codec. So what I did was go into the export settings and made up a user pre-set with the Cineform codec. Then I set up a watch folder. This enables me to drop my files straight from the card into the watch folder wich immediately starts to encode them into Cineform. Everything else is left the same in regard to frame rate size and aspect ect. Now when I bring my files into Premiere they scrub like butter and I still have the re-framing I require.