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So anyway, 4K
Skipping the hype and (yes) the debate, I know that a number of you are ACTUALLY WORKING with 4K and some 5K right now. What’s the story?
— Are you working with it in native 4K/5k?
— Aside from the frame dimensions, what format?
— What’s your distribution? (theatrical, tv, non-broadcast, corporate, etc.)
— How much did it cost for you to upgrade your systems to handle 4K/5K (computers, storage, etc.)
If you’re not working with 4K/5K, don’t believe in it, hate it, whatever — please, on another thread. The fact that *I’m* trying to stay on topic should tell you that I’m trying to go in a different direction than usual…but I think it’s important to those other threads to START with the experience of people who are ACTUALLY doing it.
For the rest of you, if you ARE interested, will you be looking at NAB? What will you need to find in order to make you act?
Again, if you’re NOT interested, please save that for another thread.
Although what the hell do I know? This forum has thrived on chaos. So take my request under advisement, and do with it what you normally do with my requests. LOL But I honestly am more interested in stories from the trenches than missives from the pulpits. This time. LOL
Best,
Tim
Tim Wilson
Editor-in-Chief
Creative COW -
44 Replies
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I’m working with 5.6-6k Red Dragon material for a theatrical doc. I love the camera and the extra DR, sensitivity, and resolution.
I’m presently in the early stages of a multi-shoot production. At those resolutions I transcoded to DNxHD 175 to make post workable with existing hardware rather than spending a lot of money to upgrade for little additional return. I don’t expect to conform and grade for another 9 months or so. The offline online workflow seems to work well in Premiere and I expect it will be even better when it comes time to go online.
David
https://AllinOneFilms.com -
David, what about the final product? What will be your resolution for projection?
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I should also mention that we put the Dragon on an octocopter and shot a lot of aerials even though we had an Epic that came with the copter. The additional resolution above 4 and 5k allows stabilization and cropping without resolution loss.
David
https://AllinOneFilms.com -
Working with native 4K. RED Scarlet.
Distribution: corporate.Format: R3D acquisition,, dimensions 3840×2160, finishing in Prores and H.264 4K.
How much did it cost us?
Well, we were working with very old (2006) Mac Pro’s and a system of SATA disks connected trough eSATA and enclosures.
We upgraded to Retina Macbook Pro’s and a Mac Mini Server with Pegasus Promise RAIDS. We had also transitioned to a completely FCPX workflow.
Most of our work is HD, but our company is doing a couple of tests in 4K, and also finishing some promo’s and stuff that we shot with the RED in 4K.
We had to do the upgrade anyway, 4K didn’t change anything. For us it was a transition to new hardware (those 2006 Mac Pro’s were getting too old), a server-system instead of local disks (sometimes we connect the Pegasus Promise raids locally trough Thunderbolt though, but mostly trough a Mac Mini Server and 10GB Ethernet card) and upgrading to new software (FCPX).To be honest, working with R3D and finishing in 4K is really easy if you have FCPX, a retina Macbook Pro and a quick raid.
We often make Proxies inside FCPX just for quick editing, and being able to quickly skim trough material, but even working with the native R3D’s is not difficult.
Doing color correction inside FCPX and rendering out in 4K, it’s not *difficult* at all. That being said, until now – this will change in the future – we just use our Scarlet and 4K for quick promo material, so no long form material in 4K as of yet.
I don’t have any experience with 5K either.We have a 4K Philips 65″ screen. When we view our 4K Prores or H.264 on it, really sometimes seems like looking trough a window.
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Most 4/5k work for me has been RED Epic and grading R3D after the edit was done with either DNxHD or ProRes HD files. I have just gone halves in the new Blackmagic 4k camera so looking forward to cinema raw.
To handle grunt I built my own rack mount i7 WIN7 PC with onboard RAID5 (12TB) which is fast. SSD system drive, NVIDIA GTX680 card, 64 gig RAM and no red rocket and I just get 25fps in da Vinci at half res. Output is still to an 1920 x 1080 monitor for grading. Looking into the 4k Decklink card and hoping for some more 4k OLED options that are affordable and available soon. Mostly I want to be able to work in 4k for future proofing, reframing for 2K/ HD. More important that 4K is raw workflows for grading.
Output is to Pr for finishing timeline and usually downscaling to either 2k for DCP or 1920 x 1080 for broadcast. Never been asked for a full 4k output yet.
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Yeah, I was working as a freelancer for a broadcast network. All their original shows were shooting 5k RED. The network was broadcasting in 720p but they asked that we build the master at 4k so that in the future they could un-archive the shows and play them back at 4k. Like someone said earlier in this thread with FCPX I just worked in HD 1080p. When I was ready for output it was a simple as duplicating the online project and changing the project resolution to 4k. Checking it and exporting. Easy peasy.
It’s much easier now then it was when the industry went from SD to HD. I was still an AE watching all the senior editors go crazy over mixed frame rates and up resing. Now it seems its just a matter of storage space for those 4k files. With the nMP’s It doesn’t even require that much of a system upgrade.
Jordan Mena | Editor | Colorist | Producer
Los Angeles, CA
jordanmena.com -
I cut a 4K RED spot last summer on an i7 iMac. No issues back then other than slow renders since we didn’t convert to Prores. Ran on a Thunderbolt GRAID. Finished spot aired at 1080p.
I purchased a GH4 for my corporate and personal work and will continue to use it just as I have been with the GH2/3… except now everything will be “4K-ier” ;). GH4 shoots 100mbps h264 @ 4K. This work will go to the web. More than likely in HD for corporate for now.
When the work warrants it, I’ll upgrade. But for now, I’ll most likely keep my current drives and see how long I can “suffer.” I have been purchasing $100 1TB USB drives for most projects and everything has been fine as they run at 90MB/s.
I expect to get a Mac Pro in the future-future. Not sure when I’ll go with 4K monitoring. Depends on what’s announced by Apple and, being completely practical, what I can fit on my desk. My edit suite might need a re-think by that point.
Cost for initial upgrade of the camera is 1700 + 250 per SD Card that can support 4k.
8-Core Mac Pro + Client Monitor + Color Grading monitor + Additional drives: Priceless.Michael Garber
5th Wall – a post production company
Blog: GARBERSHOP
My Moviola Webinar on Color Correcting in FCP X
My Moviola Webinar on Cutting News in FCP X -
In my conversations with LA based facilities catering to television finishing, that mastering at 4K is an additional 25%-30% more budget wise, but would be at last 100% or more if they had to do a 4K master down the road. This is due to additional cost of archival retrieval from all different service providers, and trying to remember why some things were done a certain way for some processes (mainly VFX), etc. It was also noted that the budget increase was when working with R3D and XAVC – other 4K formats, even ProRes are big files and the costs is in moving them, storing them, etc.
But you will see more 4K finishing because it is just easier to do it now when you look at what it takes to do it later.
Michael
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I have been cutting 5K Epic files for commercials. Finished to HD for distribution. Since this company uses FCP Legacy, we down-convert everything for edit and then link back for color and finish. The director loves to re-position in post, so Epic is his friend ( I would rather see him move the camera or change the lens, but I am just an editor…).
Scott Witthaus
Senior Editor/Post Production Supervisor
1708 Inc./Editorial
Professor, VCU Brandcenter
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