Sony Raw 4k to FCP X?

[Michael Garber]

What about Adobe Media Encoder?

Michael Garber
5th Wall – a post production company
Blog: GARBERSHOP
My Moviola Webinar on Cutting News in FCP X

[Michael Sanders]

I’m pretty sure you just download the plugin from Sony or use their Content Browser s/w..

I know HD XAVC works perfectly in X but haven’t tried 4K yet. There were reports about green flashes on the import but that was supposedly fixed in 10.0.9

Michael Sanders
London Based DP/Editor

[Francois Jean]

Hi Bret,
I do not understand why it’s not feasible to make a 4k size ProRes file instead of a 1080p and do as intended …

all the best
ZAP

[Jeremy Garchow]

https://www.sonycreativesoftware.com/rawviewer

[Michael Sanders]

Ahhh RAW.. sorry, missed the RAW bit – 4K XAVC is through the plugin.

[Jeremy Garchow]

That’s correct for XAVC and other broadcast formats.

XAVC is not the same as Sony RAW

You will have to transcode Sony RAW using the viewer I linked to earlier, preferably ProRes 4×4.

[Bret Williams]

The viewer only exports 1080p.

[Bret Williams]

I take that back, it’ll do 4k in DPX or OpenEXR. But I don’t think that helps me.

[Jeremy Garchow]

It would be best to use a traditional “offline/online” and conform your edit (you have the Proxies already) in DaVinci or Pr/Ae, depending on how you’d like to handle it.

You cut just as you’d want the pictures framed, then use the 4k RAW during the conform to gain back the full pixel resolution. If you can, I’d try and key from the RAW, so going from FCPX to Pr/Ae might be the best bet.

If not, you can use DaVinci to bake ProRes 4×4 movies and key from those.

Jeremy

[Bret Williams]

I guess if I need the extra definition that’s what I’ll do. I’ve played a little with using Media Encoder to export as 4k ProRes. Problem is the color isn’t right. Too saturated. But the resolution is there.

My workflow has been to edit the cuts of the AVCHD in X. Then export a ProRes file of the edit sans key as ProRes, and a file with key as a ProRes 4444. That gives me the ability in AE to switch between the already keyed file from FCP X, or key with KeyLight in AE. Once again, Keylight is the clear winner. X gives more of a clean cut matte, but at the expense of fine edges, whereas Keylight pulls out the details of hair and motion, but it’s hard to get the matte completely white. Leaves minor bits of transparency at times that can generally be dealt with with a grunge matte if necessary.

And now that I have a 4k ProRes file, I can “online” in AE by replacing the shots above. But since I exported them from X as a cut, there’s no real data to automatically sync them up. Just scale the 4k to 50% and match them back by hand. But it’s just 4-5 shots per video (4). Not too bad.

So perhaps resolve will have the correct color control. I’ll give it a shot. Oh, wait, I have resolve lite. No 4k output there! Not going to pay a grand just to export some shots. I knew there was a reason I wasn’t using resolve.