VFX workflow question

[Chuck]

So I got a short film shot on the RED and I'm doing some basic sky-replacement. The producers gave me a 1080p edit of the short, and they need sky-replacement. This is my first time working with RED footage, so correct me if I'm wrong... but shouldn't I be working with the 4K files in AE? Does it make a difference?

The finished product is going on Vimeo and Youtube, and is going to be entered in a contest for Diesel Jeans.

Basically I'm wonderin' what the workflow should be:
a) 4K downres to 1080p for edit, then upres for color and VFX
b) 4K downres to 1080p for edit, color, and VFX (because it's for web?)

 

[Kim Frank]

You can of cause go both ways.
But for Sky replacement it sure would be nice to work with the original R3Ds because of resoloution and your ability to adjust the RAW footage to get a nicer Key. You won't want to finish or do your FX in 4K if Finishing format is HD, but as I said it could be helpful to change the settings of the RAW footage.
But I'd say try it with the 1080 version, depending on the footage it should work fine. If not you would need to get back to the original R3Ds

 

[Uli Plank]

Don't scale up and down, it'll reduce quality. For complex compositing, you can use 4K in AEFX CS5. If you have enough RAM, it's working very well now.

If you don't have that, stay in HD.

 

[Chuck Trammel]

Okay cool. Thanks Kim and Uli.

One more question for future reference...how should the overall workflow with AEFX and Color go when working with FCS 3?

Edit 1080p (or 720p) proxies in FCS 3, then go back to R3Ds for AEFX, then to Color? What format should I be in for Color?

Sorry for my RED inexperience! I've worked with every HDSLR and pretty much every handicam, but just breaking into the RED. (which I'm so excited about by the way!)

Thanks

 

[Chuck Trammel]

Also, should note that my "Chuck" username got banned because I didn't read the fine print, and understand that I needed to use my full name!

 

[Uli Plank]

You can edit in any offline format you like in FCP, even DVCPro HD will work. Go back to R3Ds for AE and use them in Color too. Color 1.5 can handle 4K (if needed) and output to ProRes (for Blu-ray or HDTV) or DPX series (for film-out).

 

[Tim Hole]

If it is problematic getting the R3Ds though, you should be able to key out the sky (depending on the quality of the image) as it is effectively a luminance value that you need to work with. Thats if you use colorama with the input phase to luminance and the output phase to ramp grey. It is a easy but effective start.

All I am saying is that although it is not ideal, having a 1080p from 4K origin is a damn good start that will hopefully create a pretty clean 1080p image. I've had to work with a lot worse in the past...

My system at home, which is where I get to play the most, generally will pre-render 10secs of 4K on a i7 12Gb RAM on CS5.