4k finish?

[Christopher Barrett]

I've never had reason to deliver higher than HD. So.... I have no idea what the process would be. What would the appropriate (or most common) formats/settings be? Generally speaking of course... Just curious.

Thanks,
CB

 

[David Battistella]

Options are:

4k DPX sequence from resolve, Apple color, base light, Pablo, discreet products.

4k QT out of premiere

4k file sequence or qt prores 4444 out of FCP X

Its easy.

Rough cut with rendered media.
Relink to r3d in grading software of your choice
render out a 4k sequence to the format you need.

You can create a 4k master and then extract your versions from that now.

David

 

[Brad Allen]

Depends on where you are going I guess Chris. The only time I can foresee needing to go higher than HD (for me) is for cinema. In which case it's usually a DPX sequence which I then convert into a DCP.

If you're just looking for ways to export 4k out of Premiere though; ProRes, DPX, Tiff and Cineform would be the main culprits in my mind

 

[Christopher Barrett]

My workflow is typically Pemier-> Resolve -> Premier. Drag that you have to transcode between Resolve and Premier. Even if I'm delivering HD for festivals on the personal projects, I like the idea of taking it to 4k for archiving.

Thanks for the help!

 

[jake blackstone]

Drag that you have to transcode between Resolve and Premier.

Can I ask why you think this? I assume you're on a Mac or is it a Windows system?

 

[Phil Holland]

It will really depend on your client's needs, but for features DPX output is pretty standard for digital delivery and to push to a laser recorder.

 

[Subhadip Sen]

There are no shortage of options. There are quite literally hundreds of VFW codecs on Windows which are unrestricted to spatial resolution. Of course, DPX is still the industry standard. Premiere Pro's biggest shortcoming is its lack of OpenEXR which is fast becoming my prime format for 4K+ masters. I find ZIP compression (lossless) works best with digital acquisition and files are much smaller than DPX. EXR is what I use off Vegas or Resolve. Here's hoping CS6 brings in OpenEXR.

If you want a quick 4K viewable file out of Premiere Pro then H.264 is an option too. Choose H.264, go for the HDTV 1080p preset. First thing you do then is choose Level as 5.1. That unlocks 4096x2304 at upto 27fps. If you are shooting 30p, 4096x2048 is possible. Level 5.2 gets you 4K at 60fps, but CS5.x doesn't support that natively. ~80-120 Mbps is excellent quality. Of course, the best compressed 4K is using DebugMode Frameserver to X264. I am amazed how good 4K X264 files look at ~16 Mbps.

A warning about 4K H.264 files - some players like VLC or Quicktime choke up as they are not optimized for Level 5+. The key is DXVA accelerated players - I have tried it on a $350 AMD E-350 netbook and it plays just fine! Also works with VDPAU players for Linux distros. Haven't found a reliable solution for Mac OS X though. I don't like VLC, at all, but here's hoping inbound VLC 2.0 clears up L5+ support. I know VLC 2.0 uses DXVA on Windows, hopefully there's some optimizations for the OS X version too.

 

[Marc Wielage]

I've never had reason to deliver higher than HD. So.... I have no idea what the process would be. What would the appropriate (or most common) formats/settings be? Generally speaking of course... Just curious.

I would ask your distributor for the specific delivery specifications on what they require, for theatrical, home video, and so on. They may have specific file format and picture size requirements, and it's possible to underestimate these (or get them wrong) more often than you think.

As I often say, the sound requirements are even more convoluted than the picture requirements. Get it in writing, get your picture locked, then worry how to get there once you have specs in hand. As Michael Cioni says in his excellent Reducation Post classes: "worry about the caboose of the train first -- that's where you end up. Once you know where that is, you can go to the head of the train and plan on how to get there."