Oops...does this rendering option in Redcine matter?

[Sean]

So I have 4K 16x9 R3D files. I take them into Redcine to transcode them to DNxHD 1080p. But I accidentally selected the 3K 16x9 project type in Redcine rather than 4K 16x9. As usual, I scale all clips to fit the new project size. And then I render out to DNxHD 1080p.

But is there going to be a loss of quality because I selected and scaled the project to 3K 16x9 rather than 4K 16x9 when I'm finishing at 1080? I mean, maybe Redcine doesn't even really "do" anything when you change the projects to different resolutions, other than show them differently in the window? I'm really not sure. If there's no difference in quality, I don't have to re-render everything!

 

[Emery Wells]

What you should do is set your project to match your output. So if you are rendering out 1080p then you should set your project to 1080. I havent tested this in a long time but in early RC builds, using the output to do your scaling was not only slower but seemed to be lower quality.

 

[Sean]

Oh wow. I didn't know that! Thanks. I was setting the project to match the R3D and then using the output I wanted (in this case 1080p). Wow. Okay, well I will try to use a project that matches output from now on. Faster renders would be nice. Not sure I'm noticing any difference in quality...though maybe it's subtle?

 

[Emery Wells]

Like I said, i havent tested this since the very first RC builds so Im not sure how things may have changed but both in RedCine and Scratch we set our project to whatever our output is going to be which is how it is intended to be worked with. If you set your project up to 4k but intend to output 1080p, you are not looking at an image that is representative of your output. Everything from panning and scanning to TC burnin, etc is pretty much null.

 

[Ben Holmes]

What Emery said - set up the project to 1080. Also, a half debayer should be perfectly good quality when scaling from 4K to 1080p.