1080 Online / offline advice

[Chris Pickle]

I'm looking for advice / input on offline to online with a feature film we recently shot.

We shot Red 4k, then down converted to 720p for our offline.

I now want to online and I'm actually thinking of just going to 1080 ProRes--because:

- I wonder really how much more info I'll get at 1080 uncompressed or 2k?
- if I go to uncompressed or 2k, I won't be able to manage it myself as well. I'll need to likely go out to another shop
- I don't want to deal with gamma issue when converting to another codec
- If I do 1080 prores I can send to Color quite easily
- I likely won't ever need a film print, but if I do, I wonder if I could get away with using the 1080 prores?
- do you think 1080 uncompressed or 2k is a diminished return?
- If I can manage the 1080 prores myself, I can make last minute adjustments to the edit, whereas if I go to another shop, I'll be much more limited. (I think this is very valuable as we shop the project and get feedback. Changes, even slight, are inevitable)
- the hardware differences between 1080 prores & 2k seem sizable.

Any thoughts out there?

Thanks,
Chris

 

[Igor Ridanovic]

I think that sound reasoning. I always advise clients not to overdo it in their zeal to make the best picture they can. If you know that you will only need a HD master why bother with 2k.

That being said, if you can you should still go back to the original R3D files instead of using the proxies for finishing.

 

[Chris Kenny]

Although grading in Color off of REDLog/CameraRGB ProRes files works remarkably well and tends to be substantially less resource intensive and less glitchy than using Color's native R3D support.

 

[Chris Pickle]

I think that sound reasoning. I always advise clients not to overdo it in their zeal to make the best picture they can. If you know that you will only need a HD master why bother with 2k.

That being said, if you can you should still go back to the original R3D files instead of using the proxies for finishing.

Do you mean grade the R3Ds through colour or go back to the R3Ds and re-export to 1080p (not proxies).

I plan to go back to r3d and try to get a bit more out of them on the way to 1080. I'm guessing it would be helpful to get part way there instead of trying to do it all in Colour.

I hear the new Red apps can get more out of them as well.

Thanks,
Chris

 

[Chris Pickle]

Although grading in Color off of REDLog/CameraRGB ProRes files works remarkably well and tends to be substantially less resource intensive and less glitchy than using Color's native R3D support.

You mean that the 1080 prores down converts work well in Colour?

Thanks,
Chris

 

[M Most]

I plan to go back to r3d and try to get a bit more out of them on the way to 1080.

What "more" do you expect to get? If the material is shot reasonably well, the difference is going to be rather marginal if the original conversions were done properly. Now, if the material was not shot properly to represent what you now want, that might be a different story. But it doesn't sound like that's the case.

 

[Chris Pickle]

What "more" do you expect to get? If the material is shot reasonably well, the difference is going to be rather marginal if the original conversions were done properly. Now, if the material was not shot properly to represent what you now want, that might be a different story. But it doesn't sound like that's the case.

Well I have to go back anyway to re-export to 1080. All I meant was that maybe some tweaks could be done in some colour adjustments, etc. When we did our 720 conversions, we did it pretty quick--basically as dallies.

Thanks,
Chris