Please Help This Poor Newbie .... Mixing 2k w 4k issues

[Christian Simpson]

Hi all, I recently shot a music video that combined 4k clips with tons of 2k 100FPS clips as well.

I transcoded all the clips to ProRes Proxy for easy editing and the edit is now locked and ready to be graded.

Now things are getting weird. The FCP Whitepaper said to create a 2k sequence to reconform the original clips which I did in preparation to send to color. My 2k slow mo clips are still 2k and my 4k clips are 1920x1080. So I send that over to Color.

My question is how do I setup Color, in particular in the project settings tab and user preferences tab in the setup room?

Initially I set the resolution at 2k and when I sent everything back to FCP all the clips had a black frame around them. It's like Color sent them back 1920x1080 instead of 2k.

Then I tried to change the resolution to 3840x2160 (we shot 4k HD) and everything SEEMS fine. When I look at the sequence resolution in FCP it also says 3840x2160 so my question is, Isn't that scaling my 2k clips up big time? Normally I can tell when something is scaled up but this footage looks so good I can't even really tell.

Please help ....

 

[Alexander Ibrahim]

Everything you described is what I expect.

The problem seems to be that you did not decide what resolution you wanted to finish at before shooting. The time to decide what you want to shoot is before shooting starts- so you are composing for the right format, and

One choice is to output all your normal speed (4k HD, aka QuadHD) footage as 2K from REDCine. In this way your overcranked and normal speed footage will match. The downside is that you'll crop your frame top and bottom for all normal speed footage- which is probably the bulk of your material. This option retains the maximum image data through post.

The other choice is to crop your overcranked footage to 1080p. Again, your footage will match. This time your overcranked footage will be cropped on the left and right to match the 1080p aspect. This option throws away some frame from your overcranked material. Of course it will crop the least amount of footage in terms of runtime.

Either way you are going to have to make some compromises in terms of framing. Something is getting cropped somewhere.

Next time plan your finish before your shoot, and acquire all the material with an eye to the finish. Then, when you are in REDCine you can crop and output so that everything already starts lining up for your post before you start your edit.