4K - scale to frame size 1920HD in premier pro

[Sergey Afanasiev]

Hi. Once I heard an advice for 4K editing in premier pro cs6. One guy told me that it is better to create a 1920x1080 sequence. Then if you put a 4K clip on the timeline you'll need to scale the clip to the frame size (1920). The reason: it will be faster for output encoding. I have only one question: will I lose the quality if I scale the footage? I think the quality much better when make a 4K sequence and then make the rescaling to 1920 only when exporting the final result... Or I am wrong?

 

[Bob Gundu]

If you are using Adobe Encode, there is an option checkbox to use Maximum Quality render which I believe will use the 4k data to render. By not using this option, I believe the quality of your output will be the same in both option. Using scale to fit premier runs more efficiently because it only reads the data needed for that resolution.

 

[John Tissavary]

That's exactly how I do it, but I don't render final picture out of Premiere. If, like I do, you go to a grading session in Resolve, Scratch, or other color correction software, then it is necessary to export an XML in the same resolution as final output (i.e. 1080p) for all of the sizing to come across.

 

[Sergey Afanasiev]

Thank you for information!

 

[Jason Ano]

I do the same thing. I have a r3d 1080p sequence with imported 4k footage. I then re-frame and scale via motion as I see fit. For exporting to web I use h.264 VBR 2-pass and have "use max render quality" checked. It takes me about 6-7 hrs to export a 3:30min clip on a core i7 Ivy Bridge/32gb RAM/1gb GPU PC - no red rocket installed.

 

[David Wilson]

I'm not certain about this but David Newman of Cineform in the past has advised against Scale to Frame Size saying that that function threw away resolution. He suggested that it was better to use Video Effects/Motion/Scale which preserves the resolution for cropping in a shot, re-framing etc. 5K footage scales to 40%/ 4K footage scales to 50%. At any rate that is how I have been approaching it for a spell now and it seems to work fine. Perhaps things have changed, however, and Bob is right that using the Maximum Quality checkbox at render makes this approach unnecessary. I should really do some tests to see if there is a difference.

 

[Jason Ano]

He suggested that it was better to use Video Effects/Motion/Scale which preserves the resolution for cropping in a shot, re-framing etc. 5K footage scales to 40%/ 4K footage scales to 50%.

Yep, that's precisely what I do. Under the effects tab, I just do 50% motion/scale for 4k footage and 70% for 3k.

 

[Mike Harrington]

with 5k sequences I have experienced the exact opposite....

I had all my stuff in 1080p sequences..... and when experimenting found the export from a native 5k sequence>1080p was almost 3 times faster then 5k footage in a 1080p sequence...

Don't ask me why....but it was the case....maximum quality was checked in both cases

This was confirmed with about 20.... 3-7 minute sequences over 3 workstations

While this is not 4k....it is worth it to check this out when testing your render times

 

[Elsie N]

Hi. Once I heard an advice for 4K editing in premier pro cs6. One guy told me that it is better to create a 1920x1080 sequence. Then if you put a 4K clip on the timeline you'll need to scale the clip to the frame size (1920). The reason: it will be faster for output encoding. I have only one question: will I lose the quality if I scale the footage? I think the quality much better when make a 4K sequence and then make the rescaling to 1920 only when exporting the final result... Or I am wrong?

Sergey, like you I stay in the natively shot RAW as long as possible. When I've finished my edit, I will render the effects and transitions applied to the timeline and play it back to check footage. I then export it using Adobe Media Encoder as though it were an MPEG2 Blu-Ray and recombine video and audio renders on the Encore timeline. Then I can burn either a Blu Ray or DVD. And while the DVD option re-renders the footage for DVD, most who see it say it looks as good as actual Blu Ray content.