4K to SD

[Linda Barzini]

There is a 48-hour film race coming up in a couple weeks. The final deliverable is a self-contained SD Quicktime file with no proprietary codecs on a DVD.

Does anyone have experience down-rezing R3d footage all the way back down to SD (720x480 at 30 fps) in Premiere Pro or Final Cut. Does it work ok? I would prefer to shoot in 4k instead of 2k or 1k so I could have the option of 4k deliverable to a film festival if I like the project.

 

[Bob Gundu]

You can edit in whatever resolution who want, and deliver in whatever resolution. Shoot 4k, Edit in 4K, spit out a 4K file. Use compressor to deliver an SD resolution file.

 

[Andrew Gentle]

Does anyone have experience down-rezing R3d footage all the way back down to SD (720x480 at 30 fps) in Premiere Pro or Final Cut. Does it work ok? I would prefer to shoot in 4k instead of 2k or 1k so I could have the option of 4k deliverable to a film festival if I like the project.

If you have to deliver at 30 fps, it's probably easiest to set your project timebase to 30 fps as well. Definitely shoot at 4K or higher, though whenever you can because it's better for noise and sharpness. If you shoot at 2K, you crop the sensor but get access to higher shutter speeds so you can safely drop to it if you need to get a tighter field-of-view as a last resort or if you want to shoot slow motion.

 

[Richard Fuller]

Hi,

I would recommend doing testing of different programs downscaling. Not in the same league but I recently had to downsize some HD to SD and FCP 7 produced a very bad image - lots of edge blockiness, whereas after effects produced a much more pleasing image.

Rich.

 

[Sergio Perez]

Yep, be careful with aliasing and even moiré. It happens when downscaling in cheap programs and by the fact the original material has lots of detail. After Effects, Adobe Media encoder have some boxes you can "tick" that help on these issues. I don't know the specifics but would certainly look into that when downscaling. Not sure what compressor does on downscales.

 

[Linda Barzini]

Great ideas. After this, I hope to never have to go back to SD again.

 

[Dustin Dooley]

Bummer they are making you use SD. We just got done with one here in Des Moines and they accepted HD. It was still required on a DVD but as a data file we were still able to deliver in 1080.

 

[Michael Romano]

It's all about your scaler. Do some tests with high detail shots and for gods sake, don't use Final Cut Pro 7 for the conversion. Resolve may be a good choice. RCX has plenty of scaler options as well. You'd be looking for "smoothest" or similar. Best luck!

 

[Bob Gundu]

Bummer they are making you use SD. We just got done with one here in Des Moines and they accepted HD. It was still required on a DVD but as a data file we were still able to deliver in 1080.

Yeah every festival will accept HD. They probably said Data file on DVD and not encoded to DVD.

BTW, Here's a 48 Hour film challenge that I did a while back in 4K.
https://vimeo.com/59811191