Advantages to coloring in 4K?

[Scott McL]

I am in a battle with my colorist who is working as a favor.
What are the advantages to coloring in 4K even if we plan on doing a 2K finish?
He says none.
I say even if we finish in 2K it is better to color in 4K.
He claims time/workflow issues.

 

[Alexander Ibrahim]

You are both right. My advice- your colorist is working for free. Take their advice.

Yes, coloring in 4K is better than 2K, if nothing else you are future proofing your footage. Also, any noise you might generate should be finer "grain."

2K is MUCH faster to work in. 2K is much more practical for a number of workflow issues. A lot of feature films for theatrical distribution finish at 2K.

Monitoring 4K is very expensive. Right now I think we are talking at least $100,000 USD for a projector that can handle 4K. If you can't pay the colorist, I bet you can't rent a 4K monitoring setup. Why are you finishing 4K when you can't reliably monitor 4K?

Speed is a huge issue. Even with a RED Rocket™ there aren't a lot of applications that can work quickly with 4K footage. I think that as I am writing you have to finish on Assimilate to take advantage of Rocket in color correction and finishing. Does your colorist even have a Rocket?

How are you going to deliver your 4K colored picture? Are any of your venues for distribution even asking for 4K?

If you really want 4K, then offer some money, and see if that moves things along.

Then again, if you have a use for 4K at some point in the future, you can always color the picture again on a 4K system. Its not like you are hurting the picture by doing a 2K color pass now and revisiting it later.

Also, 2K looks great.

You could also compromise. How about you finish 2K and then any footage that presents a problem that can be attributed to working in 2K, such as noise, be regraded at 4K.

Regards

 

[Charles Angus]

Just be sure to do a full-res debayer and high-quality scale from 4k to 2k, and you should be fine.

 

[Scott McL]

Thanks for the above replies. Definitely clears things up. A 2K RAW file color should be fine.