Mixing 4K and 3K in Final Cut

[Julio Quintana]

All right. I've been searching REDUSER for an hour and I give up. I have 4K and 3K footage in a 23.98 timeline. I am editing with the _M proxies for both. I want to send to Color but I know that Color maxes the 3K stuff at 1.5K. Is there a way to import XMLs or EDLs into REDCINE? REDCINE-X maybe? I plan on finishing as 1080p ProRes HQ.
I know that Rubber Monkey and Crimson can do this, but I'm looking for free options first.

Thanks in advance.

Julio Q.

 

[James Press]

Try Clipfinder...http://www.daun.ch/software/

 

[Julio Quintana]

I have Clipfinder, but I don't understand how that does what I'm asking. When I do File>Import Clips from FCP XML, it doesn't seem to be bringing in my edited sequence, but rather an assortment of raw clips all over the place. What am I doing wrong?

 

[Julio Quintana]

Anyone?

 

[Ravi Kiran]

BUMP

We've just shot a music video in 4K 2:1 and 3K 2:1, and I too would like to know how to edit 2:1 footage in FCP and then grade in Color using the R3Ds without knocking the 3K footage down to 1.5K with the H_proxies. I already know how to use Clipfinder and ColorFixer to link transcoded footage to the R3D files.

 

[Ben Brainerd]

The key here is that while FCP knocks 4K/3K down to half-size, Color 1.5 does not. (At least with 4K. I'm kinda assuming with 3K, since I haven't tried it.)

Basically, what you're doing with Clipfinder is reconnecting to the Proxies from your offline prores files or what have you. So you can conform to half-res proxies (or whatever ones you want), then send the project to Color and grade in 4K.

There are some extra steps involved, but the basic thing to remember is that just because FCP can't handle 4K doesn't mean Color can't.

Now, if you're working FCS2 (FCP6/Color1) you're SOL. Kinda. You can render everything to DPX/ProRes/Whatever via Clipfinder, but it can be tricky. You're either going to render the entire clip for each bit of used media, or you're going to work with subclips (AKA just what you used) and have to do some manual reconforming.

Crimson will do what Julio originally wanted to do, which is take an edited sequence into RedCine. Monkey Extract will render your edited sequence without needing to go into RedCine. At this point, there isn't a free option that will do everything. Trust me, I've looked.

 

[Ravi Kiran]

The key here is that while FCP knocks 4K/3K down to half-size, Color 1.5 does not. (At least with 4K. I'm kinda assuming with 3K, since I haven't tried it.)

Basically, what you're doing with Clipfinder is reconnecting to the Proxies from your offline prores files or what have you. So you can conform to half-res proxies (or whatever ones you want), then send the project to Color and grade in 4K.

If I understand correctly, I could hook up to the H proxies in Clipfinder, bring that into FCP, bring that into Color, and then change the grading proxy to the full proxies?

 

[Ben Brainerd]

That's correct, assuming you've got Color 1.5

 

[Ravi Kiran]

That's correct, assuming you've got Color 1.5

I'm upgrading to the new FCS this weekend. With this workflow, are the render times out of Color much longer than doing a H proxy grade? I transcoded the footage at Pro Res, thinking that we'd grade in Color using the H proxies, but at the time I didn't realize we had so much 3K footage. Now I'm wondering if we may be better off transcoding to ProResHQ and color correcting those files instead of going to the R3Ds.