Novice needs some advice

[SF Geek]

4K is worth it, for all the reasons listed above (aside from the contrast / exposure discussion).

RedRushes should not be taking 48 hours to convert about 115 clips to 1080/2K ProRes. Obviously it depends on clip size / take length, but 4K 24fps into 2K ProRes should take about 3X real-time to convert on a current 8-core Mac Pro @ 3GHz.

So if it took 48 hours to process the 4K into 2K on a shoot, that tells me that you're dealing with any one or a combination of the following:

* You shot at least 12 hours or even 15+ hours of footage.
* Your computer and/ or drives are really slow.
* You have a problem with your computer and/ or drives used for the conversion.

3x real time, at full quality debayer? I haven't even come close to your 12x real time that you stated later. I'm not a computer programmer, but I'd be pleasently surprised to get even 12x real time out of an 8core Mac and so would my clients. Please reiterate that you didn't do a misprint.

 

[Jeff Kilgroe]

Sorry, I was kinda typing that up fast. 3X is for half quality (high), which is most often just fine for transcodes of 4K to 2K, even for final destinations of Blu-Ray or or other HD delivery, even some use for film-out. IMO, half-high to ProRes makes the most sense for that workflow, full debayer to ProRes can often be a little silly.

With a full debayer, I'm getting quite a bit slower, but I haven't benchmarked it based on single systems. The last project I shot and processed via full debayer from 4K to 2K DPX, There was about 2 hours of footage. I split the load across 5 systems. Didn't benchmark it, but I started it about 6:00PM and it was done when I returned about 7:30 the next morning.

Just playing with it on my 3.2GHz 8-core while typing this, I'm getting around 0.75fps. Or about 32X real-time. I guess I hadn't looked at it that way before, so for 2 hours of footage, that's over 60 hours of processing on this one system.

Sorry if I mislead, the full debayer is a lot more involved and typically not necessary. It's not something I would never do for a real project if I only had a single system to process on or unless I had lots of time to let it grind away. And, in that respect, have never attempted.

 

[SF Geek]

No problem. I thought I was doing something wrong. The resolution is fine for half debayer but if you're stretching the latitude, I find that I get less noise from a full debayer than with half.