Prores 4444 workflow

[mikeburton]

That is incorrect. A DPX file use 32 bits per pixel. That means that the size of the file in bits would be 4096x2304x32, or approx. 302,000,000. In bytes, that would be 302000000/8, or approx. 36 megabytes. Per second, that would be 36x24, or approximately 864 MB/sec. That would be the base rate you would need. Since all storage systems have overhead, you usually figure to need at least 1GB/sec to play it reliably.



The data rate for 4K Prores 4444 is similar to that of uncompressed HD (which is roughly 1.4Gb). Many systems are more than capable of handling that. As for "advantages," that depends on what you're doing. If you're doing color grading, it often helps to have the deeper bit depth to allow for more precision. If you're doing visual effects, it helps considerably to have more information for matte extractions and accurate rotoscoping. If you're doing basic creative editing, I would argue that you don't need 4K at all, and that it really only serves a purpose during final finishing, which of course depends on what kind of pipeline you've set up. Some people here seem to want a pipeline that eliminates the concept of offline and online. Others - including nearly all major finishing facilities and essentially anyone doing studio level work - never do that because the level of perfection required in that environment and the need for integrating material from many different sources (original photography, multiple VFX vendors, etc.) while maintaining a consistent color pipeline makes working with uncompressed RGB files (usually in the form of DPX or EXR) almost imperative.

I agree with all the concepts of offline/online workflow pretty much everything else you mentioned above. I would just add that in smaller films that do have quite a bit of VFX work but perhaps not as much as a 100mil tentpole blockbuster, that finishing (not offlining) in 4K ProRes4444 is perhaps a good choice for bandwidth purposes. And since you'd be transcoding from RAW to 4K ProRes4444 its conceivable that DPX's could then be created for the VFX vendors and then output back to the Color Facility at ProRes4444 maintaining a fairly "lossless" to the eye delivery in which color consistency could be maintained.
It works in Television as i'm sure you are well aware, especially when the show shoots Alexa to ProRes4444 and then delivery to the vendors needs to maintain this same workflow ie ProRes4444 Master for grading. Only difference being the resolution and file size of course is typically 1080p instead of 4K. Oh, and you're not debayering anything but we are supposing with a RED RAW Captured show the debayer is happening "correctly" in the dailies process or by the finishing facility creating ProRes444 for mastering. Of course, this is all about maintaining the biggest bang for the hardware buck and not necessarily taking into account the essential fact you mentioned that a deeper bit depth will achieve better results for keying, roto work and color grading. BUT, the visual difference in the end result is often not going to be felt by the audience and hence the ProRes4444 workflow is a less expensive, best bang for the buck workflow alternative to DPX where VFX is a factor which is a pretty large percentage of most shows.
In my expereince with using a ProRes4444 4K pipe you need approximately 350MB's sustained to maintain enough IO bandwidth and between 1,000MB's-1,200MB's for 4K (4096x2304) DPX.

 

[Marc Wielage]

on yahoo news recently an article stated: most major companies suffer a signifiant data loss every 2 years on average. i can believe it, people need to really save their assets and avoid one drive solutions like the plague. end of rant, and hope i drive home the point, mechanics fail and drives are a time bomb

Although... I've seen RAIDS fail when the RAID controller card died and took out all the drives with it. And in our case, since it was 16TB of data, it took 48 hours​ to do a restore. Our clients were ready to kill us by the second day... not fun.

If you're doing basic creative editing, I would argue that you don't need 4K at all, and that it really only serves a purpose during final finishing, which of course depends on what kind of pipeline you've set up. Some people here seem to want a pipeline that eliminates the concept of offline and online. Others - including nearly all major finishing facilities and essentially anyone doing studio level work - never do that because the level of perfection required in that environment and the need for integrating material from many different sources (original photography, multiple VFX vendors, etc.) while maintaining a consistent color pipeline makes working with uncompressed RGB files (usually in the form of DPX or EXR) almost imperative.

This is all very true -- people reading this thread should listen to Mike here.

Note that even the current Hobbit films are still being edited in Avid 24fps DNxHD, not in 4K (and not even in 3D or 48fps), because of the massive amounts of data and the need to quickly and efficiently make changes. Once they get close to the finish line for each reel, then they start swapping out the media and going with 4K files. And even then, because so much of the film is VFX, I don't think the R3Ds will buy them anything, since so much of every shot is digitally generated, enhanced, or changed.

I think there will be a day when 4K is trivial to edit on a laptop, but we're not there yet. Bear in mind that only 10 years ago, it was considered fairly incredible to be able to drag along multiple streams of HD at one time and edit those on a fairly heavy-duty desktop computer. Now, you can do this on a $499 computer fairly easily.

 

[Blair Thornton]

I think there will be a day when 4K is trivial to edit on a laptop, but we're not there yet.

I suspect we're getting close now actually, and nobody realizes how close. It's possible to build a portable 6Tb SSD RAID of 3Tb/sec (at an extreme cost I might add) and if you add a Red Rocket-X in your expansion chassis with that Raid, you could offload debayering and transcoding from that laptop's CPU to make 4K editing efficient.

 

[mikeburton]

I suspect we're getting close now actually, and nobody realizes how close. It's possible to build a portable 6Tb SSD RAID of 3Tb/sec (at an extreme cost I might add) and if you add a Red Rocket-X in your expansion chassis with that Raid, you could offload debayering and transcoding from that laptop's CPU to make 4K editing efficient.

But, what needs to be taken into account is cost to performance ratio here. It's not cost effective to buy a tool like the RR-x for an editorial gig as well as 4K monitoring and bandwidth requirements etc. especially because you'd have to do it for the assistants as well as the editor. As an owner operator then maybe it makes sense to you but on shows that are colaborative it doesn't make financial sense yet. And it's always a question of cost versus performance.

 

[Blair Thornton]

But, what needs to be taken into account is cost to performance ratio here. It's not cost effective to buy a tool like the RR-x for an editorial gig as well as 4K monitoring and bandwidth requirements etc. especially because you'd have to do it for the assistants as well as the editor. As an owner operator then maybe it makes sense to you but on shows that are colaborative it doesn't make financial sense yet. And it's always a question of cost versus performance.

So true indeed.

 

[Nick Shaw]

Prores 4444 is like 1,131 Mb/sec in 24p, what drive do you have and how can it not drop frames?

1.13 Mb/s is about correct for 4K ProRes444 (no 4th four as there's no alpha) but remember that's only 1.13*1000/8 MB/s = 141.25 MB/s
Pretty much anything that isn't a single spinning disk can manage that these days
It's easy to confuse Megabits and Megabytes, and think 1.13Mb/s is a huge data rate. It isn't.

 

[M Most]

1.13 Mb/s is about correct for 4K ProRes444 (no 4th four as there's no alpha) but remember that's only 1.13*1000/8 MB/s = 141.25 MB/s
Pretty much anything that isn't a single spinning disk can manage that these days
It's easy to confuse Megabits and Megabytes, and think 1.13Mb/s is a huge data rate. It isn't.

Not by today's standards. But it is more than you can get out of a single spinning drive, and requires at least an SSD or an array to sustain.

 

[Nick Shaw]

Not by today's standards. But it is more than you can get out of a single spinning drive, and requires at least an SSD or an array to sustain.

Absolutely. That's exactly what I said.

Pretty much anything that isn't a single spinning disk can manage that these days

A two drive RAID 0 connected via eSATA, USB 3.0 or Thunderbolt would do it.

 

[Marc Wielage]

But, what needs to be taken into account is cost to performance ratio here. It's not cost effective to buy a tool like the RR-x for an editorial gig as well as 4K monitoring and bandwidth requirements etc. especially because you'd have to do it for the assistants as well as the editor.

And remember there are tons of 4K cameras coming out nowadays. A busy editor, colorist, or post house is going to need to invest in hardware and a pipeline that can handle several different kinds of 4K footage. Red isn't the only player here, and I wouldn't throw a client out just because they had Sony 4K or Canon 4K footage.