Resolution Loss when rendering to other formats for VFX, Grading

[Michael McCaffrey]

I have a bunch of .R3D media shot on the Scarlet-X at 4k. I need to give the edit to a VFX guy working in Nuke, and then get them back for Grading in Resolve. I am having a difficult time because every time I or the VFX guy render out the R3D's to any other format, beit .OpenEXR, .DPX, ProRes 4444, and even Uncompressed Quicktime or Uncompressed YUV 10-bit, etc etc, we also lose noticeable sharpness in the image when rendered to HD or even 4K. The rendered images at HD are being compared to the 4K RAW at HD on our HD monitor and toggling back and forth between clips. So both clips are on an HD sequence and both clips are displaying on the HD monitor.. but because of the quality loss, going from RAW to anything else, I'm not sure what the best workflow will be for us. Any ideas? The average Joe will probably not notice much difference, but it's just such a disappointment to have to Grade and master with soft HD clips that to me, do not look sharp. Looking for some help here! Thanks!

Update:
I tried DNxHD HQX 10-bit and surprisingly there was no degradation. It matched the original raw file in resolution perfectly, and that was at 1080p. I then tried DNxHR 10-bit at 4K, dropped it into my 1080p timeline in Premiere (same as before), and now the DNxHR file is soft like the others. And this was the 4k DNxHR.. shouldn't it be sharper if anything? I dont get why the 1080p files look sharper than the 4k files downscaled to 1080p.

 

[Jaimy Soares]

Premiere uses while displaying a optimized setting. Try high quality playback with a full debayer in your preview monitor. Also exporting out of premiere and look again with a normal media player.
Hope that helps.

 

[Michael McCaffrey]

Premiere uses while displaying a optimized setting. Try high quality playback with a full debayer in your preview monitor. Also exporting out of premiere and look again with a normal media player.
Hope that helps.

Thanks. I think the blurryness was due to the 1080p signal being scaled up to the 4K TV (even though the TV dimensions were set to HD). That is why the 1080p version looked soft, while the 4k RAW file at 1080p looked sharp. I tried viewing it on some other 1920x1080 monitors and the HD DPX files look sharp so thats a relief. We are looking at getting a HP DreamColor Z24x for grading. The 1:1 viewing on a 1920x1200 monitor will give us a lot better estimation of the actual image we're working with.