Resolution query - Upscale 2K in 5K project or downscale 5K in 2K project?

[William Kee]

Hello, I'm new to the Adobe Premiere world. I'm currently using a trial version of premiere CC.

If I were editing a project and had the base settings as 5K, If I were to drag 2k and 3k footage onto the timeline and upscaling this footage, would I be degrading the quality, assuming I render out to 1080? In other words, in a project involving 2k, 3k, 4k, and 5k footage, would I be between off (A) setting my sequence settings to 5K and upscaling the 2K etc, or (B) settings my sequence settings to 2K and downscaling the 3k, 4k and 5k?

I've got several 2k, 3k, 4k and 5k 5-minute clips in my timeline and am experiencing (probably inevitable) lag.

Will

 

[Gabe Conroy]

I personally go with the view that it's better to work in a bigger container, so I would go with upscale to 5k. I have not seen any issues with quality, at least with the CUDA scaler.

 

[Robert Ruffo New]

2K timeline = lower quality. Use full 5K timeline, and downscale only at render time. This is a Premiere "almost bug" or at least weird behavior.

 

[Louis Maddalena]

I actually would do it the other way if you're going to 2k deliverable anyway... stick with a 2k timeline this way you're not stretching media to fit a larger frame and loosing quality on it only to bring it back down again to the original size after the quality loss.

 

[Gabe Conroy]

I actually would do it the other way if you're going to 2k deliverable anyway... stick with a 2k timeline this way you're not stretching media to fit a larger frame and loosing quality on it only to bring it back down again to the original size after the quality loss.

How do you figure it loses quality?

 

[Louis Maddalena]

If your starting with something thats 2K and you want to put it into a 5K project you're essentially expanding the 2K resolution to fill the 5K frame, Making 2K larger causes a loss of quality that you would not get it you were brining the 5k down the 2k. If the project was going to be delivered in 4k, thats a different story, but since the project is being delivered in 1080p, its best to bring everything down to 2k first.

 

[Mike Harrington]

This is a good question to have answered....

I have done 5k timelines and inserted 1080p graphics and seen the quality drop on the graphics on a 1080p export.....when compared to being done on a 1080p timeline.

If PPro is debayering from the original source material...there will be no difference in which timeline container it is in

but, I dont think PPro is smart enough to concatenate transforms....i.e. it scales the image up...then back down. (not sure about how it treats r3d material)

That will result in a quality loss.

Would love to be proven wrong, but this has been an issue of confusion for some time.

All my latest stuff has been 5k...with 5k graphics....

 

[Simon Dunne]

2K footage scaled to 5K, then exported to 2K, to me at least is a 2 step scale. Once up, then back down.

5K footage scaled to a 2K timeline, then exported at 2K is a 1 step scale. I'd go for this personally.

 

[Gabe Conroy]

So I decided to actually try it out instead of speculating...I took a 1080p image and scaled it up to 250% in a 4800x2700 Premiere sequence and then exported back out into an uncompressed 1080p file using CUDA. Here are 1:1 crops from the scaled version and the original version (in no particular order):

 

[Mike Harrington]

Combined the 2 images in PS with the difference operation
(increased the white point to show better)

definitely a difference....I would guess PPRO is not concatenating the scaling

the worst pixels are about a 1.17% difference in the unaltered version...

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[Wil Wong]

If you have CG and graphics, they will look better if created in 5K. I would scale up as oppose to down if you have the hard drive space and the computer power. It will be nicer to have a 4K or 5K product in the end if you do have graphics.

 

[Mike Harrington]

Totally agree...if you have the luxury of 5k CG.

But if the intended output is 1080p....no real sense rending 4 times as much data.
A good majority of Hollywood releases are not even doing 4k CG....the hobbit ect