"Virtual" Telecine workflow?

[Josh Kirschenbaum]

I am thinking about how to maximize quality while trying to do "virtual" telecine using REDCODE files and Apple's Color (determining whether Color is the best color-correction app for this is a whole OTHER discussion!)

Anyway- my current thinking / workflow is this:

EDITORIAL STAGE -> Use compressor to convert the 2K reference Quicktimes from REDALERT into 1920x1080 ProRes quicktimes to edit in FCP. I'm using ProRes at 1080p because I need client monitoring through our Decklink cards, and I don't have Multibridges in every room to do 2K.

That part works great -I've already done some tests, and it looks good- you get a slight letterbox on the 2048x1024 frames, but that's okay.

Here's where it gets a little confusing. When I color correct - I need a balance of speed and quality. I'd like to make 4K DPX files from the original REDCODE files, but I don't think I'll be able to get 24FPS out of those (I'm using a 14-drive Xserve RAID).

I thought about creating cropped 1920x1080 DPX files from REDCINE for Color, but if I need to re-size or repo, it's another round-trip through REDCINE.

Obviously at the back-end, I'll be rendering out a cropped 1920x1080 final, so that isn't an issue...but it would be nice to be working with as much data as possible inside Color...

I guess my question is - has anybody started to work out this process? I see there's a lot of discussions about SCRATCH and the REDCODE files...but it doesn't look like Apple is totally supporting full 4K REDCODE inside Color yet...

It's so fun working on the bleeding edge!

thanks in advance,
j.

 

[mikeburton]

As far as I know Apple's Color won't support 4K. You can do 2K through Color and 1920x1080 but that won't help your situation of resizing etc. If you are looking at Color as a complete conforming tool I would rethink that scenario. What you could do is use After Effects or Shake as your resizing tool. Shake and Final Cut Pro have a decent integration. However since final cut pro won't support 4K you can't go back and forth between apps, starting from fcp. So, you could render out 4K DPX files for specific shots you want to resize, effect etc and then render out of Shake at any resolution you like. Or if you don't want to go through that many steps, work in 2K or 1080HD.