Processing - Best Practices

[Emery Wells]

Im trying to wrap my head around the difference between resampling your image in the project/shot tab VS using quicktime to do the scaling in the export tab.

For example, if you shot 4k 16:9 (4096 x 2304) and were exporting to 1080p quicktime, you have two primary workflows:

1. Set your project to 4k, do not modify your scaling under the 'shot' tab, and set your export to 1920 x 1080 in the export tab.

2. Set your project to HD 1080, use the scaling option in the 'shot' tab to 'fit width,' and again set the quicktime export settings to HD 1080.

One would presume that option one would yield a higher quality image. It certainly takes much longer to export using workflow 1. However, another factor comes into play which is the quality selection (full, standard, draft).

It would be great if Graeme or Rob could explain the processing chain in REDCINE.

[SF Geek]

I would like to hear what they say about this as well. I'm sure it's been discussed here, but is there any way to look at a frame in RedCine at Full/high resolution?

[Cail Young]

However, another factor comes into play which is the quality selection (full, standard, draft).

This is key:

Full = 4K debayer
Standard = 2K debayer
Draft = 1K debayer

So, I would imagine this is the primary impact on processing speed.

Now, the shot scaling may be done in the GPU, I don't recall. The Quicktime scaler is on the CPU.

[Antoine Baumann]

For fast scaling set the project to the desired resolution, scale the shots in the shot tab and of course set the resolution in the output tab. This will use REDCINE scaling engine and is faster. I would also think REDCINE use the gpu.

The quality of the debayer is an other factor, which is from my few test, the factor that most impact processing time. Now I don't know exactly when it worth to use "Full". Standard for offline editing is definitely the way to go. May be everything that is not intended to be screened in theater.

antoine.

[Cail Young]

Standard for offline editing is definitely the way to go.

If you're offline/online, 'Draft' will give you adequate resolution for offline in 1/3-1/4 the time.

[Mark L. Pederson]

(full, standard, draft).

It would be great if Graeme or Rob could explain the processing chain in REDCINE.

Emery, you can think of it like this: (I am not sure if this is 100% technically accurate but it's damn close if it's not)

full = 4K debayer
standard = 2K debayer
draft = 1K debayer

this will by far have the biggest impact on how long it takes to render - depending on ow much oversampling you are doing (how big your output is - HD? SD? Web?) you can deliver extremely high quality images with the 2K debayer (standard) - MUCH FASTER - I like detail and sharpening on high most of time -

For the record - if you are seriously oversampling for web delivery - 2K QT wrappers may do you just fine - the stuff we did with our Swedish client that is on the www.saab. com website (http://www.saab.com/main/GLOBAL/en/94X_bioconcept/index.shtml) was all finished using 2K wrappers. It's a great option when SPEED of workflow is critical.