2K + 4K in the same FCP timeline

[Thom Steinhoff]

So I want to shoot 4K mostly and then the occasional 2K cropped for slow motion and edit it all in the new final cut (when Red/Apple ship native support for Redcode)

So, I have a 2K timeline with a 1080 proxy setting and I add to it a couple of 4K redcode clips and some 2K cropped Redcode clips and go to the top of the sequence and hit play.

First of all, did it have to do any crunching when I added the clips?

What about when I hit play?

Will the 4K be windowed/cropped or scaled? Do I have control over this?

What happens when I drop a dissolve between two 2K clips?

What happens when I drop a dissolve between two 4K clips?

What happens when I drop a dissolve between a 4K and 2K Clip?

How would it be different if I have a 4K timeline?

Thanks for your help!

[Chris Kenny]

My understanding is that the way Red's QT proxy system works, you'll be able to create QT proxy files that reference 4K footage, but that appear to QT apps as 2K. If this is the case, there shouldn't be any problem with cutting 2K and 4K footage into the same 2K timeline; FCP won't even know the difference.

Would love to hear a few more details about this system from Red guys, though.

[Cail Young]

The FCP6 timeline is independent of codec, framesize, and framerate. You do set a nominal codec, size, and rate that all rendered effects and final output will be set to, but gone are the days of the red bar appearing for anything that didn't match the timeline settings.

FCP's REDCODE support means that you don't even need to generate proxies; FCP pulls proxy-resolution data from the RAW compressed data on the fly.

[Chris Kenny]

FCP's REDCODE support means that you don't even need to generate proxies; FCP pulls proxy-resolution data from the RAW compressed data on the fly.

My understanding is there are QuickTime proxy files. They sort of tell the REDCODE QuickTime component what resolution and quality to pull data from actual REDCODE files at. These aren't proxy files in the traditional sense, though; they don't actually contain video data themselves.

So, in other words, if you've got a one minute shot, in 4K REDCODE RAW, you're going to have a REDCODE file that's about 1.7 GB, and then you're going to have some QT files that are just a couple of KB each. Dropping one of those QT files into a QT app will result in a 1K, 2K or 4K version of the REDCODE data being presented to that app, depending on which proxy file you used.

Again, more clarification from Red workflow guys would be great here....

[Cail Young]

So, in other words, if you've got a one minute shot, in 4K REDCODE RAW, you're going to have a REDCODE file that's about 1.7 GB, and then you're going to have some QT files that are just a couple of KB each. Dropping one of those QT files into a QT app will result in a 1K, 2K or 4K version of the REDCODE data being presented to that app, depending on which proxy file you used.

Reference files is the name of those beasts. I was hoping for something more elegant, but if that's the solution I'm fine with that.

[Rob Lohman]

What would you find more elegant? Simply dropping some files in a timeline or playing it back through the QT player is pretty elegant to me.

[Simon Blackledge]

Unless it gets fully intergrated, as in.. select clip >Proxy> red1k/2k/4k

But drag and dropping ref movies is still pretty awsome considering what it's doing..

Questions.. you have an edit.. at 1k. say 300 shots from RedDrives in various bins. .say 650 edit points.

Do you have to go through all 300 shots (reels) in FCP and replace each one.. point to 4k rather than the ref movs?

[Cail Young]

What would you find more elegant? Simply dropping some files in a timeline or playing it back through the QT player is pretty elegant to me.

More elegant is if FCP was smart enough to pull the lower res out of the original 4K file without me having to use a reference file. If that's the case, then great!

[Simon Blackledge]

So an Apple problem not Red ;) .. I'm sure it will evolve over time...

s

[Cail Young]

Do you have to go through all 300 shots (reels) in FCP and replace each one.. point to 4k rather than the ref movs?

The way to do this is have the camera-generated reference movies have an identical filename but rest in a subfolder (/Camera/Footage/1K). Media Manager and the reconnect function will let you reconnect to the higher-res files far more easily if they're named identically.

We're still to see the nuts and bolts of the workflow, so this is still conjecture.