Editing with Epic and GH2

[JJ La Britt]

Hey everyone, this is my first post here! I shot a short on the Epic for the first time last weekend and loved it! The short consists of boxing scenes done with the Epic, POV shot and flashback scenes done with the GH2. We shot on the Epic at 5k widescreen and used crop lines for the GH2 to match the frame. The Epic footage is staying native and the GH2 footage is being transcoded in 5DtoRGB to prores422(hq). I'm helping the director prep the footage for his editor and had a question about the editing sequence in CS6. In what way should he mix the Epic and GH2 shots? Having the sequence set on Red 1920x810 keeps the GH2 at its native resolution but, of course, the 5k Epic footage is large. Should we keep the sequence like that and scale down the Epic footage, or is there another way of doing this? Thanks for your help!

ps. If there is a thread already about this, I apologize and will halt my thread.

[Cory Petkovsek]

'In what way should the editor mix two pieces of footage on the timeline?' Drag them in and start cutting. Obviously if your sequence is 1920x810, then 5k footage is too big, so scale and position it as desired. There are many ways to work it. This way is fine and will retain full quality and coloring capability. Perhaps I do not understand what you are really.

[JJ La Britt]

Thanks Cory, I got better responses elsewhere.

[Gabe Conroy]

I have found that a 5k sequence plays faster than a 1080p timeline with the 5k clips scaled down, so I'd recommend editing in 5k and scaling up the GH2 shots.

[Cory Petkovsek]

I have found that a 5k sequence plays faster than a 1080p timeline with the 5k clips scaled down, so I'd recommend editing in 5k and scaling up the GH2 shots.

Have you compared:
A) 1080p sequence, 5k clips with the motion/scale effect at .375
with
B) 1080p sequence, 5k clips with right-click and 'scale to frame size' checked

If you have only done A, you may find B is faster.

Contrary to Gabe, I would recommend not scaling up the GH2 shots. Scaling them up to 5k and then back down to 1080p with premiere's scalers I believe almost always won't look good. The math is unlikely to be perfect and land precisely where it originally was. The percentage will be likely be off a few hundreds of a percent which will be enough to cause subtle scaling artifacts and ultimately cause a reduction in quality. To maintain quality I would keep a 1080p sequence and use either method A or B, and turn down the viewable resolution of the monitor window until editing is smooth.

Cory