I worked on my first shoot this week where a C300 Mk2 was used to capture 4K footage. The final product will actually be delivered in HD, but it got me to thinking -- from a HW perspective, particularly in post, what's really needed to shoot and potentially deliver a project in 4K? Virtually all of my work is shot on a C100 and delivered in HD. In post, I use Premiere CS6 with a 5 year old Quad Core AMD Phenom-based PC decked out with 4 SSDs for all my editing, color correction, rendering, file generation, etc. I have no plans to start delivering 4K in the near future, but if I did, it wouldn't just be a c300 (or equivalent) I'd need to upgrade to. I guess I'd also have to get a 4K monitor, a more powerful PC with a RAID array, and god knows what else if I really wanted to deliver a 4K project. I realize this post would probably be better suited for one pf the post-production forums, but I'm curious to hear from someone who uses a C300 or C500 what their start to end workflow is and what HW they need to truly deliver a 4K product. How much time is added to your end-to-end workflow when 4K comes into play? And what types of customers are you delivering to? Thanks!
C300: 4K users -- what HW do you really need to deliver 4K?
- Thread starter jthabel
- Start date
remsyatassi
Well-known member
My shop works in 4k pretty often these days and I have a workable solution. It's not perfect but it runs fast enough that I can edit with clients in the room while managing color through LUTs in Premiere, which is about as intense as it gets for me.
I run a 2014 Mac Pro trashcan (probably the weak link) - it's an 8-core with 3.0 Ghz. 64G ram and 2x 3G graphics cards. New the computer ran about $8000 but not sure how much it would now. A PC would definitely be a better option if that works for you, unfortunately I'm pretty tied into the Mac ecosystem these days.
My RAID is the Lacie Big 5, which gets about 750MB/s. So no 4k multicam at full res, but I run up to 3 shots at 1/4 resolution and it's pretty smooth. I think this raid was about $2000, depends on the drive configuration you get.
The limitation comes in that I can't really monitor 4k in full resolution LUTted with a render. Instead we monitor in HD (my $4000 FSI 10-bit reference monitor is HD anyway) and the client watches a 4k TV. I use a 4k and 2.5k desktop monitors for the computer screens, nothing special on these just Dells. I run video processing through an AJA 4k IO which handles the scaling. To my knowledge it's the only box on the market that does real time scaling including up and down cross convert, making it a necessity. It runs about $1700.
Render times are extremely fast for 4k, basically real time even with some effect processing. If I wasn't pushing real time LUTs or managed color through the AJA box it would probably have no issue playing back 4k real time, even multicam. The LUT processing really chokes the CPU. I haven't spent the time getting this worked out with my AJA box though, since I cut different cameras and color spaces together often. One single LUT would not solve my color issues.
All in it was under $20k including reference monitor ... definitely could be done for less/more but this solution works for me right now. My clients usually project for big events and live shows, which was why 4k started getting used more in the workflows. Plus delivering 4k impresses clients!
I run a 2014 Mac Pro trashcan (probably the weak link) - it's an 8-core with 3.0 Ghz. 64G ram and 2x 3G graphics cards. New the computer ran about $8000 but not sure how much it would now. A PC would definitely be a better option if that works for you, unfortunately I'm pretty tied into the Mac ecosystem these days.
My RAID is the Lacie Big 5, which gets about 750MB/s. So no 4k multicam at full res, but I run up to 3 shots at 1/4 resolution and it's pretty smooth. I think this raid was about $2000, depends on the drive configuration you get.
The limitation comes in that I can't really monitor 4k in full resolution LUTted with a render. Instead we monitor in HD (my $4000 FSI 10-bit reference monitor is HD anyway) and the client watches a 4k TV. I use a 4k and 2.5k desktop monitors for the computer screens, nothing special on these just Dells. I run video processing through an AJA 4k IO which handles the scaling. To my knowledge it's the only box on the market that does real time scaling including up and down cross convert, making it a necessity. It runs about $1700.
Render times are extremely fast for 4k, basically real time even with some effect processing. If I wasn't pushing real time LUTs or managed color through the AJA box it would probably have no issue playing back 4k real time, even multicam. The LUT processing really chokes the CPU. I haven't spent the time getting this worked out with my AJA box though, since I cut different cameras and color spaces together often. One single LUT would not solve my color issues.
All in it was under $20k including reference monitor ... definitely could be done for less/more but this solution works for me right now. My clients usually project for big events and live shows, which was why 4k started getting used more in the workflows. Plus delivering 4k impresses clients!
puredrifting
Major Contributor
A lot of it depends on the codec more than the reaster size. I have an outdated 2012 iMac and when I had the GH4, editing it's 4K was a breeze. But get into 4K RAW, 4K Prores 444, then your system is going to be overtaxed unless you have the newest, latest and greatest. Like everything else, you need processor speed, GPU speed, as much RAM as your system will take and a fast RAID. My RAID is a simple Thunderbolt I G-RAID two drive from four years ago and it benchmarks at around 250 Mbps. For 4K multicam, I would look at a 6-12 drive RAID that benchmarks out at at least, 800-1000 Mbps or faster with Thunderbolt II or III or whatever the latest flavor is. Most of your questions can be answered pretty well over at www.barefeats.com
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jm.gardiner
Well-known member
So I took a handful of 4k shot short films through post last year.
One of the films I shot on epic and dragon at 5k/6k. We took it to a post house here in LA (prehistoric digital) and though we colored everything via the raw files our final delivery was a 2k DCP file. The film was festival bound and most festivals ask for an HD/2k DCP or prores file for projection. Having everything in a HD/2k format just makes it easier for the festival and most of them aren't projecting in 4k yet. We can always go back and get a 4k DCP in the future, but my understanding is that even for a 10 minute short they would have had to render it out overnight and the cost was significantly more.
Another short I did on C500 4k/Prores we took to a freelance colorist and our final delivery was just Prores422 from her system and then I think for one festival we ended up using simpleDCP to create a 2k/DCP.
Getting a DCP of your film makes all the difference. I was blown away when I saw one of my C300mk1 shorts blown up on a 40ft screen at the Chinese theater in Hollywood. Ther clarity was un-real. It's that proper back end workflow that makes everything click together and shine.
I also shot a few days on a docu-series that captured everything 4k/log1 internal recording on the C300mkii. It's coming out soon "America Divided." I'm not sure what their workflow was like, but I remember file management on set of a run and gun verite show was a bit problematic.
One of the films I shot on epic and dragon at 5k/6k. We took it to a post house here in LA (prehistoric digital) and though we colored everything via the raw files our final delivery was a 2k DCP file. The film was festival bound and most festivals ask for an HD/2k DCP or prores file for projection. Having everything in a HD/2k format just makes it easier for the festival and most of them aren't projecting in 4k yet. We can always go back and get a 4k DCP in the future, but my understanding is that even for a 10 minute short they would have had to render it out overnight and the cost was significantly more.
Another short I did on C500 4k/Prores we took to a freelance colorist and our final delivery was just Prores422 from her system and then I think for one festival we ended up using simpleDCP to create a 2k/DCP.
Getting a DCP of your film makes all the difference. I was blown away when I saw one of my C300mk1 shorts blown up on a 40ft screen at the Chinese theater in Hollywood. Ther clarity was un-real. It's that proper back end workflow that makes everything click together and shine.
I also shot a few days on a docu-series that captured everything 4k/log1 internal recording on the C300mkii. It's coming out soon "America Divided." I'm not sure what their workflow was like, but I remember file management on set of a run and gun verite show was a bit problematic.