GH4 adobe encoder for downscaling to 1080p

[blues]

How practical am I if all my 4k clips are downscaled to 1080p prores HQ via adobe encoder. Its faster than placing 4k clips into a timeline that you need to render when I change the settings to 1080p. The rendering time is long while the encoder conversion is quick and easy.I can just keep my 4k clips in a separate folder.

 

[mmaller]

Makes sense, especially if you don't intend to reframe any of the clips. If you do need to reframe you can just use the 4K clip that you saved.
Are you working in Premiere Pro on an older system?

 

[Jim Simon]

It's my intended work flow once I pick up my GH4. This has the added benefit of converting the 4:2:0 original 4K into genuine 4:4:4 if your conversion format supports it.

 

[blues]

i work with Finalcut 7, it seems to work flawlessly.adobe Encoder first in bulk clips with the preset for 422 proresHQ (have not tried the 444). The conversion seems to be a lot faster than rendering thru a changed sequence settings.

I realy just wanted to know if this is the more practical way to do it. Has anybody done the same workflow? thanks

 

[awelgraven]

If you're working with FCP7, you really don't have any other options. FCP7 will choke on 4K H.264 clips (Actually, it will choke on ANY H.264 clips, 4k, 1080p, or otherwise).

You're basically forced to transcode to 1080p ProRes if you want to stick with FCP7. I use Premiere, and I just work directly with the GH4's 4K H.264 clips in a 1080p timeline. It downscales on the fly, and can handle some effects in real time before it starts to get bogged down.

 

[ralfmouth]

I just work directly with the GH4's 4K H.264 clips in a 1080p timeline. It downscales on the fly, and can handle some effects in real time before it starts to get bogged down.

With a faster computer and light effects it makes sense for me to work in 4k. With sharpening & noise reduction it gets hairy. Another advantage is you should be able to export your rendered playback files directly without re-encoding (sort of a "native" workflow). This would be a great time saver but I haven't found a working codec in Premiere that directly exports to .h264.

 

[Lpowell]

...you should be able to export your rendered playback files directly without re-encoding (sort of a "native" workflow). This would be a great time saver but I haven't found a working codec in Premiere that directly exports to .h264.

I use After Effects to scale and reframe clips before importing them into Premiere. You can export directly to H.264 from AE (or by dragging the AE project into AME), which I often do to render proxies for real-time editing in Premiere. When you're ready for the final render from Premiere, you can use Replace Footage on each proxy to dynamic link directly to the AE project, which will then render the clip directly from the original footage via AE.

 

[Cosimo Bullo]

It was a hard decision for me, but I did finally make the switch from FCP7 to Premiere. Never looked back.

 

[blues]

Likewise here, I was just too use to FCP7 but now I realized premiere is the way to go especially if you are shooting 4k or for that matter different formats in one timeline, it makes it so easy. and more up to date to todays usage.

Just a question though I am doing a somekind of a visual treatise of clips I had shot during the DVX days which I shot in anamorphic mixed with todays gh4 4k and Avchd etc. a total of 4 different formats in one timeline set to 1080p. I had some unusual issues when some of my DVX 720 x 576 clips would not conform all the way to the 1080p frame when I use the 'set to frame size' to pull the SD clip to 1920x1080. thanks

 

[blues]

...found the solution.double click on the clip on your timeline then use motion and expand the DVX clips manually to conform frame size of your 1080p timeline ,when done use modify and click on interpret footage then place the framerate to 24fps plus check on progressive, voila, your SD clips is inside the original 4k timeline downscaled to 1080p.Now I have PAL and NTSC formats, 4K clips, avchd clips,SD dvx100 clips, and even iphone clips in one discernible unified timeline without even rendering.AMAZING!!!

My next project is how to upscale all the 5 indie films we shot 7 years ago with the beloved DVX100 to a 1080p timeline and convert each clip to 1080p for archiving purposes.....but this adobe premiere gave new life to what we thought were outdated formats!