GH4 beginner question about editing 4k.

T

the doc

Well-known member
Sorry if this has been done to death in the past. I am struggling to find a tutorial online anywhere that answers my question... plenty examples of 4k editing working - but none that sort out my workflow.

i am using CS5. Create a 1080p timeline. Copy over my 4K footage - and then drop it into the timeline.

If I edit and export it the footage looks great and CS5 works out what to do with it to keep the scaling right.

BUT... how do I edit it so that i can do pans and zooms? When I view the footage in the monitor it fits the screen. If I click on it and start keyframing zoom / position the video in the monitor gets huge and looks like 4K size (bigger than monitor) But when i view the footage it has reverted it back to 1080P size and the pans / zooms are all wrong with black borders appearing everywhere.

Is it as simple as - i click on the clip.... set scale to 200... then do the pans and zooms like that? Does that avoid any quality loss?

The behavior of the footage in the monitor is aggravating (looking normal size on playback but expanding to full 4k size when clicked on) is there a way to avoid it?

Any help appreciated.
 
When you drop 4K footage on a 1080p timeline (you need to check the sequence is really 1080p) you need to set the scale of the clip to 50%. Now you can keyframe animate the scale, or leave it at 100% and keyframe animate the position.
 
Might I suggest you download the demo of the latest version of Premiere Pro and see if it handles 4K footage any better. The current version is 9.0 which has been updated many times since your version CS5 came out 4 years ago.

All the best!

Dave
 
Last edited:
the doc,
your question is really premiere pro related. I believe what is happening is that in your version of Premiere there is a preference setting that defaults to being on - it is called scale to frame size. You need to uncheck this setting and then re-edit your 4K clips back into the 1080p timeline. Once you do this you will be able to scale the clips up and down - 50% to view the entire clip and then larger then 50% up to 100% if you want to reframe and or create moves on your shot.
Anything larger than 100% is going to degrade the image quality. In newer versions of Premiere Pro there is an option to select the clips in the timeline, right click and then choose set to frame size to accomplish the same thing.
 
David W. Jones said:
Might I suggest you download the demo of the latest version of Premiere Pro and see if it handles 4K footage any better. The current version is 9.0 which has been updated many times since your version CS5 came out 4 years ago.

All the best!

Dave
Click to expand...

LOL! Thanks for the heads up! :beer: If I want a subscription I will get one for readers digest.

I thought CS5 would still do me as my needs are few... but this is driving me round the twist. What can I be doing wrong?

The thing is... when i drop the footage on the timeline.... it fits the 1080p screen size perfectly. I swear scale to frame size is not on in preferences... and I can verify that by right clicking on the clip.

I also verify that the clip is UHD, and the timeline 1080p. If I play the video in the monitor with scale set to 100% it plays normally - but with the edges filling the frame.... WHY??? If I haven't set scale to frame size it shouldn't do that - right?

Now - if i click on the footage to keyframe positions.... wham... it expands and looks like the proper size for 4K. BUT... if I now keyframe some motion (still with scale set to 100%)... it all looks good till I go to play the video. Now it all shrinks down again to play it as you would expect 1080p to play... and my keyframed bits now look all wrong because the video is now too small.

This can't just be CS5 problem can it? What setting have I messed up?

I can just scale footage to 200% and then keyframe motion - but this doesn't seem right somehow!
 
Let me try and reword what I said. Look at the sequence and make sure it's seeing 1920x1080. Then make sure your video didn't autoscale to the sequence. If it is then you need to go to the clip and select 100% and then animate position for tracking shots, or scale to 50% which would be full screen and animate the scale up to 100% for a dolly in , or vice vera for dolly out. Look at these screen shots. You can see where I arrange my timeline with two sequences, one for 4K DCI and one for 1080p. This gives me the ability to cut 4K out or take the same scene and cut 1080p with dolly and tracking moves.
1080p shot.jpg4K DCI shot.jpg

So here is a cut from this shoot with a digital jump cut and push, which would have taken two cameras (or a quality hit on the push) without the 4K source material.
https://youtu.be/ZhnLXkpJLFM
 
the doc,

Are you sure you had this preference setting unchecked when you brought in your footage (imported your GH4 clips into Premiere Pros project panel)?
It must be unchecked before you import the footage, It will have no effect if you already imported your 4K files.
I'm sure this is your problem. Confirm that it is unchecked and then import a new clip into Premiere Pro (it could even be a clip you already have imported) and once imported, drop it onto your 1080 sequence and you will see
that it will now need to be scaled down to 50% to fit the full frame raster.
 
Just a heads up in case anyone is at all interested :)

I have gone back to scratch... reimported the footage. MADE SURE that scale to frame size is not selected. Tried various sequences with various 1080p timelines... confirmed several times over that my footage is 3840*2160. It continually does the same thing.

If I put it on a 4k timeline then it looks fine. I am about to give up - possibly this is just a CS5 quirk that I can't fix... but very annoying!!!!!!
 
Try nesting the sequence then loading the nested sequence into the sou monitor and key framing from there.
 
Liam Hall said:
Try nesting the sequence then loading the nested sequence into the sou monitor and key framing from there.
Click to expand...

Thanks for the response - i appreciate it. I hadn't tried that yet.

That does change things - but not for the better. The nested sequence now fits 1080p sixe, but when i click on it to adjust motion keyframes it no longer expands to 4k size temporarily wjile I move it around... it stays resolutely at 1080p size though it does appear magnified... and keyframing is not possible (unless I scale it to 200%). When i stop moving it around it reverts to normal magnification and 1080p size.

So back to the drawing board -it really is like CS is scaling the footage all the time.... except when i go to move the footage with its handles.... then it scales up while I move it around... but ignores this when it comes to play the footage.
 
Possible answer?

OK - just in case this helps anyone else. Further internet trawling finds a post from someone called karl at reduser.... I don't know if this is true - but to hell with it - this a work around for my issue so i am going to start doing it.

http://www.reduser.net/forum/archive/index.php/t-90825.html

12-11-2012, 06:11 PM​

So, I did some informal tests, using an uncompressed TIFF export from Premiere Pro, and found some interesting results.

I wanted to see what the quality would look like if I edited in a native 4k sequence, but did the same type of resizing for 1080p output. This involved scaling some of the clips up to about 216% and reframing.

As expected, any 4k output of the scaled clips looked extremely soft. And every instinct in me was saying that this was a really bad idea. For output to a 1080p monitor, the clips did look fuzzier than usual.

I compared the various ways that a 1080p frame can be exported from a 1080p timeline, and they all looked identical. And, the "Use Max Render Quality" had no effect on the output quality.

However, when exporting out from a 4k timeline, the resulting frames looked as sharp as the export from the 1080p timeline, AS LONG AS THE "USE MAX RENDER QUALITY" BOX WAS CHECKED. If you leave it unchecked, the 1080p export from the 4k sequence (zoomed in 200%) will look a bit softer.

So, I guess, for someone who mostly cares about a 1080p master, it is possible to scale/reframe shots in the 4k timeline, and still get crisp output at 1080p resolution. Plus, you'll have the added benefit of being able to export 4k, and know what that's going to look like.

I can post the various TIF files I exported to test this out if anyone is interested.
 
I do not edit with CS5 but use EDIUS 7.5. I crop/pan and zoom files from my FDR-AX1 ( UHD ) on a 1920x1080 timeline. If I just place the clips on the timeline they are automatically scaled to 1920x1080 but in the Layouter ( much like motion in Premiere ) I can reset to source size and than scale as I need to. In CS6 if the project is 1920x1080 and a 3840x2180 clip is put on the timeline and not allow the program to change project settings you can scale and pan etc using keyframe . At least it works on my copy of CS6 not quite as easily as in EDIUS but I have just checked and it does work.
 
Ron Evans said:
I do not edit with CS5 but use EDIUS 7.5. I crop/pan and zoom files from my FDR-AX1 ( UHD ) on a 1920x1080 timeline. If I just place the clips on the timeline they are automatically scaled to 1920x1080 but in the Layouter ( much like motion in Premiere ) I can reset to source size and than scale as I need to. In CS6 if the project is 1920x1080 and a 3840x2180 clip is put on the timeline and not allow the program to change project settings you can scale and pan etc using keyframe . At least it works on my copy of CS6 not quite as easily as in EDIUS but I have just checked and it does work.
Click to expand...

Yeah I am sure it works fine in CS6... just limited by me being so tight and using old software. How do you rate EDIUS compared to premiere by the way? I could be persuaded to jump ship if it was good enough / the learning curve wasn't too scary. I do feel like I have invested a lot of time in learning premiere though!
 
I moved to EDIUS a long while ago. Have CS6 as part of the Production Suite but never use to edit. I do not think you would have any problems moving to EDIUS and there are a few tutorials too.
 
I also moved from Premiere to Edius a long time ago and have never looked back. It is relatively easy to learn the basics and has a lot of sophisticated features if you take the time to learn how to use them.
 
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