F55: Post-production and editing workflow

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Backfocus92

Active member
I am needing to shoot in 4K at 60fps for an upcoming project. I own a Sony F3 and love working with it, but have started to get a couple of calls about needing 4K, so I have been looking to upgrade to the F55. There are no close rental companies, so I have to ship everything in or own it, needless to say, I rent before I buy. I figured this project would be a good one to try out the F55 on. I have no worries about the camera, only worries about he end workflow, as I am not editing this. I really don't need 16bit raw files for this, so I thought that XAVC would be a good route to take and still be able to record internally. This project will be edited on Premier Pro CS6. Can you work natively with 4K XAVC in Premier? Any advise on the workflow would be helpful. I know I could do this project on the a RED, but, been there before and really don't want to go down that road again unless I have to.
 
Why does everyone insist on doing 4k online edits? Why not use an offline edit workflow? An offline codec in 1080p or even SD can be finished in 4k at the color grading stage...
 
Viddovation said:
Why does everyone insist on doing 4k online edits? Why not use an offline edit workflow? An offline codec in 1080p or even SD can be finished in 4k at the color grading stage...
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If I were editing that is how I would do it. As I stated I am not working on the edit and that is his workflow. I have tried talking with him about it, but old dogs are set in their ways. They do it once that way and it all has to be that way.
 
Viddovation said:
Why does everyone insist on doing 4k online edits? Why not use an offline edit workflow? An offline codec in 1080p or even SD can be finished in 4k at the color grading stage...
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We shoot in 4k a lot for online delivery simply for reframing options of live events that can not be recreated. Its not for the resolution or sharpness of image in that case, just options for post.
 
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ReelWorksMedia said:
We shoot in 4k a lot for online delivery simply for reframing options of live events that can not be recreated. Its not for the resolution or sharpness of image in that case, just options for post.
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This is similar to what we are doing as well, but for a different reason.
 
ReelWorksMedia said:
We shoot in 4k a lot for online delivery simply for reframing options of live events that can not be recreated. Its not for the resolution or sharpness of image in that case, just options for post.
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I'm not chiming in on this thread to discuss to merits of 4k vs 1080p acquisition. Certainly the OP has made it clear his decision to shoot in 4k is being determined by his client. But even your point about reframing doesn't negate the possibility of an offline edit - your reframing choices would be saved to the EDL, and could be rendered correctly in the final online edit and color grade from the 4k masters.

Of course, it sounds like his client isn't interested in this workflow.
 
You can ignore that article. I think it is a thinly disguised attempt to sell people something they don't need. I especially like this line "As far as I know Adobe can’t support XAVC 4K & HD." Then why don't you bother to find out before you write an article on that very subject!!! Of course he knows the answer, he just wants to pretend he doesn't know so he can sell his snake oil.

Premiere CC handles all sizes and flavors of XAVC you can throw at it without batting an eye, and without any transcoding or rewrapping. It has for almost a year. Just bring it in and edt. Simple. And why bother off-lining with HD? Save yourself the hassle and just edit 4K. Then if you do any re-composing you can see exactly what it will look like. I have a 2012 Mac Pro (not the new model) and it handles the 4K files just fine. BTW, the re-framing the HD file and conforming to the 4K later may not give you the results you want anyway because the aspect ratios are different. How'd you like to discover that at the end of the edit?

The only F55 codec that Premiere cannot handle are the SStP SR codecs, but that is coming in the next big update. It's already included in the beta software some people are using.

Why make things more complicated than they need to be? Just import and edit.

Of course, if someone is still editing on CS6, then that is their problem. Software must be kept up to date in today's world if you want to keep up with the latest codecs and frame sizes. If someone can't afford the $30 a month (or whatever it costs for CC) or is too cheap to crack open their wallet, then they should just stay with HD.
 
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Doug Jensen said:
Premiere CC handles all sizes and flavors of XAVC you can throw at it without batting an eye, and without any transcoding or rewrapping. It has for almost a year. Just bring it in and edt. Simple. And why bother off-lining with HD? Save yourself the hassle and just edit 4K. Then if you do any re-composing you can see exactly what it will look like. I have a 2012 Mac Pro (not the new model) and it handles the 4K files just fine. BTW, the re-framing the HD file and conforming to the 4K later may not give you the results you want anyway because the aspect ratios are different. How'd you like to discover that at the end of the edit?

...

Why make things more complicated than they need to be? Just import and edit.

Of course, if someone is still editing on CS6, then that is their problem. Software must be kept up to date in today's world if you want to keep up with the latest codecs and frame sizes. If someone can't afford the $30 a month (or whatever it costs for CC) or is too cheap to crack open their wallet, then they should just stay with HD.
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Indeed, if you have hardware the can pipeline 4k from start to finish, then there's no benefit to offline. However, not all of of us have 2012 Mac Pros - I know plenty of people who work with less because they haven't been allocated a budget to upgrade recently. Offlining is a valid option for those who cannot pipeline 4k in real-time. Your point about aspect ratios is fair, but there is more than one solution to it for those who don't have the hardware to use your preferred workflow.
 
Understood. One of the best things about the F55 is being able to create the HD proxy files right onboard the camera if you need them. But either way, the advice in that article is incorrect and misleading.
 
Backfocus92 said:
Any advise on the workflow would be helpful. I know I could do this project on the a RED, but, been there before and really don't want to go down that road again unless I have to.
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Updated:

As you've probably figured out already, XAVC is not a compatible codec with CS6. You can however get a Rovi plugin for your computer to make XAVC open up in Adobe Premiere but when I tested it I had nothing but system crashes on a very stable and specifically built editing PC. So I blame the plugin, but that was a year ago so it could be possible the plugin works better now.

Another option is to upgrade to CC version of Premiere since it's compatible with XAVC.

How I work with 4K XAVC from the F55 in CS6 is by transcoding footage into high quality H.264 or ProRes files and edit with them. I wouldn't exactly call these proxies, they are very high quality HD files and so long as you don't destroy the timecode in the video clips you can always link them up with the 4K versions if you need to, or a post house needs to. If I need to reframe or work with a specific clip in 4K for vfx, crop, or other purposes then I only transcode that specific clip in 4K and bring it into my CS6 timeline. For me if I know my master is going to be HD then there is no need to transcode ALL original files to 4K. That can always be done a later time if needed and files simply swapped out with HD ones by relinking in CS6.

If in your case you just work with 4K native files in CS6 then simply transcode all your original XAVC files to 4K H.264 or ProRes files and you will be off to the races.

As some others have suggested yes you can use the proxy file option built into the F55 and edit with those, but you would still need another program that actually supports XAVC so you can relink your proxy edit to the original XAVC files. So by using Sony's proxy files you'd be looking at a more tedious round-trip process which involves XML files and at least two software packages if you go with CS6. I can explain round-trip process in more detail if you need, or just go on youtube and watch "davinci round trip" for more details.
 
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Thanks for the feedback guys. I figured that was the case, but wanted it confirmed, by people who were currently using the camera and had a workflow, since I have not shot with the F55 yet and don't have any footage to test with. Most of the articles I had found on XAVC were from last year and felt outdated. I do see from Sony's website that is looks like I could shoot Raw and it would work in CC and CS6. I only need 4K for this one exhibit video so that maybe an option.
I am very familiar with round tripping as I do it all the time as I have both a new Mac and Resolve and CC, but my client does not. So we may have to do the edit on my system instead of his for this one exhibit.
 
Just note to shoot 4K raw (you probably know this) but you'll need to additionally rent the AXS-R5 module, cards, reader, etc..

That and the files are much larger than XAVC but of course that is up to you.
 
starcentral said:
Just note to shoot 4K raw (you probably know this) but you'll need to additionally rent the AXS-R5 module, cards, reader, etc..

That and the files are much larger than XAVC but of course that is up to you.
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You are referring to shooting Raw, correct? If so I really don't want to, just because of the file size, but it looks like it would be an option for this one video.
 
Yes just to be clear, the F55 can record 4K in XAVC 10-bit 422 internally to SXS cards but if you want to shoot 4K 16-bit RAW then you need the AXS-R5 + AXS 512GB cards + USB reader to do it.

4K XAVC @ 24p = approx. 32 minutes per 64GB
4K RAW @ 24p = approx. 68 minutes per 512GB
 
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