Aside from being a Post-Production Colorist, I’m often tasked with assisting to create Pre-Post and Post-Production workflows for the set all the way back to finishing. Since each show has a varying range of needs and special circumstances there is no cookie cutter solution for a typical production / post production workflow. But, recently i’ve received quite a few emails asking me about doing full 4K workflows from set to finish so I thought it may be helpful to put some perspective on the situation.
Lets start with production. capturing 4K and displaying 4k are two completely different solutions to solve. Capturing 4K has been quite simple for the most part ever since compressed RAW codecs such as the REDCODE codec from RED Digital Cinema cameras started shipping in 2007/2008. The file sizes are relatively small (in comparison to uncompressed 32bit per pixel 4K DPX files) and the codec has been implemented into industry tools to not only view the files but to resize, color, transcode and work with proxies in editorial at 720p or 1080p flavors with simple TC metadata to make for easy conforms back to the RAW 4K material. Of course, this has always been done on 1080p or 2K reference monitors on a cart such as one of our DigiLab carts or in a Dailies/finishing facility. Often times incorporating a cost effective and proven solution is better than being on the bleeding edge. BUT, we love a challenge and in the future monitoring and delivering in 4K will most assuredly be the standard. The question is when? Well, I’ll tell you…when the costs match up with the marketplace demand, both consumer and professional. Professional demand will always push the envelope first, but a combination of consumer being sold the idea of NEEDING 4K and network television airing 4K will push it over the edge. Will that be this year, next year? Only time will tell.
Back in the world of Production and Post-Production we have another consideration to take into account being there is no 4K standard in monitoring right now to adhere to. So, it appears we are in the wild west of 4K monitoring and previewing 4K on set and in the studio. Besides the obvious cost restrictions in the 4K monitoring game, lets discuss where the pain points will be in the workflow.
ON-SET
One of the more challenging aspects to monitoring 4K on set (besides cost) is getting the large LED 4K televisions from location to location and getting a true 4K signal from the camera to the monitors. This often times tends to be a major road block in monitoring and playback of 4K takes. More realistically, its 1080p to the director / client monitors and sometimes SD as playback from VTR. However, there is something to be said for being able to download the RAW data at a nearby station and display the true 4K signal to a 4K monitor in order for the Director and Director of Photography to judge the image pixel for pixel once its been acquired in camera. And for that, currently, there are only a few options,
1. Large 55″-80″ LED 4K TV’s from Samsung, Sony, Panasonic, etc – Now, there are some solutions trickling out such as smaller 30″ 4K Dell monitors, BUT, IMO if you’re going to monitor 4K pixel for pixel on set you should be doing it on a monitor large enough to grasp all the detail and definition of what you are getting in camera. Otherwise, the equivalent OLED 25″ 2K monitors DP’s are used to looking at currently are still going to be superior.
2. A mobile trailer solution with 4K projection – This is a very expensive option and one in which is not very cost effective. But they do exist and are great with the proper setup.
I anticipate the number of 4K monitoring solutions will be greater come NAB 2014 in a few weeks but right now that’s approximately what you are looking at on set.
EDITORIAL
Editorial will be the first dept I would take into account when considering this workflow, even before the set monitoring comes into play. (In this example I’m going to use the RED 6K Epic (RED DRAGON) as our hypothetical point of capture for our hypothetical workflow breakdown when considering a full 4K pipeline from set to finish). Editorial is a sea of footage that will need to be logged, ingested, backed up and molded to perfection all along never seeing a lag in performance. The footage they work with should be as system resource transparent in their daily workflow as their final edit to the audience.
IMO, this is going to be where 4K makes the least amount of sense to be incorporated, at least for a while. 4K files in RAW, DNxHD or ProRes are LARGE files that require more disk bandwidth as well as the monitoring hardware components needed for ALL the assistants machines as well as the editor/s machine/s. If we are looking at the RED Dragon as our hypothetical capture system we would only have two options for ingesting the footage into the Avid, FCP or Premiere Pro. All three of these applications can work with the native RAW files but due to the expense and limited quantities of the accelerator RR-X card, its pretty safe to bet that at $5K+ for one card the costs outweigh the benefits. If you are thinking about the process as an individual instead of a team, the individual expenses for one system can be in the ballpark of $25k – $40K. Multiply that by 3-6 systems with shared storage SAN etc and the costs are pretty astronomical. I question the benefit of cost versus benefit in editorial for working in 4K right now if you are not a single user. But its coming and will only get less expensive as a cost to entry. In the next few years it will be the norm.
VFX / COLOR / MASTERING
This is where 4K can and is being incorporated more regularly now. 4K and VFX is still a bit of a pain point as the render times are exponentially longer which could delay a release date. To date, that is one of the 4K barriers for finishing in 4k (well that and limited amount of 4K cameras and digital cinema projectors). Working in RAW is the best way to get the most of the RAW capture devices but often times to maintain color consistency between VFX and Color it works best to be working with the same files in the same color space. 4K DPX files which are typically supplied to VFX vendors are very large file sizes requiring about 1,000MB’s sustained disk speed to maintain realtime playback. The file size for 1 hour of 4K DPX is approximately 6 TB of data storage. Multiply that by VFX plates and revisions as well as renders and you’re looking at about 30-40TB for a standard 90 minute feature film. Doing a ProRes 4444 workflow however is considerably less demanding coming in at approximately 350MB’s sustained disk speed needed and only about 800GB per hour! That’s more than 1/6th the data storage savings and visually lossless to the eye compared to DPX. So, if VFX is a big part of your film and you need to be working outside of an all RAW workflow then you might want to consider 4K ProRes 4444 files as a working alternative. We use it quite often and its proved successful on many shows. Of course, you’ll want to take into consideration your monitoring and computer specs to keep up with the demands of these 4K workflows. But that is another discussion in and of itself. Once the project is created as a 4K DCP it can be played by most DCP players in 4K or 2K, depending upon the capability of the theatre’s projector.
This post may sound like more of a cautionary tale than advocating the 4K workflow and although I do believe in some aspects it is not quite fully there yet to be incorporated in every aspect of the chain, it is getting cheaper, faster and if you’re savoy, you can find workarounds to get the most bang for your buck and create a 4K infrastructure for your next show to take full advantage of the resolution you are capturing…or hire us and we’ll get you ready for a 4K future.
