4K in the world of fast paced ENG
 

So I have an X70 and an A7sII, that both offer much superior HD renderings from 4K raw footage. Mostly, this is due to the ClearImage and digital zoom functions being actually fully usable for HD exports. Some might think I am a bit anal with all my color correction and DSC chart alignments I do on my cameras, but ponder this. When testing export times out of FCPX, on a 5 minute long 4K test story, adding a sharpening filter and bringing black levels down 1 notch increased export time from 5 minutes, to 15 minutes! Further testing of h264 exporting (no grading) vs my stations HDV format dropped export times 20%, and selecting Apple Devices and faster export speed dropped it down to under 45 seconds. At 720p resolution, I couldn't tell the difference on any of the renders.

So, last test I did was to redo the 45 second Apple fast export, but with the grading specified above. That 45 seconds turned into 15 minutes again, even with faster encode selected. So I guess what i am saying is "straight out of the camera direct to air" looks are what i am all about. In the world of feed it in right now for broadcast news, an additional 14 minutes of processing can be a bit much! I am currently working on detail settings and a black level that will give a perfect output, and allow usable digital zoom in 4K mode without amplified edge sharpening, but still look crisp on an HD export, and a black level that doesn't need any grading. Happily, 4K raw footage already has a 100% white clip, at least in FCP, so one less thing to be bothered with.

Stay tuned for in depth detail settings analysis and recommendations. :)

Paul

Re: 4K in the world of fast paced ENG
 

Much depends on how your NLE is able to deal with 4K files, not sure to what codec you are exporting but on my system a 5 minute film to a h264/avc codec would take about 2 minutes, with effects similar to what you tested. I use Edius.