3840x2160 (16:9) 25 fps 604 MB/sec CODEC for desktop PB
by Hilary Koob-Sassen
on
May 13, 2008 at 1:12:43 pm
Hello all,
I am looking for a codec that I can render to from AE and FCP, and can preview 1/2 or 3/4 scaled and actual scle (partial) on my 30" mac desktop.
the AJA whack test on Dulce RX shows (720MB/sec.)easily enough disk throughput to handle 604MB/sec,
but apple uncompressed 10 bit 4:2:2 won't play more than 5sec.
my problem is not editing and rendering of which I will do a variety of methods, but rather
?????what uncompressed codec etc. to render TO????....how to see it,
1/2 or 3/4 scale or actual scale (partial)
on my 30" desktop
so I can check composition...before we finnally have it chopped up for seperate projectors or in the very fancy installation projection system
or to identify the hardware/software bottle necks to playing such a frame size on my desktop.
Re: 3840x2160 (16:9) 25 fps 604 MB/sec CODEC for desktop PB by Brian Lynn on Aug 14, 2008 at 2:08:40 am
The only "desktop" I've seen that could play a video that size was a PC/Windows box (it was a monster machine), and not "uncompressed".
Is there a reason you need to preview in an uncompressed format?
I produce content for blended wide projection as well. When I need to preview my entire widescreen roll on one machine I render it out as a QuickTime.mov h.264 compression, and scale the project down either through the render options or by dropping the main comp into a smaller comp and sizing it down, and then render that.
Do you happen to know what your final playback system will be? What kind of decks? If they are not "uncompressed" playback then there is no reason to preview in uncompressed.
And the final video will be chopped for vertical and horizontal blends I'm guessing? That's a lot of vertical pixels for a playback device to handle smoothly.
You can try using the "Region Of Interest" tool. Its awesome! You can choose an area of your huge video to do a RAM preview, and then save the RAM preview and you get just that tiny area. I use this a lot when I need to make sure gradients are flowing correctly. As far as I know it renders out uncompressed at your comp settings (not size), but only the area selected allowing you to preview one tiny part at a time.
Re: 3840x2160 (16:9) 25 fps 604 MB/sec CODEC for desktop PB by hilary koob-sassen on Aug 16, 2008 at 11:58:21 am
Dear Brian,
Thank you for that. It will be going over a variety of different types of projection systems, and you are right that compression will be fine for that. The main reason I want to render in a lossless or uncompressed at that pixel dimension is that I am building an animation and for many things the easiest route is to build the layers seperatly and render big enough that I can still have room for a 2X zoom when finally compositing the layers. So I want to keep all the quality of my compositions, and be able to move them around, and then finally render extra big, and also down to just HD. I am a video artist and the forms will be playing at a variety of venues, some HD, and some multiprojector as you describe. So at core I seek a way to render and check and composite at 2x hd res with minimum possible loss- so I can re-render and add layers.
I thank you for any help/ suggestions for the co-dec that would allow me to do this on the mac.
Hilary
Re: 3840x2160 (16:9) 25 fps 604 MB/sec CODEC for desktop PB by Brian Lynn on Aug 19, 2008 at 12:55:40 am
Wow that is a rough requirement =)
I wish I could give you simple answer but I don't think there is one. Short of printing to a Q-Vis server or some other monster dedicated hardware playback system I don't think you're going to be able to accomplish 100% of what you want. You might have to "fudge" a few things.
Are you working with proxies? This could help you speed things up a bit. It won't give you the pixel for pixel preview you want though.
And with the size of your project I don't think you're going to be able to ever preview the entire thing in full res. Unless you have a monster machine it just can't handle the internal bandwidth required to play that back. You will likely need dedicated playback hardware to get that kind of capablity.
So you'll either have to cut it up and watch it peice by peice, or conform the width to something you already know you can watch, i.e. 1920 wide, height based on ratio... use that to preview your work and render out small areas to check fine detail. At that point it becomes a trust issue with you and After Effects that you've checked everything you could, seen everything you could, and have to see the final project on a big screen after delivery. Use those area renders to check check check!
Good luck, wish I could help more. Computers are not quite at 2k or 4k size video playback yet.
