Hi all,
Just looking for any workflow tips or tricks for scaling up a particularly unwieldy edit that I'm inheriting to prepare it for colour grading and editing.
Here's the scenario: The edit is done in an HD sequence using HD proxy files. The original footage is 6K Raw Redcode. That part is easy: change the sequence settings and replace the proxy files for the originals.
Here's the problem: There are literally hundreds of other assets on the timeline that are not Raw footage, or footage at all, of pretty much every file type imaginable: PSDs, images and image sequences, embedded AE projects, other footage that's only available in HD, etc, all with different blending modes. On these are tons of keyframes for scale, position, opacity, etc. plus animated masks and various effects. Obviously scaling up the sequence doesn't scale up these assets or their effects proportionately.
Solutions I've tried:
- Swap out original assets for versions that are 3.2x the original size (same scale factor as proxy>raw). Only issue is that it seems sometimes the masks (particularly feathers) and other details don't render out consistently. Also, I have even higher res version of some of the images (5x or more) that I would prefer to use to maintain full quality.
- Embed sections of the entire sequence as after effects compositions and use scripts > scale composition, then pre-comp each layer, put in the full res assets, and then use Collapse Transformations to let the full res assets render through. This system works pretty well but obviously is very time consuming and there still seems to be some translation errors with blending modes and mask feathers. I've tried rendering these out as flattened raw image sequences, or layer-by-layer as image sequences with transparency burned in. Neither is particularly efficient.
Other ideas/thoughts:
- Is there something equivalent to the Scale Composition script but for Premiere?
- Is there a way to nest parts of a sequence and use Set to Frame Size or similar to scale it up all at once and preserve the resolution of the original assets? Or similarly to preserve a range of different blending modes?
- Are there any third party plugins or other tools to help with this kind of complicated up-res?
End goal is to get an entire 6k timeline into Davinci Resolve for colour grading, ideally with individual clips and layer information intact. However, even to get a single rendered down 6k timeline without losing the integrity of all the transformation controls and blending modes would be a great start, and we could either grade with Lumetri or cut up the rendered output and use keyframes to grade in Resolve.
Thanks for any help or ideas!