Thinking about 4K Studio Pro Ultra -- questions.

[stonepatterson]

How high up on the Mbps 4K can I go with a 4K Studio Pro Ultra? I am NOW using both an S6000 with 30+ software packages and IMac (5K, 27" monitor -- top Intel Core i5 and Radeon Pro 580) with Final Cut Pro X (lots of Pixel Film Studio FX) to do HD work -- which is going out on ProRes 422HQ for TVODs (ITunes, Amazon, Google Play, etc.). Want to jump up to 4K (or 4.6K Black Magic URSA) cameras for next projects but not sure how well the Pro Ultra will do with 3840 x 2160p (312.5 MB/s)? My IMac can handle the modes -- but the editing is time consuming (and the hard drives are all external). Please advise. Also check out https://youtu.be/GcItmnv_SS8 for the fun of it... My next project is SCARE 2.

[mhuebmer]

Megabits/second has nothing to do with picture quality. You can encode SD footage with 900 mbps and it would not get better.

I would advise to make an appointment with a MacroSystem US reseller and check your own footage at a Casablanca-4 there. If you can't see the difference between the Final Cut export and the Bogart Windows export, that would be the important part.

Would love to read your feedback here, after the test.

[stonepatterson]

I thought, "a bitrate is the amount of data required to encode a single second of video, the higher the bitrate, the higher the quality." OR. "Consider Camcorder A and Camcorder B. Camcorder A records 1920x1080 video at 15 Mbps. Camcorder B records 1920x1080 video at 24 Mbps. Both have the same video resolution, but Camcorder B has the higher bit rate. All things equal, Camcorder B will produce the higher quality video."
Now, lets consider 4K which is 4 times the image quality. Therefore, "Stick to the highest bit rate and quality setting you can, provided you have enough memory. You can always take a high-quality video file (that is, a large data file) and shrink it down with editing software. However, taking a low-quality file and boosting its quality by adding more data is impossible." Understand, I shot HD at 35 Mbps. The problems arose when I tried to convert that edited HD on a S6000 to 422 ProRes HQ for TVODs (using FCPX on an extremely fast -- great video card MAC). There is an interest in my doing more SCARE documentaries -- but at a higher quality of base material, 4.6K at 300 Mbps. Will the 4K Studio Pro Ultra handle that speed of quality image?

[stonepatterson]

And the S6000 cannot handle 422 ProRes HQ WHICH IS REQUIRED for TVODs and PVODs. Thanks.

[mhuebmer]

The 8 year old S-6000 can import ProRes 422 HQ and work with this footage - but can't export it. This is correct.

But datarate is no quality index. MegaBit/Second is the space on your Harddisc, that is filled with video. If you have two camcorders, one recording with AVCHD/H.264 and the other with HEVC/H.265 - both set to 15 Mbps, the second camcorders video file will be equal in size on the SD card, but not in image quality. HEVC/H.265 has better compression, getting more details into smaller drivespace. Camcorder B would have a better picture quality at the same datarate, and could even have a better picture quality with a lower datarate then the AVCHD camcorder

What ProRes does, is just sending iframes into a mov QuickTime container. Also compressed and not lossless… kind of the Sony DV codec did 1995. So this generates huge files and massive datarate. But you probably can't see a visual picture difference, compared to AVCHD or HEVC encoding, with much lower data rates. The better the encoding software, the smaller the datarate will be at the same visual picture quality.

A difference that would be seen is when doing special FX like chromakeying(Blue-/Green-Box). For those jobs an iframe based codec (also used by Bogart itself inside the software for editing+effects) is the best solution.

I have just exported a 3840x2160p60 MP4 with Bogart Windows on StudioPro and this 1 Min 50 Sek. video has a datarate of 126 Mbps (needs 1,61 GB on the drive). I then converted this file to ProRes 422 HQ without data rate limitation. So there the same picture quality needs 26,2 GB on the drive (with a datarate of 2050 Mbps ) Direct ProRes export is on the MacroMotion wish-list for Bogart Windows but I don't know if it is possible for those old Casablanca-3 units.