Yes, it is currently difficult to view at 4K, but a forward-looking company would incorporate features like this BEFORE people start clamoring for them. I've had this same thought, with hopes of shooting our third feature on the RED camera, and planned, if we do, to work at 2K resolution, which would be fine for our needs. But as I said, Sony should look to the future and bump the max resolution of Vegas 8 to 4K. And while we're on the topic of Vegas 8, PLEASE jump to 10-bit. It's high time. Vegas, if Sony is smart, could easily by re-tooled and re-vamped to replace XPRI, which from what I understand, isn't as popular as they would like. Vegas could go head-to-head with FCP if they would target its use to everyone from the wedding videographer segment of the market to feature film makers, as Apple does with FCP.

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"Yes, it is currently difficult to view at 4K, but a forward-looking company would incorporate features like this BEFORE people start clamoring for them."
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You do realize that Vegas is now owned by Sony and not Sonic Foundry. With SF, this would be possible. With Sony, they like to play catch up.

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Vegas, if Sony is smart, could easily by re-tooled and re-vamped to replace XPRI, which from what I understand, isn't as popular as they would like. Vegas could go head-to-head with FCP if they would target its use to everyone from the wedding videographer segment of the market to feature film makers, as Apple does with FCP.
>>>>

Yeah and forgo all the money they charge for XPRI? Doubt it. Sony isnt interested in competing as has been discussed to death here recently. Vegas is more into the consumer market.

The consumer issue drives Vegas, PPro, even FCP. Prosumers are the lion's share of their income on these products.

We were just talking about Red a few minutes ago here where I work. We're on the list and will probably get the option to buy in December. I haven't been following this decision here but what I was just told makes it appear that Red is currently be targeted at FCP and quicktime. The comment was that there has been no mention of quicktime on the PC being supported. So my assumption is that there's been nothing definite about whether you can make much use of Red on the PC.

Regarding 4K, Red doesn't have to work in 4k mode, and not too many people will want to work that way unless maybe they intend to print to film. If that's the case, it's prettied rarified air for Vegas in it's current incarnation.

I'd think that if you intended to support 4k resolutions you'd need a lot more memory available for Vegas and would probably need to get serious about a 64-bit version of the software.

Oh. That's right.

Rob Mack

No one here could answer that. Why not go post it on the product suggestion page?

Rob Mack

Actually, there's no reason you couldn't use RED footage on a PC. The way the camera works, unless editing in REDcode, which FCP does support, the RAW footage has to be transcoded to a different format before editing. Simply use the REDCine software to transcode to the format that best works on your NLE and go to work. For us, working in Vegas, we could transcode the 4K RedCode to perhaps 2K avi. It is possible, but I will have to do research to figure out the best workflow. Lots could happen between now and when we go into production on our next feature, though, which could be a couple years off.

Actually Vegas does not support 2K, niether SMPTE 2K or DCI 2K.

The pixel count is a minor problem, the required 12 bit pipeline is a much bigger problem. Should not need more RAM or 64 bit, none of the current crop of industry systems for handling this seem to need 64 bit OSs or staggering amount of RAM.

It'd be really nice if Vegas supported Cineform's Prospect 2K but I don't see this happening any time soon.

Bob.

Well, I guess I'm confused then. Doesn't Vegas support 2048 by 2048 pixel dimensions? And since 2K is 2048 by 1080 pixels...

Pixels are only one part of a 2K workflow.

Bob... what's the difference between SMPTE 2K and DCI 2K? Aren't they the same thing?

2- If you have a Red camera, it probably makes sense to finish 2K or 1080p. 4K finishing isn't even done on the majority of Hollywood feature films, and there's a reason for that. Right now it's not very practical. All the extra time and money spent doing a 4K finish could be better spent elsewhere.

3- It should be that the Red camera generates a quicktime proxy, which deal a real-time 2k 1K or 0.5K extraction. You can load these quicktimes into Vegas and edit away. Output an EDL into Redcine, do some image processing there (white balance/highlight recovery, and some other things), do a high-quality deBayer, and then conform your footage at high quality.

It's presumably the plan anyways, based on comments from the Red team.

4- You may want to do a feature request for DPX input and output if you are planning to get a Red.

Oops, yes, you're right DCI 2K is 2048 x 1080, of those only 1998 x 1080 pixels are active at 1.85:1, probably to allow for masking during projection.

The SMPTE standard for S16 2K is slightly larger.

It's all more than a bit confusing and the pixel count is the least of it.
Working with 2K RAW is very nice, but from what I've done so far it is almost back to square one on the learning curve.

Bob.

Bob... what's the difference between SMPTE 2K and DCI 2K? Aren't they the same thing?

NO!

The SMPTE standards are for film scans and are different for 16mm and 35mm scans. Our SI-2K will shoot in DCI 2K or SMPTE 2K, there's only a few pixels in it but had me scratching my head for a while as to just what 2K really is.

For anyone really serious about cinema projection download a copy of the latest DCI specs, can't believe we'll still be dealing with reel numbers! From my reading of it getting your masterpiece edited is only part of it. Turning that into a digital 'print' ready for projection is another matter entirely.


I agree about being able to read dpx sequences but then what would you do with them in Vegas?

Bob.

I agree about being able to read dpx sequences but then what would you do with them in Vegas?

I'd use Vegas as one of the least expensive conversion/tweener tools available if we could read/import/export DPX. It's been asked for more than once.

1- Hmm I thought SMPTE was going to adopt the DCI spec as a standard. (Not sure here.)

But you're talking about another SMPTE standard which relates to film scans (before DCI).

2- I think Redcine will output the high-quality deBayered files in a number of formats...
DPX uncompressed would be one of them
It could also export Quicktime... which I suppose is useful if you want to work compressed. But I'm not sure if there are any good choices for 10-bit (or more) and good compression.

Maybe we should wait and see first??