4K Film requirements

Marcus Frakes · August 8, 2006

We are forging into our first 35mm feature length project. I'm hoping to get the data from the telecine on a hard drive (is there any other way?). Then working on it to add visual effects (about 10 minutes of the film). What storage/throughput is **required** to process a project this big? It's being scanned as Film 4k so I'm thinking SCSI 360 or "maybe" Rocket Raid with SATA 2 drives would do the job nicely??

Thanks

Michael Most · August 9, 2006

We are forging into our first 35mm feature length project. I'm hoping to get the data from the telecine on a hard drive (is there any other way?). Then working on it to add visual effects (about 10 minutes of the film). What storage/throughput is **required** to process a project this big? It's being scanned as Film 4k so I'm thinking SCSI 360 or "maybe" Rocket Raid with SATA 2 drives would do the job nicely??

Thanks

There's a vast difference between "telecine" and "4K scanning." I seriously doubt that you're scanning an entire film at 4K, and particularly if you're getting it delivered on "a hard drive." You need to be a lot more specific about what it is you're actually trying to do here.

Nathan Milford · August 9, 2006

*cringe*

My 20 minute short on the ARRISCANNER at 2K (from 3K) is between 400 and 500 gigs... which I keep on a WiebeTech raid, mirroring and have backed up in several copies to LTO.

A feature, at 4K... you need a storage infrastructure... not a consumer RAID.

Marcus Frakes · August 9, 2006

I'll try to be more specific. The feature requires us to add special effects. I believe the combined amount of footage we receive will be about 10-12 minutes. In turn we will composite and add effects to produce about 3 1/2 minutes of finished work. The DoP said we will receive the work in 4K film, to which he wants it delivered back in 4K film. From there he will downconvert to Super 2K? for the final writeout to film. My question mainly concerns hardware.... What type of RAID (SCSI UW320, SATA2, Striped?, etc) would need to be purchased to handle the job? I've estimated 600GB is sufficient? We will add effects in Adobe After Effects, Digital fusion, Combustion, etc. and be working with proxy files. Also is it typical for the job to be given to us on a hard drive?

Edited August 9, 2006 by Montage

Dan Horstman · August 9, 2006

I'll try to be more specific. The feature requires us to add special effects. I believe the combined amount of footage we receive will be about 10-12 minutes. In turn we will composite and add effects to produce about 3 1/2 minutes of finished work. The DoP said we will receive the work in 4K film, to which he wants it delivered back in 4K film. From there he will downconvert to Super 2K? for the final writeout to film. My question mainly concerns hardware.... What type of RAID (SCSI UW320, SATA2, Striped?, etc) would need to be purchased to handle the job? I've estimated 600GB is sufficient? We will add effects in Adobe After Effects, Digital fusion, Combustion, etc. and be working with proxy files. Also is it typical for the job to be given to us on a hard drive?

So it is a short...not a feature.

Michael Most · August 9, 2006

What type of RAID (SCSI UW320, SATA2, Striped?, etc) would need to be purchased to handle the job?

What exactly do you need to be able to do? Pull the frames one at a time into compositing programs, play out of RAM, then push them back out again? You're not planning to do this all on one workstation, are you? If not, the network is much more of a bottleneck than the storage. You can forget about real time playback of 4K data (if indeed it really is 4K) unless you introduce a much bigger infrastructure than what you seem to be talking about.

If your need is to store frames, it's up to you how you protect that (I'm talking in terms of RAID protection here). If your need is to pull them to multiple workstations, you need to be investigating very, very fast network solutions - far beyond things like gigabit ethernet. I hate to say it, but by the way you're talking about this, it seems like you're getting in way over your head. But maybe that's just the way it sounds....

Marcus Frakes · August 11, 2006

OK the DoP just changed the requirements to 2K, so I think we are out of the woods..... Our current network, render farm, and RAID systems should be sufficient for this project.

So it is a short...not a feature.

Nooo, it's feature length. The 3 1/2 minutes of OUR work will go into this at various scenes.

Cedric Lejeune · August 16, 2006

OK the DoP just changed the requirements to 2K, so I think we are out of the woods..... Our current network, render farm, and RAID systems should be sufficient for this project.
Nooo, it's feature length. The 3 1/2 minutes of OUR work will go into this at various scenes.

4K in effects is a nightmare as most of the time you don't just deal with 2-3 layers. Even in 2K it will be heavy to move and to keep interactivity in GUI, except if you are using proxies.