The good news is that exporting from a 2.5K workflow maximises the resolution of the camera and it will look like the sharpest 1080p output on earth. When 4K projectors and TVs (Sony has one on the way) become more affordable, 2.5K will also upscale very nicely – especially since it comes from raw – compared to 1080p. The screen resolution is 2560 x 1440 and the IPS panel size is 27″ so it has no trouble with 2400 x 1350 Blackmagic Cinema Camera material.Īs for projectors and TVs unfortunately 2.5K ones are extremely rare if not almost non-existent.
You will need to use this to get the full resolution from a Mac, as HDMI only goes up to 1080p.
Since you will want to free up a Thunderbolt port for the Blackmagic Cinema Camera anyway, the Dell is a good option as it has a Displayport on the back. Essentially this is a matte version of Apple’s Cinema Display but without the fancy chassis and Thunderbolt connectivity. I’ve had stunning – no – eyeball popping playback on my Dell U2711 screen too.
Those with the newer Macbook Pro 15″ 2.5K screens will enjoy this. Of course, the resulting file plays back no problem in Quicktime or VLC, etc. Need a 2.5K display to view it on? Get the Dell U2711 IPS 27″ monitor for around $699 on eBay
Goodbye CinemaDNG plugin you aren’t needed here! My export settings for 2.5K H.264 – click the image to enlargeĪnd that’s it. You may get away with lower if you want dramatically reduced file sizes. I’ve used a target bitrate of 80 Mbit and a maximum of 120 Mbit to keep that fine noise grain and uncompressed look.Under Bitrate Settings select VBR 2 pass.Select frame rate to match your footage.Now enter the width and height as 2400 x 1350.Below under Basic Video Settings before entering the resolution – select profile ‘High’.Here are the 2.5k export settings I’m using in Premiere for the final 24p master. So how about for export to Vimeo? At the moment Vimeo doesn’t playback higher than 1080p but you can still use it to share the clip or as hosting for the full 2.5K file. I am editing on a Macbook Pro 17″ i7 with 8GB RAM and an SSD as the main working drive, and didn’t have any problems. You don’t need the CinemaDNG plugin or any workarounds. It doesn’t matter what sequence preset you use, when you drag the clip onto a blank timeline for the first time you should be prompted whether you want the sequence settings to match the clip.Now simply drag the lossless clips to Premiere where you can smoothly snip and colour correct away just like with DSLR footage.But unlike the ProRes option in-camera you are getting the full 2.5k resolution and believe me 2400 x 1350 makes a huge difference over 1080p! The resulting Quicktime files will be playable in Quicktime X, VLC Player and 100% editable in Premiere.
Choose Create Proxy > Movie to create a clip composition You can apply grading to the clips in After Effects as soon as you open them or you can choose to grade the lossless clips in Premiere. I did some light grading in the Photoshop style raw colour corrector to bring up the shadows, flatten the image and tweak the white balance before rendering them out from After Effects. The lossless files don’t use complex compression algorithms. It is fast, easy and maximises the quality of the footage.Įditing 2.5K raw is very demanding, but with this method you won’t need a monster computer. You can grade with the common Photoshop raw controls and drag the clips right in, before rendering them out in a 2.5K lossless format for editing on a timeline in Premiere. In After Effects (AE CS5.5 or CS6) CinemaDNG chooses to play nice. Here’s the solution that’s working best for me… Premiere cannot yet edit the CinemaDNG files natively, performance is very limited, it interprets the footage at 1fps, requiring you to fix this for every clip and image quality suffers greatly, possibly because it doesn’t allow you to edit in glorious 12bit. I am not an FX guy so rarely use After Effects. I’ve been experimenting today with Blackmagic Cinema Camera workflows. Don’t bother watching it full screen from the stream as it is a pale imitation of the full 2.5k file)
(Important: on the Vimeo page for this clip, click download to get the 2.5K 80Mbit clip. DOWNLOAD 2.5K BLACKMAGIC H.264 FOOTAGE HERE