4k Anamorphic Footage Export Failing Immediately

Hi,



I'm trying to export the project I'm working on, a 4K project shot with an anamorphic lens giving a 2.35:1 aspect ratio.


Final size should be 5076 x 2160


Both Compressor and FCPX fail almost immediately whenever I try to export with these settings. If I try and export with a scaled version, 4096x1742 it exports without any issues. The problem with this is that Youtube/Vimeo, etc.. do not interpret the file as a 4k movie.


Has anyone experienced this before? Any recommendations/suggestions?

looks like youtube's 4k image size limit is 3840x2160. go to this page can scroll to "Resolution and aspect ratio" for more info:

Recommended upload encoding settings (Advanced) - YouTube Help
support.google.com/youtube/answer/1722171

Hi Jamecude,


What I'm actually trying to resolve is why I cannot export at 5076x2160. The youtube portion is less important, I apologize for introducing it and adding confusion.

Any ideas on what the problem could be?

I just now created a project 5076 x 2160 using custom in the project settings. I dropped a 1080 clip into it and selected spatial conform to fill the screen (I did not have a 4K clip handy). FCPX exported the master just fine without any problems.
I assume you setup the project for those custom dimensions. What error does FCPX display, if any, when it fails?

Also, have you tried the 5K project settings (5120 x 2160) which is roughly 2.37:1 ?

I also did a short test exporting in that format and evrything went perfectly...

Project settng: 5076x2160 24p = Export (share) Prores422 from iMac (27-inch, Mid 2011)

What are the specs of the share you are trying to do?
What are the specs of source media?

- Some codecs have limits on formats.

I've been doing a lot of testing to see if I could isolate the problem.


I created a new event, project, and taken a clip into a 5K timeline ( I had the same hunch as DGWvideo)

I had only fails for anything larger than 4196x2160 export based off the 5K (5076x2160) timeline

I've got all my apps up to date, running

FCPX 10.2.2
Compressor 4.2.1
OSX El Capitan 10.11.2
MBP 13 retina, 8GB
2.6 GHz Intel Core i5

could it be a horsepower issue?

The Error message from compressor is vague it reads "Failed: 3x The operation could not be completed"

Ideally my export settings would be

UHD 5107x2160
24p
H.264
25,000kbps as per Larry Jordan's reco


Source media specs

8-bit 4:2:0
4K @ 100MB/s
Sony’s XAVC S codec

AFAIK H264 does not support this big frame size. 4K is basically the limit. If you export ProRes you'll have no problem. But then of course your intended audience would need to have ProRes as well.

Hi Lichinho,

That's amazing to hear, maybe that's where my issue lies.

@Francois, @DGWvideo, the successful exports you've done, are they H264 or another format?



@Lichinho, do you know the maximum image size that H264 can handle?

My test was done using XAVC-I footage and exporting to Prores 422 HQ.

Here is the wikipedia page for H264:

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H.264/MPEG-4_AVC

I had seen that but not sure I'm properly understanding.

I'm assuming under Levels, is where max frame rate/resolution is what I should be following right?

How do I determing which level of H264 I'm working with?

Quite a saga ...
I did a test with x264 no luck

First you can't call UHD anything other than 3840 x 2160 or 7680 x 4320 all other dimension are what they are.

What we need to know is how you want the finished production to be distributed...

If you are aiming for UHD 4K you will have to scale down to 3840 x 2160 letterboxed.
I think there is a preset for this in compressor, and forget Larry Jordan for this one.

all the best

sorry, I was under the impression that anything greater than 1080 HD was UHD. Thanks for clarifying.

Since I'm able to get a 4698x1999 file exported successfully, I'll have to opt for that, it's only 5-10% smaller than the original file.


Thanks for the help! Hopefully others can benefit from this thread

Anything over 1080 HD us considered UHD. 2.5K is UHD.

Might be considered but...

- UHD Parameter Values

"The SMPTE standard ST 2036-1, “Ultra High Definition Television — Image Parameter Values for Program Production”, defines a family of progressive image sample structures for Ultra High Definition Television, with resolution 3840 x 2160 (termed UHDTV1) and 7680 x 4320 (termed UHDTV2), with an aspect ratio of 16x9, and with RʹGʹBʹ or YʹCʹ Cʹ colour encoding and digitalrepresentation83. The most recent version was approved in October 2014.
Colorimetry is defined consistently with BT.2020. In addition, for UHDTV1 at frame rates up to 60 frames per second, BT.709 colorimetry can be used. The transfer function (‘gamma’) is consistent with BT.2020 and BT.709."

www.smpte.org/sites/default/files/1554_SMPTE_Wallchart_v6.pdf

Tell that to TV, camera, and monitor manufacturers who group 2K and 2.5K into the same advertising "UHD" hype.

Guys,

Let's not let this thread devolve into nitpicking who's correct about UHD, it honestly doesn't matter at all.

I really appreciate everyone taking the time to test file settings and helping me learn about H264 limitations. I hope this will be useful to others in the future and a chirp fest at the end of a productive email isn't going to prove useful to anyone later on.

Thank you all