BMCC 2.5k work Flow on FCPX

I have been given DNG CinemaRaw footage shot on the Blackmagic Cinema 2.5K camera.
Simply put do I need to output Prores 444 from Davinci Resolve to get the all that the camera sends out in colour depth or does Pro 422 HQ cover it well enough and no there will no be heavy VFX with alpha channels. But yes this is a production that could get on in the theaters. Yes there will heavy colour grading/finishing as this is a sci-fi/horror film.

But I do know that sometime outputing the highest does not equate to a better source output to be used in FCPX.

Wishing there was native support in FCPX with BMCC, CinemaRAW DNG files.


Please don't just say Prores 444 all the way without an informed reason why.

Thank you

Can I round trip the footage from Davinci Resolve & FCPX. Export Prores 422 with the XML from Davinci so that I can when finished the edit in FCPX send out an XML from FCPX to go back to link Davinci RAw files to do the FINAL export?

So the final render out of Davinci Resolve is from the original source cinema Raw files.

Is this right?

A possible workflow would be to generate what ever Prores (even LT or proxy ) from Davinci using what used to be called "Master Timeline" (all the shots back to back) then deliver as " individual clip s" that you will use for editing... You will have to restrain using complex plugins that will not be supported back in Davinci. Do a tight edit then output fcpxml ...

In davinci pre-import DNG in media Pool , then import your fcpxml, the shots should automatically reconnect to the preloaded DNG ( the fcpxml import dialog need to carefully be filed) then you do your final grading on the DNG in Davinci and deliver the final shots again as individual clips with Handles ... but this time render in ProRes 4444 for digital cinema master or 422 HQ for broadcast master, export a new fcpxml. Go back to fcpx, import new fcpxml , set "render format" to match desired master output then add fx , title etc.

Share your Quicktime master piece ... the end

Wonderful thank you for the detailed explanation

I'd think ProRes HQ would be just fine for any purpose.

Although standard « Digital Cinema » content is transferred from the server to the projector at 250 Mb/s for 2K 2d 24fps the process of producing an excellent DCP will benefit from preserving the highest chroma details and best fidelity to the original camera files.

The BM 2.5K cinecamera produces 12-bit DNG image sequence each 2400x1350 and 5 MB/frame, this produces a stream of about 960 Mb/s … +- 450 GB/hr

If the producer wants to show this film in a theater, I believe it would be a good practice to generate a MASTER file closest to the Original Camera Files dynamic range. This is why and only for the purpose of generating the best DCP that I still advise to make a master in prores 4444, as far as television diffusion even a prores 422 would be sufficient but check the broadcaster spec sheet, you might even end up needing an AS11 Master …( around 100 Mb/s )

——————
About the Prores codec (Informations from « Prores white paper June 2014 »)

4:4:4 is the highest-quality format for preserving chroma detail. In 4:4:4 image
sources, there is no subsampling, or averaging, of chroma information.
4:2:2 is considered a high-quality, professional video format in which the chroma values of Y’CBCR images are averaged together such that there is one CB and one CR sample, or one “CB/CR chroma pair,” for each Y’ (luma) sample.
Prores for 2048x1556 24p (Source: Prores white paper June 2014)
422 181 Mb/s 81 GB/hr
HQ 272 Mb/s 122 GB/hr
4444 No Alpha 407 Mb/s 183 GB/hr
——————

Note that the closest match to the Original camera Files is the prores 4444 no alpha at 407 Mb/s and that is more than half the bandwidth of the original stock.

Just thinking aloud and explaining my advice.