I´ve been shooting 4K or 5K for the last 3,5 years. Latest project was a documenatary series about 5 different people, top 5-10 in the world in their sport. (Wingsuit base jumping, FMX, Snowbard and skiing) It was shot mostly in 4K, a few HD cameras were used every now and then.
Our primary camera for the action was our RED EPIC, it shoots RED RAW .R3D is the file name. It´s compressed, but depending on your setting it´s virtually lossless on the lower settings 5:1 Compression.
The amount of Footage in GB was daunting (our second camera was a Canon 1DC, then smaller Sony 4K cameras), I think we ended up on around 25TB.
We edited in Premiere on PC´s because my partner is a PC guy, no proxies, we just used the 1/4 setting in Premierer.
In FCX you can´t specify the resolution, you can just choose for better playback, but it helps a lot for performance.
You need serious RAIDs to store the footage and od course back up. We had each program backed up to a Single 4TB drive + keeping it on a big RAID for editing + one more disk where the footage was originally batched when shot.
The data amount is manageable, but it´s a bit of a pain. Latest Premiere trouble was today, when we wanted to make archive backups of each episode and the Project Manager dosen´t manage to make a back up. No idea how we are getting all this footage onto one disk now, as footage (as always) came in late, on new disks ( no room on the RAID).
Bottom line, get organised from the start, and more importantly STAY organised. We didn't manage to stay organised to the bitter end, but close.
I think you will be happy with a MP instead of an iMac. The machine will be churning a lot. Rendering takes time when you go from 4K to 1080.
But. I will never shoot anything less than 4K for my personal projects anymore.
Looking back at all the stock shots we have from great locations from earlier work and trying to cut that EX-3 footage into the 4K stuff, the difference is night and day.
(Not saying you can´t shoot great 2K, the Alexa is a proof of that, but it´s too expensive to own for me)
Good luck with the project
Our primary camera for the action was our RED EPIC, it shoots RED RAW .R3D is the file name. It´s compressed, but depending on your setting it´s virtually lossless on the lower settings 5:1 Compression.
The amount of Footage in GB was daunting (our second camera was a Canon 1DC, then smaller Sony 4K cameras), I think we ended up on around 25TB.
We edited in Premiere on PC´s because my partner is a PC guy, no proxies, we just used the 1/4 setting in Premierer.
In FCX you can´t specify the resolution, you can just choose for better playback, but it helps a lot for performance.
You need serious RAIDs to store the footage and od course back up. We had each program backed up to a Single 4TB drive + keeping it on a big RAID for editing + one more disk where the footage was originally batched when shot.
The data amount is manageable, but it´s a bit of a pain. Latest Premiere trouble was today, when we wanted to make archive backups of each episode and the Project Manager dosen´t manage to make a back up. No idea how we are getting all this footage onto one disk now, as footage (as always) came in late, on new disks ( no room on the RAID).
Bottom line, get organised from the start, and more importantly STAY organised. We didn't manage to stay organised to the bitter end, but close.
I think you will be happy with a MP instead of an iMac. The machine will be churning a lot. Rendering takes time when you go from 4K to 1080.
But. I will never shoot anything less than 4K for my personal projects anymore.
Looking back at all the stock shots we have from great locations from earlier work and trying to cut that EX-3 footage into the 4K stuff, the difference is night and day.
(Not saying you can´t shoot great 2K, the Alexa is a proof of that, but it´s too expensive to own for me)
Good luck with the project