Hello All. I'm working on a short film. I'm on a PC. Windows 11. Premiere Pro 23 because 24 was fantastically buggy and I never change versions in the middle of a project.
What I'm doing is editing on a 23.98 fps timeline/sequence with a variety of footage: Main camera is a BMPCC 6K pro in Braw 8:1 compression. For some shots in places we couldn't take a larger camera we shot in 8K 24fps on a Samsung Galaxy s23 ultra (the Ridley Scott phone). The BM footage is 23.98 and the phone says it's exactly 24fps.
We are cutting the movie on a timeline set to 2048 x 858 pixels because many festivals like this for Scope 2.39:1 projection. I do my preview files at Prores 422HQ and I keep the timeline pretty much rendered at all times...so I don't have to deal with a long render at the end of a day before exporting. But...that's if I'm exporting to Match Source.
My question is: can I have these 2K timeline settings and export the movie in 4K?
I've actually done this already...back when the film only had a few scenes in it and I would simply choose High Quality 4K as my preset and I'd get a nice 4K file and could upload that to YouTube or Vimeo etc. Of course since my preview files were in 2048 x 858 I couldn't USE PREVIEWS and still get 4K...so I would export using the High Quality 4K preset and let the computer do whatever it is that it's doing when you have a 2K timeline but want a 4K export. I assume it has to re-render new export files. And also I realize I'm asking a lot...because the machine has to both upscale and render and export to get this result.
Now that the film is getting longer as we add scenes...I'm still able to render the timeline just fine from start to finish...but if I don't use previews and I want to try to export as a 4K file...it hangs up usually somewhere well into the second half of the show...which is only right now about 8 minutes long! So it's not some giant project or anything...and as I say above it's 2048 x 858...If I just say USE PREVIEWS it'll export a nice H264 copy in about 14 minutes. Real fast. But not at 4K.
When I try to get it to give me 4K on the export...it of course slows way way down...hours of time because now it's got to render the larger format I guess...and export it...but the bigger problem is the HANGING UP deep into the process. I can start this and go to bed for the night...and get up at 5am and sure enough it's not moving...the numbers don't change at all...it's stuck...it's stopped or it's running so slowly that it appears for all intents and purposes to be stopped...it's hung.
Am I doing something wrong? Is this asking too much of the computer? The software?
Anyone have any thoughts on this? I can find a hundred tutorials on how to export 4k....but very few get into working with a 2K timeline/sequence AND THEN EXPORTING 4K. There is an assumption that if you wanted a 4K export you would have worked with a 4K timeline. But that's not what I'm doing.
In the festival world most of the time I just need a nice, clean 2K file. But occasionally it would be nice to offer a 4K version and that's what has led me down this path.
Has anybody tried this? Or does anyone have any thoughts on a better way to accomplish this? I suppose I could render out a Prores 4444 version...put it through Topaz Video AI to upscale a 4K OR back into Premiere Pro and scale it up to proper UHD aspect and spit out a 4K copy that way...thanks for any thoughts or ideas. Much appreciated in advance. Arlin Godwin / Washington, DC
Thanks for the post and welcome to our user-to-user forum. In order to help you better, please give the community more information. See, How do I write a bug report? To troubleshoot, I suspect that you are pressing the system by serving up scaling, effects processing, and other GPU-centric and RAM hungry processes on a feature-length sequence. You may need to change your workflow for export or bolster your hardware. Info about your hardware would be useful for a diagnosis. I hope we can help you.
Thanks, Kevin
Kevin Monahan - Sr. Community & Engagement Strategist – Pro Video and Audio
If you export a 2K sequence to 4K and all your source clips are 4K or higher, there shouldn’t be much quality loss. Just make sure you’re not using render previews during export, as that will affect the final output.
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