GH4/Avid workflow help?

[Lasers_pew_pew_pew]

Hi there lovely people.

 

I was wondering if I could pick your squishy supple brains for a moment.

 

I'm doing a 24 hour charity fashion filming stunt on Saturday.

 

And the deal is we turn up, film this stunt all day, and then I go back and edit the video and publish it to the interwebz that very night.

 

Here's the problem.

 

My Mac Pro can't play or handle h.264 4k files very well (VLC will play them fine-ish, but quicktime finds it impossible).

 

I usually AMA into Avid (I am an avid editor, yes I know I should get premiere but for this project I have no choice but to use Avid 7).

 

My plan on the day was to have a laptop converting the h.264 files into 4k ProRes on my laptop so when I get back to the office to start editing I can AMA the files and start editing off quickly. And then export to 2k when done. (Or more likely a 1080 down sampled file which should look nice).

 

The AMA's of the files converted to Pro Res I have from a test day, can crash the computer constantly and lose all the work at times.

 

And they still don't play back greatly.

 

I can transcode in the back ground some clips but this will massively slow the edit down. Also I'm not sure what to transcode them as, 420 MXF is the top option that comes up on my avid settings I think? (I'm an idiot with codecs), and when I tried cropping in I noticed I was losing more resolution then I thought I would when cropping in 200%?

 

I was hoping to use the cropping ability of 4k to help me get different shots on the fly and zoom in on details of the clothes and posters, but is 200% cropping not feasible? Or is it that when I transcode to 420 MXF that is bringing the quality down, what should I transcode to?

 

 

ANYWAY,

 

What workflow would you guys recommend for easy editing and to quickly be able to start editing straight away and export off with as little problems as possible! (preferably!)