I wasn't aware of the non-square models but now that you've shown me the light, I agree with you that that's probably my best bet. I might be able to fully tile the full 4k with simultaneous detectors (which I can do right now on HD input).
I did look into doing script stuff and fully intend to play with that in future just because it looks like opens up a lot of possibilities/customization. (baby steps, I'm new at this pipeline programming) I also came across setSequenceNum and figured maybe that could be applicable but I wasn't able to find documentation about it beyond "Retrieves image sequence number" (which looks like a cut-and-paste from getSequenceNum). but if the wide-aspect model doesn't work out I'll go down the road of what you describe.
thanks for the help!