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Why not shoot highest resolution even if for 1080p Distribution

J

James Mulholland

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Hi Everyone,

Was reading about the different resolutions on RED MX and seen people say 4K 16:9 is better for cinema use while 4K HD was better for 1080p distribution. I was wondering though why would you not shoot at 4K 16:9 to get that little extra from the image and use that even if distributing at 1080p? I know 4KHD is suppose to be faster when going 1080p but apart from that if you have time would 4K 16:9 be better? also there is 4.5K aswel which I image will be very tempting to shoot on for me.

Even if I plan on delivering something on a DVD at 1080P i'd still like to achieve the highest quality possible so just curious?

Thanks

James
 
As a graphic designer I can tell you right now (from my point of view) that, if you resize or downscale the image or video the right way, is going to look OK or even better than the original in most cases, as long as you keep your ratios. For instance, 1080p looks OK in 720p monitors, because they share the same aspect ratio. For instance when I do my work in Photoshop I use "bicubic shaper resample" for reduction, and "bucubic smoother" for enlargements, so it disguises the pixelation. It should be the same for video, but it depends on the program you are working with, in any case, the rule is: bigger images always look OK when you resize to a smaller size. That is not the case if you do the opposite, but again, it depends. You will be surprised if I tell you, that many feature movies were shot withn 1080p camcorders and then transferred to film. So it all depends..
 
The reason is 4K HD is exactly 4 x 1080, which makes it inherently better when downsizing as it's not chopping pixels in half from odd resolutions. So not just faster, I think it creates a cleaner image which in the end is what we want.
 
4k HD is is just a pixel crop giving you an image that fits the 1.777 HD frame format. Just like the 5k WS gives you a 5k image pre cropped to 1:2.41.
 
The best algorithm resampler for resize is Lanczos. At least according to my tests.
Lanczos keeps the image (videos) very sharp and at the same time has probably the smallest side effects comparing with other algorithms.

Too bad we don't have it in Photoshop/Premiere/AE.
 
jimhare said:
The reason is 4K HD is exactly 4 x 1080, which makes it inherently better when downsizing as it's not chopping pixels in half from odd resolutions. So not just faster, I think it creates a cleaner image which in the end is what we want.
Click to expand...

A little confusing when you say 4 x 1080. that's 4320 pixels vertical (V).

I understand that 4KHD is 4096 (H) x 2304 (V). So the term "K" newly refers to the horizontal resolution, not the vertical one. Put it this way: 4KHD is the same as if you would say: 2304p. That was before they decided to change the standard terms and counting the horizontal resolution instead of the vertical one..

So if you want to resize a 5K image (5120 x 2700) to 1080p, and keep the same aspect ratio pixel by pixel, then: 1920 (H) x 2700 (V) / 5120 (H) = 1013 (V). Means you will end up with an image of 1920 x 1013 with black bars top and bottom.
In the case of 4KHD, you are right about that, using the same formula, you'll end up with the whole frame with no bars. 1920 x 1080 -- 16:9 aspect ratio.
 
Last edited:
Sebastian_A said:
The best algorithm resampler for resize is Lanczos. At least according to my tests.
Lanczos keeps the image (videos) very sharp and at the same time has probably the smallest side effects comparing with other algorithms.

Too bad we don't have it in Photoshop/Premiere/AE.
Click to expand...

I agree Lanczos is the best, I used to design PHP web pages, and that's the best thumbnail resizer ever.
 
Björn Benckert said:
4k HD is is just a pixel crop giving you an image that fits the 1.777 HD frame format. Just like the 5k WS gives you a 5k image pre cropped to 1:2.41.
Click to expand...

5K WS gives you 2.37:1

Right between 2:35:1 and 2.40:1.
 
Julio Quintana said:
4K HD is exactly four times the resolution of 1920x1080 (ie. 3840x2160). This means you only have to divide the image in half both ways to get a clean 1080p image.
Click to expand...

Are you sure 4K hd is 3840x2160?, I though it was 4096x2304.. probably I got it wrong, but in any case the formula above applies the same..
 
Pretty sure it's exactly 4 x 1920 x 1080, 3840 x 2160. It's 4 times because you can fit four 1920x1080 windows into it. 4 times the vertical resolution alone would be 16 times the resolution of HD as you are multiplying by both V & H, not just one.

Pablo Moreno said:
A little confusing when you say 4 x 1080. that's 4320 pixels vertical (V).

I understand that 4KHD is 4096 (H) x 2304 (V). So the term "K" newly refers to the horizontal resolution, not the vertical one. Put it this way: 4KHD is the same as if you would say: 2304p. That was before they decided to change the standard terms and counting the horizontal resolution instead of the vertical one..

So if you want to resize a 5K image (5120 x 2700) to 1080p, and keep the same aspect ratio pixel by pixel, then: 1920 (H) x 2700 (V) / 5120 (H) = 1013 (V). Means you will end up with an image of 1920 x 1013 with black bars top and bottom.
In the case of 4KHD, you are right about that, using the same formula, you'll end up with the whole frame with no bars. 1920 x 1080 -- 16:9 aspect ratio.
Click to expand...
 
Ok got it. Anyone knows where to get good movies shot on Red for DVD distribution, other that the ones on film already?
 
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