3k on 4k monitor... How does it look ?

[Denis Buhot]

Sorry if this has been adressed somewhere else... Has anyone experienced viewing good 3 k material on a 4K output ? How does it render ? Can we possibly intermix 3K and for K for a 4K editing ? Thanks for any input...

 

[Pablo Moreno]

Elysium was shot on Epic 3.3K and then upconverted to 4K for film release, so there you go.

 

[Denis Buhot]

thanks, seems great...

thanks, seems great...

Elysium was shot on Epic 3.3K and then upconverted to 4K for film release, so there you go.

However,l hear of french tv being reluctant to go for 3 K stuff for fear of poor end result on a 4k monitor !

 

[Noah Yuan-Vogel]

Elysium was shot on Epic 3.3K and then upconverted to 4K for film release, so there you go.

But anamorphic, so 2x the vertical resolution of spherical 3.3k. I wouldn't use it as an example of "normal" 3k for 4k delivery.

The 3.3k anamorphic Elysium used utilized 8.9 megapixels, where as spherical 3K uses at most 5 megapixels

 

[Jeff Kilgroe]

Sorry if this has been adressed somewhere else... Has anyone experienced viewing good 3 k material on a 4K output ? How does it render ? Can we possibly intermix 3K and for K for a 4K editing ? Thanks for any input...

Believe it or not, when sitting in front of a 4K desktop display and viewing 3K, it looks a bit soft. Or you window it at 1:1 pixels and it looks great. Upscaling algorithms can do pretty good in some situations depending on which flavor or 3K and 4K we're talking about. 3072 pixels to 3840 pixels is a 25% increase in horizontal resolution or scaled output. 2880 pixels scaled to 4096 is noticeably much softer. Just as the best 1080p still looks soft on a 30" 2560 pixels wide display, no matter how good your upscaling is.

All the so-called experts can spew forth with their claims of what the human eye can see and all the measurements regarding arc minutes and viewing distances and all that. All seems logical and well laid out and even based on average human vision attributes in a very scientific way. What they're forgetting is that our eyes are interpolative and are constantly summing data from a continuous stream of imagery and always from slightly different angles. We can see "texture" at distances that totally break all the naysayers' claims of what we can see at what distances. Likewise, we can perceive detail on a 4K display.

As for 3K upscaled to 4K for larger venues. To me it does look soft, but just as "sharp", maybe even a bit more so, than distribution film prints. Distribution prints often can't measure nominally better than 2K horizontally anyway. I know one thing, I get used to seeing a few 4K digital presentations and then go watch something projected on film and I swear the projector is out of focus, even when it's not.

It's really hard to quantify all this and to truly explain it. And even showing people 4K doesn't instantly make it apparent how much detail there really is at first glance. Sure, it's easy to see close up and does have a bit of a wow factor. But when it becomes truly apparent about how great 4K can be is when someone has it for a while and then you take it away. Put down that retina iPad or smart phone and pick up the old 1024x768 iPad. Yep. Same difference when you go from 4K to 1080p. Or even from 4K to 3K.

 

[Denis Buhot]

educated response ! Thanks Jeff