Can I Upscale Videos to 4K?

[david laguna]

I am looking to make my own short film. I would like it to be in 4K but I don't have the money to buy a 4K camera so I was thinking about recording in 1080p and Upscaling to 4K. I know Just raising the amount of pixels wont do anything to make it look better but sony said that they are taking their bluray line and upcailing the 1080p content to 4K. They are doing it in such a way that it will actually look exactly like native 4K content. I would like to upscale my short film the exact way sony is doing it. Does anyone know how to upscale 1080p content to 4K like sony is doing with their blu ray line?

Thanks

 

[BRANDON JAMESON]

What you are asking is like taking a slice of 4x4" bread and trying to pound it until it fits into a a 12x12" cake pan,

Sure, you can do it by interpolating pixels, but it will be like the pounded and stretched piece of bread....The image will have less information and will suffer for it.

As I am sure you know, 99.9% of all films are released in 2K which is a heck of a lot closer to the size of a 1080p frame that
you will be shooting your project on.

Many films were shot on the Viper camera (Zodiac, Benjamin Button) which was a native 1080p digital camera and were released to theaters in 2k, resulting in Oscar nominations for cinematography.

So, work hard on a beautiful image, be clever in your use of light , choose the best lenses you can work with too..... and that will probably be a better use of your time and ingenuity.

Best of luck to you.

 

[Stacey Spears]

know Just raising the amount of pixels wont do anything to make it look better but sony said that they are taking their bluray line and upcailing the 1080p content to 4K. They are doing it in such a way that it will actually look exactly like native 4K content.

I believe you are thinking of the mastered in 4k Blu-ray discs. They are taking 4k sources and scaling to 1080p. They are not doing anything special at all. It is pure marketing much like Superbit DVDs were. Others are doing the same thing they just are not marketing it that way. e.g. Baraka and some Imax discs like Grand Canyon Adventure are done at even higher resolutions than 4k. I think Grand Canyon was scanned in at 8k. The one thing unique that Sony is doing is that they are putting wide gamut content on Blu-ray using xvYCC. xvYCC is not actually part of the Blu-ray spec, so they are sort of hacking it in and as long as you have a specific player and display, it works.

The mastered in 4k Blu-ray discs from Sony don't look like 4k when displayed on a 4k display. I have several of those discs. Then again, the 4k versions that they bundle on the 4k media sever don't look 4k either.

 

[John Bellari]

I am looking to make my own short film. I would like it to be in 4K but I don't have the money to buy a 4K camera so I was thinking about recording in 1080p and Upscaling to 4K. I know Just raising the amount of pixels wont do anything to make it look better but sony said that they are taking their bluray line and upcailing the 1080p content to 4K. They are doing it in such a way that it will actually look exactly like native 4K content. I would like to upscale my short film the exact way sony is doing it. Does anyone know how to upscale 1080p content to 4K like sony is doing with their blu ray line?

Thanks

pseudo 4K likely won't make your movie look better if you have no budget...

From my small observations, I see no reason why you can't scale and intercut well shot 1080p Red or Alexa images to 4K and make them look "passable", or at least better than the current crop of cheap 4K 8 bit options which likely poorly resolve 2160 lines...


No budget? Buy a GH4, use it then turn around and sell it, or rent a Scarlet, as the price of shooting inexpensive 4K is insanely cheap right now...

But it's ultimately mathematically impossible to upscale anything but vector or static graphics from 1080p to 4K and have them be exactly the same...

 

[Marc Wielage]

I am looking to make my own short film. I would like it to be in 4K but I don't have the money to buy a 4K camera so I was thinking about recording in 1080p and Upscaling to 4K. I know Just raising the amount of pixels wont do anything to make it look better but sony said that they are taking their bluray line and upcailing the 1080p content to 4K.

I would worry more about the tough things like lighting, exposure, composition, and most important story and characters​. Your movie will succeed or fail on the basis of the latter, not the K.

I agree with John above that budget will often make a big difference, especially in an independent film. If another $50,000 buys you an extra week of shooting or better locations, that will be a tangible difference that will actually make the film better. A thousand times more resolution won't give you a better movie.

 

[Ivan McCullough]

Jup, whenever a producer says to me if we could use some of the contingency to improve things on my end what could they spend it on? I always say "more time".

 

[Dr. Sassi]

Consider the base from BluRay at least 2K, but that is based on real pixels, RGB per pixel while scanned.

An HD camera has mostly a Bayern-pattern (Exception would be EX1 for example). You get usable ~80% from a Bayern-pattern based sensor.

The BluRay might be upscaled from 2K full Pixel to UHD. It is a massive step already. From 1080 Bayern to 4K -- that is much more.

You do not get new or more details from upscaling, and there is the advantage in capturing 5 or 6K from the start.

If you like to impress people with 4K, do it right or leave it alone, as it will put your work in the shadow of a fake, if upscaled. I hope your story idea deserves better.

Read the ProLost blog about the GH4, I wouldn't spend money on this. If you like to have 4K as final format, why do you think even Sony works already on a 5K sensor, if they found the magic of upscaling?

 

[Marc Wielage]

Jup, whenever a producer says to me if we could use some of the contingency to improve things on my end what could they spend it on? I always say "more time".

I once worked on a $1 million movie and a $3 million movie in the same month, with the same executive producer. I asked the guy, "other than $2 million, what was the difference?" Because the $3 million movie did look better.

He said: "bigger-name actors; better locations; more rehearsal time; more takes. On the $1 million film, the director had to do 3 takes and move on. On the $3 million project, the other director could do 10-12-15 takes until it was really right."

Upscaling video is pretty trivial nowadays, and there's a lot of companies that will do it for you. But you can't quite get 2.5 gallons of information to fill a 10-gallon barrel. However, given that most of America is seeing 2K movies in theaters, and some of those are making hundreds of millions of dollars, I think 2K will suffice for most films.

A top Kodak color scientist told me 10 years ago that the best a 35mm release print could do (assuming the normal OCN -> IP -> IN -> print lab workflow) was 2K. And that was under very good conditions. I think 2K is still an acceptable theatrical release format, but I don't have a problem with people who want to shoot and release in 4K, as long as they've budgeted for it.

 

[Brian Merlen]

just buy a GH4, BMC4k, one of the cheap sony 4k models, forget upscaling when you can score a 4k camera for only a few thousand bucks... if you can't afford to shoot red, don't bother you can still get 4k on the cheap if thats what you can afford...


can you just rent why marry the 4k cow at all? if the milk is a 3 day week rental?