Finishing in 4K vs HD

[JT Thurlow]

Hello,

I shot my first documentary feature in 4K and finished in HD. Being able to reframe was quite handy using this method. It was released eventually on Blu-ray and Digital (HD)

For upcoming projects (cinematic documentaries and feature films), I am unsure if I should be planning to finish in 4K to future-proof these projects more. This would mean going about production differently, as for instance when shooting interviews I'd have to use a zoom lens, or two cameras.

Any thoughts are greatly appreciated.

Many thanks

 

[M Harvey]

I suspect you’ll get a lot of advice here to finish hi-res with an eye to future-proofing (reduser is a community built around a series of products that value long been on cutting edge of image resolution). And it’s generally good advice.

But it's always easy to encourage the preservation of as much information as possible, it's much harder to figure out the right trade-offs for you, because none of us will bear the costs. So what's important to you? Yes, finish in 4k if possible. But don't fail to make the feature because the added production costs or change in working method put it out of your reach. After all, there are a lot of films still being made on 2.8k Alexa.

One other thing to keep in mind: if you use cropping sparingly, and aren't usually cropping in very much, that footage can still look good in a 4k finish. Perhaps test and see if this is acceptable to you (maybe set up a 4k timeline and cut together 4k footage with a 3.5k crop, a 3k crop, a 2.5k crop, etc.). That said, if you're cutting within an interview a lot-- and cutting in enough to replace a physical lens/angle change--, your life is going to be easier going to a 6k+ camera.

 

[Phil Holland]

It's a very, very broad distribution market as of 2022. HD is the baseline entry point for delivering content in my mind at this point in the timeline. 4K is much more prominent in digital distribution. We're dealing with several hundred million screens versus the mere thousands for cinema. 8K is the the newer front, but for some that is also over half a decade in.

My best advice. Capture in the highest quality format you can and finish in the highest resolution you can afford.

 

[Eric Santiago]

Great advice
I just graduated to 6K (DRAGON DSMC1 from Scarlet MX) and already seeing more benefits going above 4K DCI.
Even with Scarlet MX, shooting 4K was heaven when it came down to delivery.
It was more beneficial for explainer videos e.g. training, product showcase, etc...
Hoping 6K will do me good for the next few years

 

[Björn Benckert]

If you do it right it takes a small additional effort and you don't really have to work much different than if you would aim for HD delivery. We have done a few web drama production 5 episode each x 45 minutes and no big difference in diskspace render times etc.

My recipe is this.

Editing. Use temp graded HD prores proxies, can be made in camera on DSMC2. these take minimal space and makes it possible to edit on any machine from a single spinning disk if wanted. Preferably use resolve for the edit. Why because it will make the rest of the post process more simple.

When done editing.
Simply relink your edits to the r3d´s. and rescale your timelines to UHD. Then a nice step is to use the Resolve media management tool and export r3d trims for each clip with lets say 10 frames tails and use the relink to the the trimmed clips function. This makes it so that all source for a full episode fits snuggly on a small drive / does not take up much space and you get a neat raw source archive for your selects.

Export UHD ungraded exr files for your VFX shots and send to VFX, or if you know how, these can also be dealt with in resolve fusion.

Do your grading and add your titles in resolve. This can be done while the debayer setting is low, so no need for heavy rendering or such until export.

Bring in your VFX clips put them on a seperate layer in your timeline above their originals and apply the grade from the clip underneath. copy paste style.

If you used a 8k camera or whatever, then you can choose resolution to output UHD or even 8k just set the output to best debayer. For example set it to 8k and your VFX clips will be scaled up but the rest will be taken straight from source and rendered to for example a 4444 prores master file. Even a old trashcan renders a 40 minute sequence over night. A new machine with a raid and 1080+ GPU or better will render it, if not realtime something very close to it. Even if using a 5k or 6k camera UHD gives you wiggleroom for downsampling and reframing without any upscaling taking place.

Also even if you do all your effect shots in a downsampled lower res or even your whole production in lets say HD, then upscaling them with a good algoritm and will still look better than pushing it all out in HD.

To me the extra effort is really worth it. All the shit I rushed trough in HD looks soggy in comparison and I'm sure 5-10 years from now the HD stuff will simply feel like old SD stuff / not possible to slice into a showreel as it simply looks lowress and old.


Here is a episode of such UHD production we done shot on heliums: https://vimeo.com/314805399

And here is one commercial I pushed trough in UHD just because why not, it looks better especially when showing on a UHD screen, We only have + UHD screens at the office. This I shot on monstro with 70 year old Ana's still it looks sharper and more detailed than most and far better than most HD stuff we worked on:

https://vimeo.com/397017715

 

[M Harvey]

My recipe is this.

This is great, Björn-- thanks for sharing!

 

[Marc Wielage]

I shot my first documentary feature in 4K and finished in HD. Being able to reframe was quite handy using this method. It was released eventually on Blu-ray and Digital (HD). For upcoming projects (cinematic documentaries and feature films), I am unsure if I should be planning to finish in 4K to future-proof these projects more. This would mean going about production differently, as for instance when shooting interviews I'd have to use a zoom lens, or two cameras.

I agree with all the advice above: I think you do need to consider 4K delivery for most distributors and streaming services these days. For the last 6-7 years, we've been telling our clients to finish in 4K even if they weren't delivering it immediately, and just archive it and have it ready if and when one of the streaming services asks for 4K. There is some potential value in shooting in 6K or 8K for 4K release, and building in a crop factor during production.

Another potential issue are HDR and Dolby Vision, and you can make a good argument that these add to the value and the visual impact of the final project. Be aware that the costs are not insignificant, particularly Dolby licensing and so on. But it's one more potential selling point you can use with distributors.