4K might become a reality quicker than we think

[Darren Roark]

I agree with this. It’s the changing expectations of the people who pay us that will change things.

Thinking back to 2008, most of the post houses I dealt with for commercials in LA charged around double for HD workflow. Then suddenly a year later the 7D came out and the 5D had the 24p firmware update. A bunch of ad agency creatives went out and bought them much to the dismay of many DPs I know who for a time were expected to shoot jobs on those. The cat was out of the bag and our clients were unwilling to pay the HD surcharge any longer.

Now that PP and FCPX can both edit in native 5K footage, clients shooting lower budget jobs on the upcoming inexpensive 4K cameras will have raised expectations. It will be like 2009 all over again. I’m still happy with my 720p 50″ plasma that I sit six feet away from, but the 4K 39″ crappy Seiki monitor I bought showing Red footage looks stunning up close. Most people stand right up close to the TVs in the stores and judge the picture quality and I bet 4K will sell a lot of them unfortunately.

The bright side is there will be a point where this will eventually stop as the human eye has it’s limits. Unless Sony is currently developing bionic retinal implants, I am optimistic it will end at 4K.

[Neil Goodman]

but what good is it w/o a legitimate delivery methods?

4k Tvs still away’s away from being affordable/ common place.

Broadcast Tv is not gonna flip anytime soon.

The internet isnt fast enough to stream/downlaod it in general.

Even high end Studio features are cutting at offline resolutions so really whats the point yet?

[John Davidson]

We did our first source 4k RED RAW multi camera project on FCPX last month – delivery was 1080i HDCam. I really thought it was going to be a pain the the butt to work with all the footage but we edited in proxy and it was surprisingly painless. We even did coloring in X. The flexibility of working a 1080i project with 4k footage, allowing for crops and zooms without resolution loss was pretty awesome. It was edited on a 2011 iMac.

It motivated me to buy one of those Seiki 50″ TV’s just so I could see the footage better. I hope we get lots more 4k work because that was a fun workflow.

John Davidson | President / Creative Director | Magic Feather Inc.

[Andrew Kimery]

I think the workflow John mentioned (4k shoot, HD delivery) is going to be what becomes common sooner rather than later.

Though I’ve already seen a few no-budget 4k projects on Craigslist demanding someone, for free of course, finish their project in 4k (like the the problems they have can be fixed by adding more pixels…).

[Michael Phillips]

The debate is not with 4K acquisition, editing or mastering – it is in the distribution.

Michael

[Darren Roark]

Matt Lauer already looks too real for comfort to me in HD. Just as HD workflow gets easy, now they are hellbent on changing it up again. I’m not happy about any of this, but it’s happening much faster than when HD rolled out here in the states.

You can download and watch 4K movies with Sony’s overpriced media player right now. At about 40GB each, depending on their servers, that would take about three hours per to download on my connection. Not great, but still doable, HEVC will make it easier. The BDA announced 4K Blu-Ray discs are on the way last month, and Netflix will be testing 4K in certain areas with the next season of “House of Cards”.

This 4K youtube video of footage from that new panasonic camera steams at 4K just fine. (It’s only 3 mins, a 90min film at that compression would be 13GB) https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=hHKJ5eE7I1k

Sears is selling a Seiki 4K 55″ tv right now for $850 and they have pretty good reviews, they already have cheap affordable sets. Most people don’t understand resolution is only part of it, but it didn’t stop them from calling 1080 “TrueHD” which was total BS to make people buy yet another TV.

The broadcast side I totally agree. Most people are unaware they are usually watching a heavily degraded 720p signal at best from most broadcasters. That and some are finally phasing out tape as a delivery medium in spite of the HDCAM SR decks they had to buy at $100K a pop. (from Sony) For broadcast, they will change when they have to and it won’t be soon.

The point is if they can sell people new TVs and make money, they will. Then everything else has to catch up to that standard. We just saw all this happen in the mid-2000s and now it’s happening again ten years later. Sony is a TV maker and a major movie studio who master all their current films and TV shows in 4K. (Breaking Bad is in 4K on their media player.) That way they have the content to lure people into buying a TV they don’t need.

Again, I don’t agree with it, but any new content I make I am going to be keeping this in mind.

[Andrew Kimery]

[Michael Phillips] “The debate is not with 4K acquisition, editing or mastering – it is in the distribution. “

Distribution will be streaming/digital downloads and probably won’t really take off until H.265 becomes common. Sony already has a 4k streaming service and Netflix will start streaming in 4k this year (as well as shooting it’s original content in 4k). Amazon, Comcast and DirecTV all announced at CES that they are getting into the 4k game too. Oh, YouTube offers 4k too.

Broadcasting in 4k is a much bigger challenge as it would basically be the analog/digital switch all over again.

[Gary Huff]

[Andre van Berlo] ” On this forum I’ve seen people figure that they won’t need 4K editing capability for the next 2-3 years. This week I saw that Panasonic is going to release its GH4 with 4K. Estimates are that it will cost under 2K, perhaps even around $1500.”

Try more like $1999-ish, with the requirement of purchasing microP2 cards at $355 per 64GB.

Then, on top of that, it’s 8-bit 4:2:0 AVCHD (H.264-based) 4k.

Then you have the breakout box with 4 3G SDI ports…for another $2k.

Then either a Ki Pro Quad or the Odyssey 7Q.

It all adds up to not being that cheap.

[John Davidson]

I’m more interested in seeing what Blackmagic comes out with this year. A production cinema camera with higher frame rates would pretty much win me over.

We have the Sony FS700, but when their 4k Recorder ended up costing more than the camera and turned it into an unwieldy bazooka, they pretty much blew whatever desire I had to get it. It’s also really annoying they charge for a firmware upgrade.

That’s pretty much how it goes these days. Company releases breakthrough product, then fails to follow up with making it the perfect product because of terror at cannibalizing their other product categories. How many cameras has Canon released since the 5D Mark II? Like, 80? I always felt like the FS700 was a hail-mary fluke from Sony. It’s still phenomenal for slow motion, but once you’ve worked with RAW color it’s kind of hard to want to go back to H264.

John Davidson | President / Creative Director | Magic Feather Inc.

[John Heagy]

Give me the enhanced 2020 color space and 10 bit color depth that is included in the UHTV-1 spec but at 1080p60/120. That would be a meaningful and broadcast-able change. 4K TVs are simply Japanese sponsored product obsolescence.

Hang out at a 1080 vs 4k demo at NAB and see what people do. They ask “Is that 4K?” and then they walk up to it to see the difference. It’s not even close to SD vs HD… that was impossible to miss.

4K at 60fps is 12Gb!! The 6Gb Blackmagic stuff is limited to 30fps. Don’t even get me started on 8K!!

The first DLP digital cinema projectors in theaters were/are 720p, and this on a 40ft screen! Now 1080 is not good enough on a 80 in screen!… spare me!

Give me 2020 10bit color at 1080p60/120 on a 60in OLED.

John