What is 2K?

[Erik Lindahl]

2K stands for “2000” and is the width of a scanned film-plate. 2K is larger than 1080P HD and can also hold a full 35mm frame (these are more 4×3 than the HD’s 16×9 resolution).

Alot of effects in films use 2K as their baseformat, yes.

Shake, Flame, Flint, After Effects etc. all support 2K. It’s basically just a large file.

Often “2K” comes in a DPX format which in tern can have other “features” aside from the plate size, much like a QuickTime can be 8- or 10-bit footage, for instance.

I’m no expert in this area really, but have som base knowledge. We just yesterday scanned film for a commercial which we’ll edit in Final Cut in HD res. This will be 4:2:2 10-bit 1080i50. However, the post facility we scanned at scans at 2K, sets the colors and then bring it down to HD.

[Jeff Carpenter]

Try not to get too excited, but there IS something called 4K as well. Other than that, Erik seems to know more about this than I do so you should refer to his post for everything else.

[David Roth weiss]

Daniel,

When buying a digital still camera you’ve probably heard reference to megapixels right? Well 2K is 2 megapixels. Still cameras have an easier job of capturing images because they only have to capture one at a time, while video cams have to capture frames continually, a mush harder task at high resolutions. This is why still cameras go up to 7, 8, and even 11 megapixels, while 2K or 4K is incredibly high for a video camera. The proposed Red camera you keep hearing about supposedly will make use of the CCDs from a still camera, and theoretically capable of 2K and 4K resolutions.

Does this help?

DRW

[Daniel5000]

Yes
thanks everyone

[Chris Borjis]

[Jeff Carpenter] “Try not to get too excited, but there IS something called 4K as well.”

And not to jump the gun or put the horse before the carriage, but 6K
is just around the corner, though that might be considered overkill.

Some believe thats the ultimate maximum for film xfer. Others believe
it only slightly looks better than 4k where 4k looks much sharper when compared side by side with 2k.

[Steven Gonzales]

I thought that 2k referred to the film image being scanned to approximately 2000 lines of horizontal resolution:

2048 x 1536 pixels for a 1:1.33 aspect ratio, or 1828 x 1332 pixels for a 1:1.37(academy) aspect ratio.

[Mr.poindexter]

2K resolution should be 2048×1080, which is the resolution of the cinema DLP chips TI has in the largest 3-chip DLP projectors. Here is an example of one:
https://www.projectorcentral.com/Digital_Projection-LIGHTNING_35HD.htm

4K is 4096×2160 and Sony has a working 4K projector, althought the last I heard the only way to feed it was with 4 HD-SDI inputs and each one gets one quadrant of the image so it isn’t exactly ready for prime time.

There are some other high resolution units out there, like JVC’s QLA-QX1 that is 2048×1536 – basically a 2K width 4:3 projector, but generally 2k/4K is referring to the width and they are now usually a 16×9 projector with an anamorphic lens turret to provide for all the necessary aspect ratios. Prior to this generation of projectors, the cinema DLPs were 5:4 aspect ratio 1280×1024 units with anamorphic lenses.

[Misha Aranyshev]

With all brainwashing High Definition manufacturers have been doing for years I’m glad 4k is still mentioned
🙂

[Chris Borjis]

[Mr.Poindexter] “4K is 4096×2160 and Sony has a working 4K projector, althought the last I heard the only way to feed it was with 4 HD-SDI inputs and each one gets one quadrant of the image so it isn’t exactly ready for prime time.”

If your referring to the SXRD cinema projectors, they’ve been in production for some months now. There’s one installed about 5 miles from my facility.

They actually promote that as a feature (quad screens or unified quad mode)

[Mr.poindexter]

Yeah, it is a feature and it is a nice one, but you cannot feed them a single signal to spread across all 4 screens – you need some sort of video splitter system. I know a guy who looked at having one in his house just a couple weeks ago and that was one of the signs it just isn’t ready for use in anything but commercial applications.