let me start by saying this video was a metric ass ton of work I mean not for me
mind you Ed did all the heavy lifting so make sure that you show him some love by
liking the video or following him on Twitter or something because his
findings are absolutely fascinating if
you consume or create video content on
the web welcome to 4K better video
quality or a big fat
placebo
Intel is bringing ddr4 to the mainstream with their allnew core i76700 K and core
i56600k processors check out the link in
the video description to learn more so Ed's investigation into 4K video quality
was actually inspired by a Panasonic camera known as the GH4 at a mere $2,000
trust me that was amazing when it came out the GH4 could shoot 4K to an
internal SD card at a bit rate of 100
megabit per second and you can learn more about bit rate and why it's important here which for the first time
put 4K video production like prograde
production in the hands of regular consumers who happen to be in the market
for what is also a fairly capable mirrorless Stills camera balling right
we sure thought so we picked one up pretty much right away and the vast
majority of our b-roll has been shot on the GH4 for months with us going as far
at one Point as to shoot 4k on our aam a
Sony fs700 4K on our bcam the GH4 and
edit on a 4K timeline with a native export of 4K video that we upload but
this proved to be very challenging at the time the fs 700's High bit rate 4K
footage was a total bear to work with the file sizes were huge putting
significant strain on our networking infrastructure when multiple editors
were working at the same time and we experien other workflow interruptions
ranging from poor editing timeline uh scrubbing responsiveness to annoying
file splitting during long clip recording to even export errors when
rendering out the final videos so we went back to 1080p downscaled from 4K
using our external recorder on the aam since the fs700 sensor performs so well
at resolving fine details regardless of the output file resolution anyway and
continued shooting b-roll at 4k natively
on the GH4 since while that does slow down the editing timeline it's not in a
manner that completely cripples the productivity of our editors like the 4K
native FS footage did so what you've been seeing out of us since then this is
really important is a 4K timeline with
downsampled 4K footage off the fs700 that is then re-up sampled back to 4K
and Native 4K footage from the GH4 that is then exported at 4K when we create
the file to upload to Youtube or vessel
fast forward almost a year and we were moving into a new office and rolling out
three new servers a rendering server powered by two Intel Zeon E5 2699 v38
core processors a high-speed SSD based
20 gbit network storage server and a 100
tbte plus archival storage server these
potentially addressed almost all of the previous issues Network performance file
size and rendering horsepower not to mention that adobe hasn't been sitting
on ass for the last year and Premiere has improved a fair bit as well in terms
of how it handles high bit rate and 4K files so it was time to evaluate whether
it was worth it to go native 4K again as part of an investigation into how we
could use our 36 core video crunching server to improve our workflow so we
started by taking a closer look at some of the 4K footage that we'd shot
recently on the GH4 comparing the visual quality
of the Native 4K footage and then that very same footage down sampled to 1080p
with a variety of codec trying to figure out how to get timeline performance
perfect and the results shocked us when viewed on a 4k monitor they were
indistinguishable from each other and in fact even when compared using overlaid
still captures in Photoshop and by setting the blending mode to difference
they were nearly identical so then was
there any point recording in 4k at all we needed to dig deeper so we
specifically recorded identical Clips at
4K and 1080p natively on the GH4 camera
and compared those against each other this time with the 1080p footage
upsample to 4K same result down sampling
4K to 1080p upsampling 1080p to 4K they just all look the same so we broke out
the big guns and used our proper professional grade camera our Sony fs7
100 to do the same comparison now we can see the difference
watching the files over our own local network between the upsampled and the
native 4K footage with the text on our figurine appearing to be more in focus
when watching back the native 4K file even though the camera and subject were
not moved in between shots but what does
this difference translate to in terms of a real world benefit we all know that
YouTube has had a 4K option for quite some time but should content creators
even be worried about shooting and editing in 4k should they export in 4k
for their upload should you the viewer select 4K when watching we have all
those answers but Buckle in because if the rest of this video sounded pretty
technical this is probably going to be a little worse I'll start with the answer
for the content creators since this affects the content consumers as well
regardless of your camera working on a 1080p timeline with 1080p footage will
not not result in a degraded experience for your viewers thanks to the video
processing done by YouTube the benefit of your fancy camera is basically
limited to better performance on a green screen and better color grading and
punching options in post- production something that is arguably much more
important to the appearance of the footage than sheer resolution anyway so I'm not poo pooing fancy cameras but we
also discovered that upsampling to 4K
for your final export is worth the extra
file size and the extra rendering time because when YouTube detects a
resolution of 4k on their side they will offer a 4K viewing option to the viewer
that features a higher playback bit rate
and therefore sharper image quality on both 1080P and on 4K displays which
leads us finally to the answer for consumers conventional wisdom would
dictate that watching content at the native resolution of your display is
ideal this is something that most of our viewers seem to be aware of based on
these poll results but if you have the internet connection and bandwidth cap
limits to handle it this is not the case
for online video or at least on YouTube watching at 4k on a 4K or 1080p monitor
yields a noticeable visual quality improvement regardless of whether the
video was natively shot at 4K or upsampled thanks to YouTube delivering
the video to you at a higher bit rate
which leaves us finally with a last message for the content creators out
there if there's anything to take away from this video it's don't get too
focused on 4K or resolution in general
in the same way that a 4K recording phone is not a professional video
recording device entrylevel 4K cameras are not equal to their 4K prograde
Brethren but don't worry most Pros are
just using their 4K gear to have more flexibility during the creation of their
1080p final product anyway so if you're producing Web video you may actually be
better served by a superior 1080p camera
at this time because lenses encoding settings codecs camera sensor size and
sensor quality all impact the finished product and on that subject stay tuned
for the results of our investigation into editing codec it's going to be at
least as interesting as this one especially For You video editors out
there thanks for watching guys if you disliked this video you know what to do
but if you liked it please click that like button maybe support us by buying a
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do that in the little eye in the corner or even by supporting us directly
through our community Forum now that you're done doing all that you guys are
looking for some more videos to check out boom you should check out our recent
video on the Acer 34in curved gaming
monitor that I absolutely freaking love
uh we just did that one and it's not for 4K but uh is it ever sexy see you guys
next
time