Walking around the halls of the Las Vegas Convention Center for this year’s NAB convention, it’s quickly becoming clear that the buzzword for 2013 is “4K”. From the Blackmagic Production Camera 4K to the Phantom Flex4K which shoots 4K at 1000 frames per second to Sony Proclaiming everything is 4K, you can’t get around the 4K moniker.
But I’m not buying it. Or at least not fully buying it.
I have always been skeptical of 4K. For those of you unfamiliar with it – 4K resolution is essentially Quad HD – take a 1920×1080 picture and double it’s dimensions: 3840×2160. It’s beautiful, insanely sharp (my eyes hurt trying to focus on all the detail) and frankly, mostly unnecessary for presentation.
Let me clarify that point a little bit – 4K for acquisition? Sure why not. I’ve been a little weary paying a huge premium for cameras that can shoot 4K, but thankfully the ugly tar pit of camera competition has reduced the cost of 4K cameras. So if you can manage, store, and backup all that 4K footage, go right ahead and knock yourself out. I’ll admit, accepting that 4K could play a role in my next production was a bit of a course reversal for me, but I’ll happily eat my words as technology progresses.
However delivering 4K… That I’m still not sold on. Despite what bloggers are saying trying to sound like their on the front edge of the technological curve, the problem with 4K in delivery is a biological problem. We had this debate before when HD was coming to the market and the question was between 720p and 1080p (I always refer to this article Carlton Bale), our eyes simply cannot tell the difference between 1080 and 4K at comfortable viewing distances.
8K (or Quad 4K if you want to call it that)? Yeah I know they’re experimenting with it in Japan but c’mon…
But I digress… Sure the 4K displays are gorgeous and wonderfully detailed, but I had to step close to make sure I was indeed getting the full glory of all them purty pixels. And for all the hype of 4K displays, I never saw a side-by-side demonstration that put a high end 4K monitor next to a high end 1080p monitor showing identical footage. My guess is most walker-bys wouldn’t notice it until they got within 5 feet.
An example of how tightly packed the pixels of a 4K display are.
HD delivery is here, it’s going to be here for the foreseeable future (heck, there’s still a lot of content still being delivered in Standard Def). 4K is great for theatrical presentation (though people aren’t complaining about resolution in mass about 2K theatrical display), but no one except the die hard early adopters with deep pockets are going to be hanging a 60″ 4K television in their living rooms.
But shooting 4K – even if you’re intending to scale it down to HD. That’s almost here in mass. And just like how HD originated footage looks great in SD (in general), 4K originated footage will look amazing in HD.
Just remember that 4K is NOT going to future-proof your footage. The only way to future-proof your footage is shoot something that people in the future will actually give a damn about.
Update
This is 4K when done right!
The size of that screen and the proximity to the viewer really show off 4K in all it’s true capability! With almost every 4K monitor I had to keep asking myself if I was seeing 4K or just really really good HD (This is my 9th NAB attendance – all the HD screens look awesome, the 4K screens look better but it can be hard to tell). On this monster LED display – there was no question – this is 4K in all it’s glory. Everything else I had to ask to make sure I was being gypped a K or two.