Any plans for 4K recording? - Page 1
Forum section: electronics / general

author: NiHaoMike
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 17, 2014, 10:09:50 pm
content: Are there any plans for upgrading to 4K recording? I think it would be of particular interest for the teardowns. With 4K displays starting at $340, it won't be long before going beyond 1080p becomes mainstream.

author: Richard Crowley
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 17, 2014, 10:25:16 pm
content: 1080p is mainstream. I have six HD cameras, switcher, recorders, etc. But very little content ends up distributed in 1080.IMHO, 4K is just the latest fad. Last year it was 3D, but you probably don't even remember that. Yawn.At least in my city, with probably something like 100 theater screens in the metro area, very few of them are exhibiting in 4K.If I can't even see a big-budget Hollywood film in 4K, and with essentially zero 4K TV content, I don't see 4K TV as a big deal in the near future.

author: orion242
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: September 17, 2014, 10:47:34 pm
content: Unless you have a connection without a data cap your going to run in to limits quickly with 4k, at least here in the US.I think 4k will gain traction, but its a ways out. I thought most sports events where recording in 4k and some of the movies also. Red digital seems to be making coin on the cameras. Netflix has 4k streams for a small selection of content.

author: NiHaoMike
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 17, 2014, 11:02:54 pm
content: 3D was a failed attempt to market old technology as new. I had that on a 486 that would be over 20 years old by now. Now if they could figure out how to do 3D without the glasses, that would be something new...All of the current iPads are doing a step in between 1080p and 4K. I don't think it will be long before consumers wonder why their iPad has a higher resolution than their TV and want a "Retina display" TV. I upgraded to 4K last week and I already really like the loads of desktop space I now have. Now all I need is a better GPU...Most fixed connections in the US have no data cap, at least for now. Mobile is different, but you're probably not going to get much real benefit with 4K on a smartphone.

author: EEVblog
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: September 17, 2014, 11:12:50 pm
content: No plans.I made the leap to HD early on and that was hard but it really paid dividends.I don't see the same value in 4K.It would be handy in terms of being able to zoom in on stuff in editing and still keep full HD resolution, but in terms of actually producing 4K output, hardly anyone will watch it or get value out of it.Full HD is plenty and looks fantastic on virtually all current viewing platforms (inc my 60" TV), how would anyone benefit from 4K? I can't see it, pun intended.

author: Richard Crowley
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 17, 2014, 11:26:20 pm
content: Quote from: EEVblog on September 17, 2014, 11:12:50 pmYes, absolutely. And THAT is why I can't see any significant future for 4K as a distribution format in the near future.Indeed, shooting in 4K and the ability to "zoom in" without losing resolution at 1080 or 720 could be a convenient production feature.

author: EEVblog
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: September 17, 2014, 11:29:07 pm
content: Quote from: wilfred on September 17, 2014, 11:22:52 pmYou might not think about it, but W2AEW did. He contacted me about what camera to upgrade to, and macro lenses, lighting, and manual controls etc. He's has now upgraded and is using that advice and gear to produce better content for you. As have a few other bloggers as well.So me having done the hard yards tweaking with the camera and associated stuff is paying off on other blogs you enjoy too. You're welcome

author: Richard Crowley
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 17, 2014, 11:29:27 pm
content: Quote from: 3roomlab on September 17, 2014, 11:25:52 pmBut that's not reality. In the Real World the first person you see on your way into the ER is the insurance clerk.

author: EEVblog
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: September 17, 2014, 11:36:28 pm
content: Quote from: Richard Crowley on September 17, 2014, 11:26:20 pmYes, it would be useful in production, not only for the resolution, but other minor aspects that can improve final rendered video quality.But to really take advantage of that stuff you needreallyexpensive gear and lenses (like in the 10's of $K) and unless you are shooting a hollywood feature film and have oodles of time and horsepower to colour grade and render like the pros do (e.g Karl Von Mollar with his Electronics Doco), then you are wasting your time and money on producing 4K content.And for anything at all to do with youtube, it's pretty pointless, because of the compression, even if it does token support for 4K.

author: orion242
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: September 17, 2014, 11:44:16 pm
content: Quote from: NiHaoMike on September 17, 2014, 11:02:54 pmHuh?Like who?Charter.. depends on package 100MB down package is 500GB/month, below that its 250GB/month or lesshttp://www.myaccount.charter.com/customers/support.aspx?supportarticleid=2124Comcast... Not sure what there cap is nationwide, but they are currently testing pay for a bucket of data like wireless plans only bigger buckets.http://customer.comcast.com/help-and-support/internet/data-usage-trials-what-are-the-different-plans-launchingATT Uverse 150GB to 500GB monthhttp://www.att.com/esupport/article.jsp?sid=KB409045

author: NiHaoMike
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 17, 2014, 11:55:41 pm
content: Quote from: 3roomlab on September 17, 2014, 11:10:54 pmThe 750 Ti is reasonably cheap, very low power, and will do 4K for common desktop use, though you'll have to downshift to 1080p for gaming. I'm waiting on the 970/980 and then either get one of those or a 770/780 depending on official benchmark results and how much the older cards get discounted. (To be honest, 4K gaming really is asking a lot even for the upcoming GPUs. My main use case for 4K, however, is development work.)

author: marshallh
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: September 18, 2014, 01:39:09 am
content: 4K for videos? No point yet. Not to mentional pretty impractical. In 5-10 years maybe."Good enough" is the worst enemy of "better". Many people are still fine watching DVDs on their HDTVs. They don't care.

author: NiHaoMike
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 18, 2014, 02:29:38 am
content: For electronics shows, 4K can be quite valuable for teardowns and other situations that involve views of PCBs. As those views are largely stationary, the average bitrate can be pretty low and still look great.What's unusual about the Seiki 4K displays is that despite the "almost too good to be true" prices, they will do 120Hz at 1080p and even do "LightBoost" with a backlight strobed at 120Hz. In other words, great for gaming. When not gaming, switch to 4K mode for a big desktop, good for development work and especially photo viewing/editing.

author: orion242
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: September 18, 2014, 02:35:19 am
content: Quote from: NiHaoMike on September 18, 2014, 02:29:38 amDitto I can always use more desktop. I'll take 3 side by side

author: SteigsdB
author_rank: Contributor
timestamp: September 18, 2014, 02:57:15 am
content: Quote from: Richard Crowley on September 17, 2014, 11:26:20 pmFOX does this with the NFL games it broadcasts. They add a couple 4K cameras into the mix that they use to pull 720 'zooms' out of for replays.Consumer 4K is probably a ways off, but the US broadcast industry is starting to gear up for it. Netflix and DirecTV have 4K content already in the can that they downres for broadcast in 1080p and pretty much every major player in the broadcast camera market has a 4K option.The big issue is that to the end user, it will be hard to see any noticeable difference in resolution between 1080 and 4K on any screen under 100".TV Technology has had some good articles about it lately:http://www.tvtechnology.com/multiformat/0112/k-picture-becomes-clearer-for-broadcasters/267583http://www.tvtechnology.com/cable,-satellite,-iptv/0149/sony-launches-k-download-service-can-ultrahd-ott-be-too-far-behind/226054Incidentally, the "UltraHD" 4K moniker that is being thrown around lately is not actually 4K, it's 3840x2160, true 4K is 4096 × 2160.Of course, none of this matters too much as NHK is already touting the merits of 8K..For reference:

author: EEVblog
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: September 18, 2014, 03:02:40 am
content: Quote from: NiHaoMike on September 18, 2014, 02:29:38 amI already have 4K teardowns, go look at my teardown photos

author: coppice
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 18, 2014, 03:05:48 am
content: Quote from: marshallh on September 18, 2014, 01:39:09 amThere are already far more 4k TVs in our shops than 2k ones. Desktops monitors and cameras are being slow to catch up, but do you really think it will take 5 to 10 years for that to be sorted out? 5 to 10 years is a long time in this business.

author: EEVblog
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: September 18, 2014, 03:12:54 am
content: Quote from: NiHaoMike on September 18, 2014, 02:29:38 amBut that's the kicker. You need to shoot everything at 4K, so you end up with a ton of 4K footage, and then all the extra time and effort in rendering and archive etc, only to benefit maybe 0.01% of viewers who might chose to watch in full 4K and then might pause to see a small detail?It would be patently silly to shoot in 4K just to satisfy that small base of people.And don't forget that it's already hard enough to get sharp enough and deep enough depth of field on teardowns in order to have everything sharp at 1080P. I can't imagine how much harder I'd have to fuss to get it right at 4K. Not to mention that I wouldn't be able to see in the monitor whilst shooting.No point shooting 4K for the detail if you don't go to the effort to get true 4K resolution without any fuzziness.So it opens up this whole big can'o'worms in terms of production practicality in the real world. If you think you can just buy a 4K camera and instantly shoot and get the benefit of 4K for the type of footage video bloggers like me do, you are almost certainly wrong.I think I'm probably one of the leaders in quality of teardown footage, as I take care to get it fairly decent, and often when I replay in full HD it quite often looks slightly out of focus because I didn't get the depth of field right, or the autofocus system is hunting, or a set the manual focus and accidentally moved the object a tad or whatever.

author: EEVblog
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: September 18, 2014, 03:19:39 am
content: Quote from: coppice on September 18, 2014, 03:05:48 amYep, I think that figure is not far off the mark.But Like I said before, producing 4K footage isn't as easy as you might think. It's hard enough to get decent 1080P. This is especially true of video bloggers who must focus on producing content efficiently rather than dicking around getting every last pixel good enough to satisfy a few pixel-peepers.

author: NiHaoMike
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 18, 2014, 04:00:41 am
content: Quote from: SteigsdB on September 18, 2014, 02:57:15 amThe factor that matters is the PPI. On a 50" display, 4K yields about 88 PPI, about average for a modern desktop monitor. 1080p halves that to 44 PPI, which quickly starts looking pixelated. A 50" 4K display is more or less a 2x2 grid of 25" 1080p displays without the borders. When a single 4K display is cheaper than 4 1080p displays of the same total screen area (not even including the mounts for the upper two displays!) and competitively priced compared to 2-3 of those 1080p displays, it makes a strong push for going 4K.Now as for 8K, it would indeed require a very large display to make sense. The fact that 4K is already pushing it for GPUs means we won't see 8K becoming popular for a long time. Dell makes a "5K" display that seems to be targeted towards photo editors.

author: Eliminateur
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: September 18, 2014, 04:59:33 am
content: indeed, it's silly to go for 4K for the reasons you all said:1) incredibly big raw files to work with, editing and rendering time increase more than 4x2) upload time, even with Dave's super fast new uplink, you're talking at least 2 to 3 times the filesize thus negating the benefits of the fast upload!3) WHO has 4K, practically noone, you can have 4K TVs tight but how many EEV viewers watch it ona TV instead of a PC?, hell, i'd say that more than 90% don't have a monitor that's bigger than 1080p....4) For those that use TV/HTPC, there are no commodity HW decoders that can handle 4K decoding right now except for the latest haswell/nvidia/ati GPUs, a raspberry pi or HW set top box won't cut it(so you can have a VERY modern ivy bridge pc/htpc/notebook and you won't be able to HW decode and if your cpu is one of the low end ones you won't be able to SW decode it without dropping frames).5) for PC use/gaming there's no GPU that can handle gaming at 4K (you need to invest in retarded double/dual GPU that costs thousands of dollars to even reach playable performance) and the benefits on "small" screens is iffy with the issue of DPI scaling6) Cost, retailers can plaster their walls with 4K TVs all they want and ofc they're going to do that since they have a ridiculous overprice so by filling their space with those TV they generate unneeded hype, until a decent brand(LG, philips, etc) 4K set becomes cheaper than a current 42"(that's the sweetspot size) 1080p (no smart, just plain old TV) then the technology is dead to consumers, just like the 3D "fad" that ended up in utter failure (and why do you think they push 4K...)7) Content: there is no compelling content and practically no reason to go to 4K, CATV is not 4K ready, i wouldn't even watch 720p on DirecTV their sats just don't have the BW, they have a ton of compression artifacts even in the SD content, very noticeable on dark gradients even on a CRT(i had DTV since day 0 here until i dropped it due to excessive cost and the vid quality was horrible, very noticeable on blacks).I've seen DTV in "HD" they have 2 or 3 channels, and it's 1080i only, terrible.... Also majority of "old" BD players don't support 4K, even current gen consoles cannot playback 4K BD AFAIK.In fact, CATV HD channels are 720p!, we're not even using 1080p widely yet because of filesizes and diminishing returns!so yeah, 4K is useless at this moment, and will probably continue to be so for many many years, it's not like the SD to HD(and on a small measure to Full HD) transition that did bring massive improvements in all aspects, fHD to UHD doest not really bring anything tangible to normal TV sizes(up to 42") (and who cares about plutocrats with their wall to wall TVs next to their Mercs) and has all drawbacks

author: GK
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 18, 2014, 11:57:25 am
content: Quote from: EEVblog on September 18, 2014, 03:19:39 amWhy does Sharon Stone instantly spring to mind?

author: free_electron
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 18, 2014, 02:48:26 pm
content: we don;t need 4k we need quantum tunneling television ! so we can reach in the screen and turn a knob or push a button (or snatch a iece of equipment ) in daves lab !

author: NiHaoMike
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 18, 2014, 04:57:33 pm
content: Quote from: Eliminateur on September 18, 2014, 04:59:33 am4K has been supported since the Kepler GPUs - 6xx series and above. For just over $100, you can upgrade your PC to support 4K for video playback and common desktop use. 3D gaming is another matter...

author: mariush
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 18, 2014, 05:19:01 pm
content: My FX8350 plays back 4k videos fully decoded in software using about 20-40% of cpu, so any modern quad core (and i'd dare say even some new i5 dual cores) will be perfectly capable of playing 4k in h264 without any problems.HEVC encoded 4k videos use up to 40-60% cpu on my system, with (still) relatively unoptimized decoders. It will get better with time, and new video cards will decode 10bit 4k in hardware without any problems.If you guys want to test your systems here's a 4k video:It's somewhat low bitrate (20-30mbps, youtube what can you do..) but even 40-60mbps 4k videos should play fine if that one plays fine on your computer.The video also points out some of the benefits of recording in 4k, with a good camera. Bigger sensors, better sensitivity, built in filters and motion stabilization, improved hardware encoding retaining more quality even if you use camera in 1080p record mode etc etc.

author: EEVblog
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: September 19, 2014, 12:14:32 am
content: Quote from: mariush on September 18, 2014, 05:19:01 pmChoosing to shoot in 1080p is hardly part of the argument.The problem is all the downsides that have been mentioned. 4K simply offers no real practical value to a video blogger, it only has downsides.

author: miguelvp
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 19, 2014, 12:17:11 am
content: Quote from: NiHaoMike on September 18, 2014, 04:57:33 pmMy one year old Tegra 4 based Nvidia Shield running Android can output 4K out of the HDMI output but I don't have a TV to verify thishttp://shield.nvidia.com/specs-and-features/

author: NiHaoMike
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 19, 2014, 03:16:49 am
content: http://www.pcworld.com/article/2686115/nvidia-unveils-its-all-new-geforce-gtx-980-and-gtx-970-graphics-processors.html#tk.fb_pcQuoteSounds like pure marketing to me, but maybe the upcoming GPUs can get decent performance rendering 4K after all. Unless the "internal 4K" is really an oversimplified explanation of the feature and actually works in a totally different manner...