5 ms·

Content over 4k is readily available and even cheap to produce, but most of the good stuff is still being produced in 4k, so why is that???

vanviegen 3y ago
Because 4k (and even 1080p) is good enough for most people?
- 111111IIIIIII 3y ago
  Yeah, for TVs that sounds right, but not for desktop displays. I wonder if desktop display pixel density is only stagnated because the TV industry has so much influence on the momentum and the TV industry thinks 4k is good enough.
  - bobthepanda 3y ago
    Bandwidth. ISPs already throttle streaming and have data caps.
    - deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]
  - vladvasiliu 3y ago
    I think that influence is pretty clear. In my neck of the woods, when pc monitors in 16:9 became a thing, the marketing copy was basically how great they were for watching movies. Only now do some manufacturers start to put out taller monitors, but they're still rare, at least in my market.
  - fomine3 3y ago
    That's why I'm happy to see new 8K TV release. I think it's overkill for 99% TV usage, but it's needed for PC display.
  - prmoustache 3y ago
    Also, if you compare same laptop available with a 1080p screen or a 4k screen, the former gets much better battery time.
  - jon-wood 3y ago
    Is it even needed on desktop displays? My experience has been that anything under 32” you need to use scaling to make anything readable on a 4K display. I’m current using a 43” 4K display as my main monitor, sitting not very far from to, I can’t distinguish individual pixels as it is, and frankly even this is uncomfortably large, I have gutters set up around the edges so that windows maximise to a comfortably viewable size.
vGPU 3y ago
Cost of delivery. Most stuff is being streamed these days, and nobody wants to have to pay for the cost of streaming 100gb files. Plus the cost of commercial videography equipment is insane. Why upgrade before you have to?
- rbanffy 3y ago
  The better the capture, the longer the shelf life of that footage. So, while the pipeline might not run at more than 4K, the source material ideally is at a higher resolution. And you need to make sure it still looks good on lower quality displays.
  - vGPU 3y ago
    Nobody is making movies that anyone would really care to preserve for the coming decades anymore anyways. Besides which, we took a big step back when we switched from 35mm to digital. Digital has only recently reached par quality.
    - rbanffy 3y ago
      The BBC probably thought that when they recorded over old Dr. Who episodes. It’s up to our grandchildren to decide what they want to see and what they don’t.
epgui 3y ago
As someone who used to run a photography company: total costs of producing 4k content (camera system, computer setup to handle file management and editing, time required to process and manage content, storage, headaches, etc) is absolutely enormous compared to 1080p. Higher resolution content like 8k seems like a nightmare for everyone but the consumer. I do think and hope we’ll get to the point where it’s not a big deal, but even today a brand new macbook pro will struggle to render a basic 1080p composite in After Effects. Even basic 1080p footage editing in Premiere Pro can overwhelm reasonably modern machines. (Yes, I know that you do X on your Y machine without problem, but my point is that it’s easy to forget to account for all these little costs, and they pile up! Especially for professional workloads where people love to push the bar higher and higher.)
- onion2k 3y ago
  I know that you do X on your Y machine without problem, but my point is that it’s easy to forget to account for all these little costs, and they pile up! Cloud-based After Effects render farms do help significantly though.
  - o1y32 3y ago
    You still doesn't seem to get the point.
    - onion2k 3y ago
      I think I do. The point is that you can build your video in Affect Effects locally at 1080p (or less) on a standard Macbook, and then render the video in the cloud at 8k really easily and at quite a low cost. You don't need to "do X on your Y machine". You can rent someone else's machine for that.
      - kuschku 3y ago
        > and at quite a low cost So, let's actually look at that. For a "low-budget" 8K pipeline you'd first need a camera that can shoot at 8K or more. Ideally you'd want more so you can crop-in or do stabilization in post. So you'd be shooting on the Blackmagic Ursa Mini Pro 12K (~$6k) [1]. Usually you're using 5-10% of the material that you shot in the final edit, for some movies that can go as low as 1% (e.g., Apocalypse Now [2]), but let's calculate with a 45min documentary and 7.5% material used. That means you've now got 30 TB of raw material [3]. You'll obviously use proxies for editing, but at least for color grading and for delivery you'll need access to the full material. So now you'll need to store 30 TB of raw material somewhere in the cloud accessible to the machine that's doing the delivery. Even assuming you've got a symmetric fiber connection so we can disregard potential traffic limits and transfer speeds for initially uploading the material, you'll still need to pay for the cloud storage. Creative Cloud has a storage limit of 100 GB for individuals or 1 TB for business plans [4], which is obviously far too limiting, so you'd need to use something like LucidLink. As you'd be working with large video files, you'd need high-performance storage, so you'd have to calculate with their performance plan, which is another $80 per TB per month, so $2400 per month just for this one single project [5]. ________________________ [1] https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/1578059-REG/blackmagic_design_ursa_mini_pro_12k.html https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/1578059-REG/blackmagi... [2] https://books.google.de/books/about/?id=wB7cAAAAMAAJ https://books.google.de/books/about/?id=wB7cAAAAMAAJ [3] https://www.braw.info/capacity/ https://www.braw.info/capacity/ [4] https://www.adobe.com/creativecloud/plans.html https://www.adobe.com/creativecloud/plans.html [5] https://www.lucidlink.com/pricing https://www.lucidlink.com/pricing
prawn 3y ago
The demand for it would be from a minority. A lot of people are watching content on their phones, for one thing. I create some travel video content and up until last year, most of my clients weren't even fussed about 4K. I had been shooting at 5.1K for most of last year and then dropped to 4K this year because no one has needed it, but the storage and delivery costs are higher.
prmoustache 3y ago
Everytime you increase the resolution all the requirements in term of cpu, ram, bandwith, storage explode for production, media distribution and end user explode. It is not just replacing one screen for another on client's side.

vanviegen 3y ago

Because 4k (and even 1080p) is good enough for most people?

111111IIIIIII 3y ago
Yeah, for TVs that sounds right, but not for desktop displays. I wonder if desktop display pixel density is only stagnated because the TV industry has so much influence on the momentum and the TV industry thinks 4k is good enough.
- bobthepanda 3y ago
  Bandwidth. ISPs already throttle streaming and have data caps.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
- vladvasiliu 3y ago
  I think that influence is pretty clear. In my neck of the woods, when pc monitors in 16:9 became a thing, the marketing copy was basically how great they were for watching movies. Only now do some manufacturers start to put out taller monitors, but they're still rare, at least in my market.
- fomine3 3y ago
  That's why I'm happy to see new 8K TV release. I think it's overkill for 99% TV usage, but it's needed for PC display.
- prmoustache 3y ago
  Also, if you compare same laptop available with a 1080p screen or a 4k screen, the former gets much better battery time.
- jon-wood 3y ago
  Is it even needed on desktop displays? My experience has been that anything under 32” you need to use scaling to make anything readable on a 4K display. I’m current using a 43” 4K display as my main monitor, sitting not very far from to, I can’t distinguish individual pixels as it is, and frankly even this is uncomfortably large, I have gutters set up around the edges so that windows maximise to a comfortably viewable size.

vGPU 3y ago

Cost of delivery. Most stuff is being streamed these days, and nobody wants to have to pay for the cost of streaming 100gb files. Plus the cost of commercial videography equipment is insane. Why upgrade before you have to?

rbanffy 3y ago
The better the capture, the longer the shelf life of that footage. So, while the pipeline might not run at more than 4K, the source material ideally is at a higher resolution. And you need to make sure it still looks good on lower quality displays.
- vGPU 3y ago
  Nobody is making movies that anyone would really care to preserve for the coming decades anymore anyways. Besides which, we took a big step back when we switched from 35mm to digital. Digital has only recently reached par quality.
  - rbanffy 3y ago
    The BBC probably thought that when they recorded over old Dr. Who episodes. It’s up to our grandchildren to decide what they want to see and what they don’t.

epgui 3y ago

As someone who used to run a photography company: total costs of producing 4k content (camera system, computer setup to handle file management and editing, time required to process and manage content, storage, headaches, etc) is absolutely enormous compared to 1080p. Higher resolution content like 8k seems like a nightmare for everyone but the consumer. I do think and hope we’ll get to the point where it’s not a big deal, but even today a brand new macbook pro will struggle to render a basic 1080p composite in After Effects. Even basic 1080p footage editing in Premiere Pro can overwhelm reasonably modern machines. (Yes, I know that you do X on your Y machine without problem, but my point is that it’s easy to forget to account for all these little costs, and they pile up! Especially for professional workloads where people love to push the bar higher and higher.)

onion2k 3y ago
I know that you do X on your Y machine without problem, but my point is that it’s easy to forget to account for all these little costs, and they pile up! Cloud-based After Effects render farms do help significantly though.
- o1y32 3y ago
  You still doesn't seem to get the point.
  - onion2k 3y ago
    I think I do. The point is that you can build your video in Affect Effects locally at 1080p (or less) on a standard Macbook, and then render the video in the cloud at 8k really easily and at quite a low cost. You don't need to "do X on your Y machine". You can rent someone else's machine for that.
    - kuschku 3y ago
      > and at quite a low cost So, let's actually look at that. For a "low-budget" 8K pipeline you'd first need a camera that can shoot at 8K or more. Ideally you'd want more so you can crop-in or do stabilization in post. So you'd be shooting on the Blackmagic Ursa Mini Pro 12K (~$6k) [1]. Usually you're using 5-10% of the material that you shot in the final edit, for some movies that can go as low as 1% (e.g., Apocalypse Now [2]), but let's calculate with a 45min documentary and 7.5% material used. That means you've now got 30 TB of raw material [3]. You'll obviously use proxies for editing, but at least for color grading and for delivery you'll need access to the full material. So now you'll need to store 30 TB of raw material somewhere in the cloud accessible to the machine that's doing the delivery. Even assuming you've got a symmetric fiber connection so we can disregard potential traffic limits and transfer speeds for initially uploading the material, you'll still need to pay for the cloud storage. Creative Cloud has a storage limit of 100 GB for individuals or 1 TB for business plans [4], which is obviously far too limiting, so you'd need to use something like LucidLink. As you'd be working with large video files, you'd need high-performance storage, so you'd have to calculate with their performance plan, which is another $80 per TB per month, so $2400 per month just for this one single project [5]. ________________________ [1] https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/1578059-REG/blackmagic_design_ursa_mini_pro_12k.html https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/1578059-REG/blackmagi... [2] https://books.google.de/books/about/?id=wB7cAAAAMAAJ https://books.google.de/books/about/?id=wB7cAAAAMAAJ [3] https://www.braw.info/capacity/ https://www.braw.info/capacity/ [4] https://www.adobe.com/creativecloud/plans.html https://www.adobe.com/creativecloud/plans.html [5] https://www.lucidlink.com/pricing https://www.lucidlink.com/pricing

prawn 3y ago

The demand for it would be from a minority. A lot of people are watching content on their phones, for one thing. I create some travel video content and up until last year, most of my clients weren't even fussed about 4K. I had been shooting at 5.1K for most of last year and then dropped to 4K this year because no one has needed it, but the storage and delivery costs are higher.

prmoustache 3y ago

Everytime you increase the resolution all the requirements in term of cpu, ram, bandwith, storage explode for production, media distribution and end user explode. It is not just replacing one screen for another on client's side.