YouTube Tips Is it worth putting videos up in anything higher than 1080 ???

[MaJ]

I wonder?

I am right at the start of my film editing journey... my goodness it has taken me a whole day to edit a simple 3 minute video... and I do mean a whole day... and the video will probably get 50 - 100 views... hmm...

But my real wonder is this...

Why do the video in 4k?

Maybe it takes forever to upload... luckily I have delayed my video going live until 10am [BST] so it has 7 hours to finish... but currently it's only got 1080p up. And that seems glitchy... I'm worried the 4k will be glitchy... I'm worried the 1080p won't 'fix' itself... as the file [a version of the same film at 1080p] works fine when played on my computer [not via Youtube]

But 4k is a lot of hassle

It's like 50GB for a 3 minute film

Yikes

And Ican't play the file on my computer - I have a very fast, super cool GPU, computer... and VLC can't play the 4k file

It's rendered down from Davinci Resolve Studio 16 - so should be standard to play [?]

But not being able to check a file before I upload it - is scary

So my question is - is there any worth to uploading in 4k

Do people not watch 1080p videos?

What benefit is there to 4k? As at the moment the negatives are all I see...

1. takes forever to finish uploading to Youtube
2. can't watch the file on my computer [in 4k] to check it's correct
3. it takes up 50gb for 3 mins of video

Can anyone counter with benefits [?]

Thanks

J x

 

[Beanie Draws]

I'd say 4k is more of a luxury than a requirement. If you CAN, you probably should, because it future proofs your channel for another 5-10 years, but if you don't have the storage or processor capabilities, it's not the end of the world to not do 4k just yet.

I've never had anyone mention "this video sucks because it's not 4k" and conversly, I've never heard anyone say "wow! this video is amazing because it's 4k"
I personally wouldn't worry too much about it yet. If you can, go for it, but it's really just a bonus/luxury at the moment.
how old is your computer? My surface pro 4 from 4 years ago JUST manages to play 4k (which is ironic seems it has a 4k display lol!)

 

[MaJ]

I bought a top of the line computer at the end of 2019 [so 6 months ago]

I was shocked to discover this week that the GPU was poop

I bought the computer to make music and so it was built 100% with that in mind, best latest CPU, sound card, etc...

Anyway - so this week I bought a 2070 Super [couldn't afford the next GPU up, as it was almost double the price]

But with that GPU - my computer is now, pretty good for editing and making 4k film

It's annoying that VLC won't play the films - grr.

I get the future proofing idea... as watching a 360p film now, maybe what watching 1080p in five years time

Thanks

p.s. the file eventually fully uploaded, and it does play back on YT fine... strange I can stream it in 4k, but VLC won't play it back from my hard drive

x

 

[Tito Tim]

I looked at my analytics and a majority of my views are on the phone. I cannot see the sense in 4k on a 6 inch screen... I have had comments on bad audio (even if I apologize for the bad audio) but no one has ever complained about the video quality. I upload in 1080, and have no idea what they watch in.

 

[Zita]

Unless your making super cinematic video I donΓÇÖt think 4k is necessary, as Tito said most people watch YouTube on the phone or tablet, but YouTube algorithm does love 4K videos.

 

[Damon]

Well, there's a difference between capture and final distribution. resolution above 1080p are what I call capture resolutions. A trick from my music days: in the recording studio we would capture (record) at far higher quality than CD quality. Final distribution was CD quality but the raw data was far higher. That's done so as much data as possible has make it into the final song on the record

The thing is 4k is not meant for final distribution unless you're delivering to the big screen. 2k, 4k, 6k and 8k are all for the big screen. The good thing is you can downsample the image to 1080p and have a far higher 1080p quality in the end.

Again the 4k you'er getting in these cameras isn't true 4k because it's really just Ultra High Definition, not DCI 4k like the movies. Not to mention that they gut all the color data and bit depth out of the image.

They way I use 4k is to capture in 4k, then downsample the image to a Ninja 2 recorder to 1080p during production. When the footage is saved to my computer, it's already 1080p. Not only that but I get a true 1080p in terms of, well, I use ProRez HQ and 10-bit, 4:2:2 image. It's the highest quality 1080p footage you can get without going to a RAW 12-bit image. (If you think a 4k image is hard on your computer, try a RAW image!)

Lesson: Always capture in a higher quality than you deliver. That's the only positive for resolutions higher than 1080p, bit depths greater than 8-bit, and subsampling greater than 4:2:0.

 

[MaJ]

In regards to RAW

Yes I record in RAW it's BM RAW 3:1

I'm thinking of continuing to do them in 4k - but maybe buy a new external HD [?] - I think my computer has a 1TB and a 6TB internal drive - but the 6TB one will soon be filled up at this rate....

I guess I have to do it all on those drives - and at the end of each project back it up to the external drive then delete the internal file version... otherwise I will have filled and killed the computer in a few weeks...

Can you imagine back in the day they wrote and sold professional games with a total capacity of 1k [ZX-81]... now we are using up 50+GB on 3 minute videos

I think I did something a bit weird/wrong

The first video was 4k - 3 mins - and 50GB... yes 50GB

I think I did it as a RAW type file... Youtube took it, in it's stride - but my VLC player couldn't handle it

Well the latest video was 8 mins long and just over 2GB

I consciously selected MP4, it's 4k the same

So I think all my worries were based on my having maybe selected the wrong file format to burn to

Is MP4 the best [?]

As the GB to file size seems alright and has allayed any and all issues I had... so I have no cons now... just the pro of future proofing my content [for a few years... I note 6k is gaining traction already]

x