Upscale clips to 4K or downscale project to 1080?

chris f

chris f

Veteran
I'm working a project that was mostly shot in 4K and will be distributed via YouTube and there are a handful of clips that I want to add digital zooms to (as well as a few 1080 clips to scale up) and I'm wondering if there's a quality difference in the final export between a 4K export where clips are scaled up beyond 100% on occasion or a 2K export where the digital zooms stay under 100% (because of being 4K native). Since the majority of people will never watch it in 4K anyways, if their phone/laptop, etc. chooses to auto playback at 1080p will that look any different than if I just mastered in 1080 in the first place?
 
IMO, if you're editing on a 4K timeline and keeping the zooms reasonable (175% vs. 300%) then most people will not see a difference, especially if the source footage is high-quality (like CRL).

1080p in a 4K timeline:

- Soft 1080p will be noticeable if the master is 4K and playback is 4K.
- Really good 1080p/2K - like from ARRI - may not be noticeable.

But with all that said if the majority will be watching on their phones/etc. in 1080p then it doesn't really matter. In theory, you should get slightly better quality from the super-sampling but who's going to really notice?

4K masters only matter when you're playing back in 4K on 4K screens.

[When you buy your new C500 Mark II, you can shoot in 6K and have a ball in post.]
 
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haha, well that is true...but I think most people will settle with 4K masters for a while.

You would dump all of your 6K footage into a 4K timeline and go crazy.
 
chris f said:
I'm working a project that was mostly shot in 4K and will be distributed via YouTube and ... if I just mastered in 1080 in the first place?
Click to expand...

Youtube rendering of 1080 is ac1 whereas if you deliver in 1440 ... or higher ... it is vp9 which is a much better compression format and will deliver a much
more detailed look. 1080 to 1440 is not much of a jump and you will notice the difference.
 
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