Will 4K ever be obsolete? Is 8K the next big thing?

O

Oller Visuals

Well-known member
Plenty of people are impressed with 2K films being upscaled with internal poor-man's bluray players. And that's not high budget offiicial 4K remasters happening to some movies. I'd assume we'll even see the digitally shot Star Wars prequels in both 4K an 8K at some point.

Conclusion: Modern software can achieve all kinds of impressive trickery. Really, it's quite awesome. Been upscaling my old 5mp stills in Photoshop with good results.

Now: is there any reason to believe that we will we reach a point when shooting in 4K isn't good enough? Are resolutions adequate today? Should one focus on other aspects like HDR, noise levels and good optics? Maybe even Virtual Reality will be a bigger thing than 8K?

I've never seen a comparison with 4K/8K, but I've heard people say it's a noticable difference. "8K is what 3D should have been", and similar statements.
 
I think even 2K will be good enough forever, for the audience. Will some buzzword-led producers insist on 8K? That's a different question.

The eyes of our children do not have more rods and cones. Likewise I think there is a comfortable angle of view to watch certain things and that the people of the future will have the same preferences. Of course you can worry that virtual reality will be everything, that everyone will be watching everything with goggles, but that is where I am more conservative. I don't believe in infinite improvement and change. I believe in natural limits and technological maturity (http://www.dvxuser.com/V6/showthread.php?346893-future-proof&p=1986635042&viewfull=1#post1986635042). Therefore 2K and 4K will look just as good tomorrow as they do today.

I have thought about and debated this for years and years. Recently I did yet another round of measurements and posted it in another thread, http://www.dvxuser.com/V6/showthrea...n-ASC)&p=1986719785&viewfull=1#post1986719785
 
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The evolution of HD to 2k to 4k to 8k is similar to the analog audio albums to CD. At a certain point it exceeds the ability to notice the difference on the high end. The interesting thing about audio is it has now gone in a backward direction.
 
8K will happen for one reason. VR. 2k in VR is practically VHS quality. 4k is like 720p. 8k is the bare minimum for pixels to not be visible. Some think 12k is the point at which VR will be indistinguishable from reality.
 
Bob Loblaw said:
VR has no future in video or cinema. The only life it has is in video games, and even then it's anemic.
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I thought it was a gimmick until recently, but I'm a convert now. The tech will only get better from here on out until its like, a pair of sunglasses or a contact lens. No, it has no future in cinema, because it's fundamentally different from cinema, but it's going to drive camera and display technology to higher and higher resolutions, if for no reason other than VR porn.
 
8K is going to happen because the marketing department of the big electronics manufacturers will make it happen. We all know that nobody needed 4K, yet here we all are, shooting, editing and posting 4K. If you work for clients, the clients will eventually require 8K. Not for any logical or understandable reasons, just because that's what they will want. Think how many of us would have bought 4K cameras if the standard had stayed at 1080? I would have been pretty happy getting another few years of service from my C100MKI and C300MKI. But clients started requiring 4K origination and I had no choice. And planned obsolecence gives manufacturers something to hang their hat on.
 
There is value in 8K insofar as postproduction goes, things like reframing etc., so even if you regard 4K as a pinnacle of what the eye can perceive, you may want to shoot in 8K so that you have options in post for an 4K final output. Of course, at some point you are going to reach a limit, and perhaps indeed 8K is that limit, at least for narrative filmmaking (I'm not counting VR as that, since I think that's simply a different artform altogether).
 
Josh Bass said:
A colleague had a valid point that at some point we might have wall size video screens like in the sci fi movies.
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We already have wall size screens - in our theaters, stadiums, billboards, etc. What really matters is the viewing distance, and 4K is plenty of pixels for viewing distances that most would consider 'comfortable'.

Of course, 8K still enjoys benefits over 4K, and perhaps in the future the way we produce and consume media will change to actually accommodate sitting a few feet away from a wall-sized screen.
 
Of course 4K and even 8K and 12K will be obsolete.
Even thinking in terms of K will no longer be relevant.
Change is inevitable and cinema as we know it will one day be something else entirely.
Perhaps even within our lifetimes.
 
Be it VR or be it an enormous home cinema screen – 8k makes sense the moment the image fills the whole field of vision. For that goal 4 K is low res. In such a situation, if you additionally want to move your head and loo over your shoulder there must be 12K to do the trick – if you are watching a bell-shaped screen. With a head set, where the projection moves with your eyes, 8K will be enough (8K for EACH eye of course, no split screen trick counting!).
 
puredrifting said:
8K is going to happen because the marketing department of the big electronics manufacturers will make it happen. We all know that nobody needed 4K, yet here we all are, shooting, editing and posting 4K. If you work for clients, the clients will eventually require 8K. Not for any logical or understandable reasons, just because that's what they will want. Think how many of us would have bought 4K cameras if the standard had stayed at 1080? I would have been pretty happy getting another few years of service from my C100MKI and C300MKI. But clients started requiring 4K origination and I had no choice. And planned obsolecence gives manufacturers something to hang their hat on.
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This is exactly right. It's not that we need it, it's the fact that it's what would make people buy a new tv, The fact you can't even get a 4k anymore.
Cameras are a little different to the tv's though. A better resolution can give you the ability to isolate a different area in 1080 as apposed to just making the pixels closer when downgrading. I have done it before for people that don't go over everything with a magnifying glass to tell the difference.

yoclay said:
Of course 4K and even 8K and 12K will be obsolete.
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I don't think there will be 12k "tv's", probably cameras though (considering we have 6k), but i think tv's will jump to 16k, just like they went 4 to 8 (double).
 
Phil vG said:
I don't think there will be 12k "tv's", probably cameras though (considering we have 6k), but i think tv's will jump to 16k, just like they went 4 to 8 (double).
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Maybe they will be 12k because the screens will change profoundly. 12k or even 16k won't be useful on a today's 16:9 screen. Think about wall filling screens, which will become much broader due to limiting ceilings. Or think about 360 degree screens for VR. None of these screens have much in common with today's 16:9 format.
 
Josh Bass said:
I just worked on a commercial. For a LAWYER. Shooting 6k on the 8k Red.
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Just curious: Did your client request 6K footage ?

I have yet to have a client request 4K footage though I shoot most things as 4K, and so far the RFPs I receive specify 1080 HD deliverables.
 
I'm looking forward to 8K and beyond, because I always buy yesterdays cameras. I lag behind one or two steps and pick up hardly used excellent gear once the price premium falls off. I'm only now on 1080 because I got my first specific rider request last year - I went from SD, ignored 16:9 and jumped to 720, the more people move to 4K and the smaller number who upgrade to new formats can only be good for me.

I smiled on a Sony 4K camera course when they revealed their domestic 4K displays couldn't resolve what the cameras and pro monitors could - but nobody seemed to have noticed?
 
TheDingo said:
Just curious: Did your client request 6K footage ?

I have yet to have a client request 4K footage though I shoot most things as 4K, and so far the RFPs I receive specify 1080 HD deliverables.
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I was only the teleprompter on this thing, no idea how that conversation went.

Anyway, no one’s mentioned the swollen, veiny, purple, throbbing elephant in the room...all big tech advances are driven by porn.
 
Mark Williams said:
The evolution of HD to 2k to 4k to 8k is similar to the analog audio albums to CD. At a certain point it exceeds the ability to notice the difference on the high end. The interesting thing about audio is it has now gone in a backward direction.
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That Moment has already arrived! And its a silent killer that nobody talks about. Killer and not the elephant. Its called:

ARCHIVE adnd FUTURE proofing!

I am in a process of preping my movie for future proofing, so my grandchildren can profit of stuff I did, and therefore archiving my digital files is a MUST!!!! And my oh my what I have found out in that department, I still have a headache...

What drived technology ahead? Demand for content.
What if demand is no more, will technology keep developing? No bro.

I survived at least one tech revolution and memories are still fresh:
When people who were still paying of the lease for their CONTAX 645 Kit and set of ZEIS lenses that cost 20K, all of a sudden were told that their tech is "obosolete" and "worthless" and that they should swich to Hasselblad H1 or Canon DSLR (which at the time costed another 10K). That was the point whre quite a few pro photographers decided do downscale operations and go out of biz realy.


Now, intresting point is this: Who shoots digital at the time?


Magazines, advertizing, wedding etc....in one word, Media that doesn't need to be future proofed!
(Once the campain is over, banners are tossed in garbed and magazines are hopefuly recycled).

But portrait, specialists, fine arts and such photographers, acctualy went back to film!
(chck out the curent prices for Plaubels, Mamyas etc...crazy!!!!)

Now, that revolution happened just at the moment when FUJI and KODAK develloped THEBEST OF THE BESTEST elulsions amd Nikon release THEEEEE CAMERA among cameras (F6) and PANAVISION was about to blast everybody with their new Primes, alas--- toooooo late. Majority of market already moved to Digital. Canon 60D and RED (that we all despize now).

There is a point where 8K and 12K will be useless because nobody cares for content that they carry on. That can in/directly drive away the interest and RD money not to develop things anyfurther.

If SPACE RACE during cold war lasted a bit longer, USA would bancropt even more brutaly and faster then it did (yes we are bancrupt buteverybodysaffraid to addmitt it).
Luckly for American people, USSR collapsed faster and sooner. Otherwise, NASA and Pentagon would squize ous out even more tht they did.
But the SPACE RACE program wasn't driven to accomplish technical peaks but to winn in the ideology wars (Commies vs Corporates). Once USSR collapsed, there was no need to develop space technologies any further because the goal is reached already.

How do you think to develop 12K resolutions when most of the video contect today is made and distibuted for free?! who's gonan pay for R&D for higher and better?
I mean, YT doesn't admitts it yet, but they can not keep going forever providing a streaming and storing the contenct and not charging for it. At some point overheads will overcome the profis (there is a limiting money that advertizing can draw; not more then that).

How they gonna do it?! Well, my prediction is that at some point they will start erasing all videos that have less they 100K views (because ideaology that WON in Cold War eqals The World according to Profits AKA number of views).
Well, erasing YT videos with low viewship is equivalent to burning books that nobody reads (or that somebody wants to hide the knowledge that they containt:). Not to mention that in that instance, Justin Bieber and Rick Asltely will survive but Leonard Cohen will disapear from History!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uNMOCzWVs2I

Only 31K views :(


On the same token:
I think of video resolution in terms of print ink!
There are scriptures that are produced long time ago with bad quality materials and now carry barely visiable inks (faded, washed out) and whatever is printed that way is realy hard to consume and basicly ignored by the audinece (320x240 resolution).
Books from lets say, turn of the century, still have decent print that can be cleraly red (1080HD) so audinece reads them with no problem!
Modern books are even better printed (4K) and its a real joy to read them, but printing them in higher resolution (12K) is just menaningless-its already good enough!

Maybe some other media (medicine, astronomy, military) will need 60K video resolutions, but I don't and neither millions of people who are interested in watching exclusively the movies, we don't need beyoond meaningfull resolution quality.
Yes maybe PORN crowd will need need it and push for the 60K #Dvirtual reality video quality, but their kick will be shortsighted since they will die out in next generation cause of their inapporopriate fluid dispersion. So why worry?!
:)
Scripts made in stone with hammer and chissel from 5000 years ago still standing strong and might last for another 5000 yeras. Books printed 300 years ago (or movies made on nitrite bases film stocks ) are nowhere to be found. So which of the two was more advanced technologies?!
 
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