It seems crazy but the number of 4K video recording devices available to the average person has increased dramatically only over the past year or so. GoPro makes 4K cameras, there’s a 4K Sony ActionCam (I’ve got one), and even current generation smartphones like the iPhone 6s/6s Plus are offering 4K video recording at this point. It’s pretty amazing that we can have this kind of video recording ability so casually, but are we putting the cart before the horse here?
I’ve got two 4K-capable recording devices (my iPhone and my ActionCam, both relatively easily acquired) but I can’t actually watch that 4K footage anywhere in full resolution. For that I’d need a 4K TV or one of the 4K or 5K iMacs, and none of those options are particularly cheap yet, especially since having a big nice TV isn’t a priority for me. Though if it’s a must for you, I think the 5K iMacs are the best deal. You’re getting a complete computer attached to that display and it’s 5K versus the far more common 4K TV-only displays.
Even if you have a display capable of showing the 4K video, are you really going to watch video clips shot with your iPhone that way? Chances are you’ll want to share them online via Youtube or some other video-sharing site. Youtube has had 4K streaming for a while but it’s far from ubiquitous. I don’t know that I’ve ever come across a 4K video on youtube without specifically searching for one. If you’re like me and have a Vimeo pro subscription, they’ve been offering 4K streaming since August 2015, and hopefully to free users soon. But again, even streaming 4K video from Vimeo or Youtube will still require a 4K-capable display to actually see it.
So why have this admittedly cool feature if I’m unable to take full advantage of it? For me, it provides some very important and neat advantages. To understand them, it helps to explicitly explain what 4K is. With “4K” the video has a horizontal resolution of about 4000 pixels (hence the 4K moniker, ‘K’ being the abbreviation of the ‘kilo’ prefix).
Having this space means you can do some really cool stuff with your videos in post-production. 4K is essentially twice as wide and twice as tall as 1080p HD. This means that if you have a 4K video, you can create a “viewport” that is of 1080p resolution and move it all around the clip. When you render the final video (only what was in the 1080p viewport) you’re still getting a 1080p movie which is pretty good. So with editing, a 4K video allows you to make mistakes while you’re recording and then clean them up in post-production. If you don’t mind exporting to 720p, you can have even more space to play around. Even if you don’t edit anything and simply “down mix” a 4K video to 1080p, it’s still probably going to look better than a native 1080p video.
Ok, so maybe I’ve done well at explaining some cool things you can do with 4K footage even if you can’t view it, but how do you make those edits? Won’t it require a powerful machine? I certainly would’ve thought so, but the reality is more fuzzy. I edit my 4K footage using iMovie on my 2014 Macbook Air without any real problems. Is it ideal? No. Is it as smooth as editing 1080p or less? No. But it is completely usable, and that’s pretty much the low end of what will work. A Macbook Pro should have no problem at all editing 4K footage, to say nothing of an iMac or Mac Pro. Depending on your camera, you may also be able to lower the data bitrate of the video to help make it smaller and easier to edit.
Which reminds me…that’s really the only thing about 4K video that might require new or different hardware; the video files are huge. If you’re recording to an SD card or micro SD, definitely get one that’s in excess of 32GB. I’ve done quick 5-10 minute shoots and ended up with files several gigabytes or more in size. So you may want to consider a beefy hard drive, preferably with a good transfer bus like Thunderbolt in order to mange the files themselves.
Other than that, 4K video is nothing to be afraid of and it’s a lot easier to use than you might think. Consider giving it a try if you like shooting video.