Recording in 1080P or 4K

Turn11 · Oct 30, 2018

Today I do not have a 4K display and I am wondering if I will benefit from recording video's in 4K?
I am not experienced in editing
I have the Horse Power in my laptop
Storage is never a problem

Your thoughts and please explain.

Lady Rover · Oct 30, 2018

If you have the power use 4k@30fps it's pretty future proof.
More 4k and 8k screens will crop up (even though I do not really see the point for them in 95% of the cases).

You could write out a copy at FHD for today's use like YouTube if you want less powered machines to cope with the results.

Alternative use 2.7k as a reasonable compromise.

4wd · Oct 30, 2018

Recordings made in 4K can be expected to look better after editing - even downsized to 1080p.
The hard part is the additional time it might take rendering and issues previewing any changes made, if your computer is only just powerful enough.

What are you doing with any finished video, most are uploading at least some material to youtube, so why not work in 4K anyway.

beach_Dr · Oct 30, 2018

If you're editing, 4k gives you more leeway to crop, zoom, pan etc in the frame and still output 1080p with no quality loss.

And maybe oneday you'll get a 4k screen and enjoy the footage! If you have the storage, why not...

BerndM · Oct 31, 2018

I also have nothing that can play native 4K (except from YouTube) so I don't bother with it at all. 1080P/60 works great and uses A LOT less SD card space, is way easier to edit and can be uploaded much faster to various websites too.