Why You’ll Never Need an 8k Camera (Ai Fixes This) 

13:37 "I'm kinda just waiting for the day this is all built into our NLEs" Just an FYI, Resolve Studio already has native features for motion interpolation, upscaling, and deinterlacing using machine learning and mostly replaces the need for Topaz Video AI on footage that's already of rather good quality. Motion interpolation: Edit page > Inspector > Retime and Scaling > Motion Estimation > Speed Warp Upscaling: Right click on clip > Clip Attributes > Super Scale Deinterlacing: Project Settings > Image Scaling > Deinterlace quality > DaVinci Neural Engine There was a video you also put out recently about AI-based software, and while you mentioned it in Adobe's tools, Resolve does also have machine learning-based rotoscoping and object removal. Hope this helps for anyone reading, but specifically hope Sara comes across this.

hot take: 1080p it still just fine for around 90% of creators out there. 4K is nice for punching in and reframing in post, 8k is great for tracking/green screen work for that extra resolution for proper compositing work, and anything beyond that is just a flex at that point. like why does anyone actually -need- 12K or higher? Give me a really clean 1080p/4k video any day. awesome video, Sara!

The only real problem with 1080p curerntly is that RU-vid absolutely crushes it. If you only have a 1080p camera, AI upscaling will help but what will really help for free is to create a 1440p or 4k timeline and resize your footage to fit. Proper 1440p or 4K video files get AV1 transcoded on RU-vid currently which is significantly higher quality.

So the C100 was a great choice for this test because the image that you started with was actually downsampled from a 4K image. The sensor in the C100/300/500 were all identical - and the C500 offered 4K raw output to an external recorder. So while the output was 1080p, it was really really good 1080p footage and in scaling the video back you’re basically reversing what happened inside the camera.

That looked surprisingly good! A well-lit and composed 1080p image can go very far, especially with the way that online video is compressed anyways.

Only a little over 8 yrs old and the focus is rock solid

Im just saying, we always love to see a Sara creative (CAMERA) video! The approach is always different than others!

It's probably the sharpening and smoothening features of your TV that is spoiling your 24fps footage on RU-vid. I hear a lot of people disable it. I don't have first-hand experience with a 4k TV with these features but it's a point of contention for sure.

We have been using client processing in computers for years. For example if your your rendering a game you don't send a compressed image, you send the codes needed for the client side to render the image for you. The more powerful the client hardware becomes the more compressed the signal can be or alternatively the higher the quality of the image. A similar situation happened with quality storage of music. Initially music needed ages to store a single piece of music into a relatively large area. But over time storage became cheaper whilist hardware processing became better and people worked out how to write better software So when before it would take ages to compress a single mp3 and a whole album would take up an entire disk instead you could compress an CD in less time than it took to play it & it took up a tiny fraction of a disk Then along came MP4 and we saw the same again with video files and we all understand the advantages & immersibility of MP4 video over MP3 audio However, no matter how much we try we have tried we still haven't managed to create the same effect no matter how much more visceral MP5 is. Is this because MP5 is a proprietary system made by H&K? Or is it because it is in fact banned in many countries except where its used by professionals? Unless you live in certain parts of the USA such as Texas like you do Sara! So perhaps you could do a video about comparing MP3 with MP4 & then with MP5? (For those of you who don't get the joke: a Heckler & Koch MP5 is a machine weapon - not a method of compression)

The problem is that each widely acceptable formats is 4 times denser than the previous standard (from 1080p to 4k to 8k). The sweet spots are actually the in-between formats like 2.7k and 6k but they are non-standard and not widely accepted. The difference between 2.7K and 4K is for pixel peepers.

Congratulations on 900k subscribers on your way to 1 million. Keep up the awesome content. 😊

Something about the skateboarding footage at 5:54, Topaz actually does have a pretty good de-interlacing model that you can use for something like that. Even handbrake's de-interlace options I think could fix that up reasonably well actually.

the image is so great Sara

congratulations on 900k subscribers!

Neat video Sara. Insightful!

Nice video Sara!

Great video Sara! It made a very noticeable improvement!! I heard about this software in 2010 in film school from one of the teachers, and back then it didn't really do a great job, looks like they've improved it!

Looks great!

Considering how old the camera is, it looked pretty nice. Especially after post processing, you barely notice the difference between it and the FS5. P. S. Nice use of Comic Sans, lmao.

900k subs, lets go!!!

Sara, thank you for the awesome video. Your awesome!

Congratulations for 0.9M 🧡

Yes, garbage in, garbage out might always apply even with AI. Even considering if you input a confusing or terrible, messy prompt you’ll get less than optimal results. That having been said there’s a lot more you can do these days in post and I totally agree with your position hold onto it you’ve got try out the new technology on the software side.

17:00 turn off the motion smoothing setting on your tv! It fixes the problem of 24fps looking like a soap opera

Sick! I just purchased my second C100mkii a few weeks ago!

I had an R5 with 8k. While I never shot in 8k I loved having the ability of shooting in both full frame and super 35 and being 4K either way. It made my 28-70mm lens work as a 60-140mm without switching lenses.

I have a fairly early consumer-level 4K camera - the Panasonic FZ1000. For now it's generally been "good enough" for what I use it for, so I'm not necessarily planning to upgrade anytime soon, at least not just yet. When I do upgrade, though, I'll want to just stick with 4K for now, and instead prioritize better dynamic range, low-light performance and higher frame rate. Dynamic range - I've sometimes taken videos where I'm showing something in a dark area, like in some equipment under a shelf where there's no direct light, and I have my phone there as well. I miss a lot of the details in the shadow area, while my phone's screen gets completely blown out. (Same thing happens when I take a video pointed toward my PC.) I can see details IRL that get completely lost in the video. If I could get better-than-IRL dynamic range, that would be great. (I dream of having enough dynamic range so you could combine a nice daylight landscape shot, a Bortle level 1 (distant rural location basically on a moonless clear night) starry sky with Milky Way and all that goes with it, and the NASA depiction of the moon overlaid on the sun, both showing extensive surface details, during a solar eclipse, all in each frame, without exposure stacking.) Low-light - A few times I've tried to take a video at night of a group of people (probably 100-200 or so) singing around a campfire. Yeah, you can't see much there, other than the fire. If I could make it look like almost midday, that would be nice. (I might not always crank it up that bright though, I do want the option of being able to turn it down for ambience, etc.) (I dream of taking a video at night in a cave or a forest on a moonless cloudy night in the middle of nowhere, and make it look like midday.) Frame rate - the 30fps my current camera does at 4K has been okay, and it will do 60fps at 1080p, or 120fps at 1080p without sound. I have been thinking that upgrading to 60fps (with higher fps for lower resolutions, but preferably with sound) might be "okay", but just a little bit ago I saw a RU-vid video that proved me wrong. Look up "Yuja Wang Flight of the Bumblebee" on youtube, or Rick Beato's video talking about her "The Impossible Virtuosity of Yuja Wang" and observe her hands on the piano. I'm pretty sure 60fps wouldn't be nearly enough, I think you'd need an absolute minimum of 120fps, or probably 240fps or even more. As for a resolution upgrade, I'm not planning that until a farther future upgrade. I want PC processing power to catch up to where video is as quick to process, render, etc, as audio is on a "recent" PC - not my current one, but my previous. Some time ago, I did a few tests... On my i7-4790K, converted a video from 4K H.264 100Mbps (from the FZ1000) to HEVC, q=0, all keyframes, everything cranked up to the max. It took about 4 days to transcode a 4-minute video. On the same 4790K, converted about 2 hours of audio from uncompressed wave to 320kbps, q=0 mp3 - that took about 2 minutes. On my current Ryzen 9 5950X, started converting a 256x144p 2-minute clip from an older video I came across in Avidemux to VP9, speed=-9, prioritize best quality, GOP size 1, use full color range ... and it said it was going to take 10 minutes. Then, starting the uncropped version at 640x480, said it was going to take 35 minutes. Lastly, just for fun, I told the software to upscale to 4K (from 256x144), then convert that. The first pass took about 13 minutes (I had to let that run), then after the second pass had started, it said it was going to take an hour and 35 minutes or so. (I thought it would take a lot longer, but, yes I know you can't really upscale 144p to 2160p. I guess I need to redo the experiment with an actual 4K clip.) Of course I aborted all those tests. When I do upgrade resolution though, I'm thinking of doing the same kind of jump I did previously when I upgraded TO my 4K cmaera - and skip a resolution step or two. Before my 4K camera, the max resolution I had on a camera was 640x480, although I might have had a smartphone that could shoot 720p right before I got the FZ1000. I'm thinking, I might want to skip completely over 8K, and go to 16K, or possibly 32K. But, at what point would it be too MUCH resolution ... Yeah, I would like to have high enough resolution so that no matter where I look on a screen large enough to fill my entire field of vision, I cannot see individual pixels. (I can probably still barely see individual pixels under the right conditions on an LG G4 phone screen - 2560x1440, 5.5", 538ppi, holding the phone in my hand at normal distance - for example if I put up a solid white image with a single black pixel somewhere in the middle.) But what kind of processing power would it take to deal with that, and how much disk space especially for uncompressed, high dynamic range, high frame frate footage, that would be crazy insane today. Anyway, I'd want my PC to be able to process the 16K footage or whatever resolution, as quickly as my 4790K could process audio conversion (basically 60x realtime), and have enough storage so that raw/uncompressed footage at that level I described would make my storage no more bursting at the seams than my current ~100TB of storage struggles with some of my older 640x480 footage or recent 4K videos. (I probably won't be building Exabyte or Zettabyte Project anytime soon.) I'm not in the market for a camera right now, but if I was going to buy one, I think I'd be taking a good look at something like the Sony A7s III, if I had the spare $.

Your cat is so coool and cuuute!

Shocked baby Sara at 13:13 was hilarious 😂

I don't even use cinema cameras, but your delivery...I'm here for it lol

I use a Canon C100 Mark II to film my videos. It’s a gorgeous camera with all the features I need. Bought it second hand and I have no regrets.

i have a Fuji XH2 which can do 8k. i can make out a difference, even tho its pretty subtle. I ended up using 4k HQ mode which downsamples the 8K output of the sensor to a 4k image, and its amazingly sharp. And even tho 8K is around for a while now, it will take a very long time until its the standard for consumer level electronics to being able to display that propperly... so I'll stick to the downsampled 4k for the time being...

Wow you’re nearing 1m, thats kinda crazy to see! I remember learning about your channel way back when your first video with John was on his channel, how many years ago was that now?!

I use VEAI almost every day. Actually upgrading my gpu so it would upscale that much faster. Often I run out of things to upscale because when you upscale literally 24/7 eventually you run out of things But i just wanted to say other than that the program is cool, is that the 250$ "price tag" is a subscription cost to getting updates. Also there's a watermark that gets removed with the full version. So just in case viewers go "OMG a 250 dollar AI upscaler I can upscale all of my chinese cartoons!" (like what I use veai for) just think about it as a 20$ a month sub fee.

When I was hiring freelancers to film for Food Quest the stories I couldn’t shoot, I really liked those who filmed in 1080. They seemed to have better composition. It also saved space and time since we weren’t delivering 4K to the networks. I still film in 1080. Only going to 4K when I’m doing a project where I’m not certain, and I might have to do some recomposition.

I mean I find the battles over resolution kinda strange in general- I like audio a lot too, and people seem to get really obsessed over things like the mastering intention (resolution) and the consumption/playback, if it is something you can perceive etc. The returns diminish, like in video 4K over 1080P on a tiny laptop screen (the real debates probably 2.5K v 4K) is small but not imperceptible. The entirety of the screen is tack sharp, the text doesnt have any artifacts and other small but nice things you notice. In my mind, if i were a pro I'd want huge massive resolution for the editing side. I would want high quality sensors and lossless codecs with high performance editing stations so I could replace other equipment. Watching 16K resolution footage on an iphone screen is not worth 5 million dollars to bob or tom but it would be worth a lot to someone who could ditch every single other lens except one prime and have a truly clean 4k output in the end, doing all of their "zoom" as digital in post without losing quality. Bokeh will be one of those things that will eventually be able to be rendered perfectly enough too. No more big ass lenses, less the prime. AI will eventually make pixel perfect creations at any resolution you want that will look like what you want it to it just won't be real. That's the thing, when the uncanny valley goes away it'll just be viewed probably akin to... convincing things in fictional film. It'll look real, but it just ain't real at all. I think it's the IDEA that is scary, not that we won't know what is real and what's not. We already don't know that, to be honest unless you have a bit of technical skill. I could tell you if the pixels have been shopped by analyzing it first by eye and then by software but the whole duping the general public about xyz is long gone.

Loved the zelda sound effect when you were opening the package the same way link opens a treasure chest.

My XH2 has 8k which isn’t helpful but the digital teleconverter (aka zoom) is actually massively helpful. That crispy fast wide prime lens turns into a zoom and that’s just so satisfying.

This is where Blackmagic are so good. My P4K has been meaningfully upgraded a number of times via firmware since I bought it.

TVs have an awful lot of sharpening on by default. A good way to set sharpening is to throw up some text on the screen and turn sharpening all the way down, then dial it up till the text looks just clear. You may find that you like it that way better as well.

still rocking my 1080p monitor and im happy with it. i dont need 8k.

I wouldn't have picked the difference, what a great video - and for me who's about to buy more cameras it's timely too! Can you do a video on your colour grading for these clips? Please? :)

I used to believe that high end video work was where it is at……spent crazy money upgrading cameras and more over the years and I absolutely love crispy and clear 4k etc…. BUT reality is that this doesn’t matter to the RU-vid algorithm..any videos I make that are video intensive gets no views…4k,scripts,and months of my time…..BUT when I get the name of my video correct is SD with no background music, script sucks etc I get thousands of views….so the 10 years making video content on RU-vid has taught me SUCCESSFUL video content these days seems to be terrible low brow Mr. Beast content in SD…straight up facts. I guess if your client wants 4k or 8k it matters but I would suggest saving tons of money on equipment and your time because high end is not going to get your videos more views. And only cause you stress from the cost to never ending rendering nightmares. Great example is the most enjoyable part of this video is the cat scene which is not fancy or high end…straight up…oh let’s throw this antidote in for fun….not fancy but everyone enjoys it. If you want views on RU-vid become more creative not high end or you can continuing chasing Tech Fads for a big stack of pennies in return for your time, money and efforts …for most of us that is 💯👊🏻💚💨💨💨. Video was on the money though IF you actually need 4k/8k no doubt. 💨💯👊🏻💚

She's still gonna buy every camera she can. Great thoughts Sara :) Thanks for sharing.

How does the upscale AI your using compare to the pro AI upscale in davinci resolve 18 ? Is my question :)

Shooting 8k would be nice if downscaled to 4k but it's just more files storage and processing power needed to deal with

Great video

I watched this on a 1080 Westinghouse TV. Yeah, I know.. Looked fine to me, by the way. The comparisons all showed up fine. On a 4k screen, different story, but for a simple 1080 stream screen for background noise, meh. I don't need 8k, or 4k, or 1440 for the matter. What I will say though, is that filming source really enhances the production quality, that much is unmistakable on any screen.

The unveiling at 1:56 music gave me flashbacks to the Day of the Tentacle game!

For filmmakers, its not 8K or 4K that we wanted to master to but the extra resolution to use to reframe our shots in post without the quality loss. 4K for reframing is awesome for 1080p output and 6K for 4K. We will need 12K for reframing to 8K.

Oh, congrats on finally getting married. I'm waiting on version 2 of the A1. I want the A7r5 screen and a few more things before I buy that camera. I do need a 6K camera, and I keep looking at the Red Komoto for Documentary work I need the 6K so I can better crop in the edit, but yeah, 4K is all I need for the foreseeable future.

You should try the Canon R6 Mark II for Video. It's vary sharp. I have it on Pal mode here in Australia.

4:18-LMFAO. 🤣

Whose 8K useful for? Content producers - it allows you to zoom in post. If your outputting at 2K or HD you effectively have a 16x zoom in post. If your outputting at 4K you have 3 options. A. Have a 4x zoom B. Have a 16x zoom & then use a computer uprezz the output to 4K C. Have a 64x zoom & then use a computer to uprezz the output to a slightly lower quality 4K VR headset users The closer someone's eyes are to the display the larger the pixels are thus the less pixels People can see! Unless the pixels are smaller i.e. there are more pixels in the image ergo the image is higher resolution People with wall sized televisions This is the same argument as People using VR glasses. Its just the screen is now so large that you have to sit far enough away from that you can take the whole image in or because your focusing on a particular bit of the screen Camera Manufacturers - with the low end constantly being commodofied creating cameras with ever higher resolution or images per second or colour depth or whatever give them something to sell as its better than the past Hopefully this is what you said in your video. But I am leaving this comment before I have watched your video to see if we agree

9:07 I felt that deeply. I agree, Judy. 😂

On that film grain synthesis that is really a feature of the AV1 codec and very few devices run that natively currently. So it will be some time for most people before they get that.

So when you upgraded your Canon T3i to Canon 7D you decided to stick to the same sensor from Canon but bought a better built in image processor? Which is fine, lots of people don't realise that new camera are often the same hardware but with better processing software. Just as if you look at early games for a games console and compare them to newer games for the console - the new games look a lot better. This is because the programmers have worked out how to do more in time with the existing consoles or in this case camera's

All we actually need is a 2.7k crop sensor with s5ii stabilisation, 24mp.

This is one of your best videos ever about camera gear. Well done. I can tell the difference on my 4K TV, but on my phone or tablet? Of course not. BTW, you should revisit the Canon C70 since they updated it to do 12-bit raw and eye tracking autofocus. Crazy what they're squeezing out of a $5,500 camera now.

For the average consumer, 8K or 16K or wthK means little. For professionals, it's a big deal. Crime scene photographers, military satellites, space photography, surveillance, or any profession where small details (which can be 'blown up' excessively) matter. 'Can you enlarge that?' 'Enlarging two pixels, gets you two blurry pixels.' Generic Crime Show 'Can you enlarge that?' 'Hey. That guy has hair plugs. Bald man we got you.' Future Generic Crime Show

Great color grade on the C100 footage. I think i have gotten content with my Gh5's. I think the only thing that get me goggle eyed now is Apple's new laptops. Just waiting on a new Imac with the new chips.

Do you have a picture of classic Macintosh comptuers on your wall? Like as little icons or something? I can't tell because depth of field but it looks like that and that's super cool!

Now if you upgrade to 8k, everything else you have has to be in 8k. It's not worth it right now. When TV shows and like HBO etc move to 8k as a standard, I might consider it.

¿How long did it take you to process (upscale) the short film?

How did you grade the c100 footage because I’m having issues in resolve

yup. difference is noticeable

I'm watching on a $200 1080p 32" monitor (2K), and I can tell the difference... however, it's only if I look really close at the high frequency textures in your hair and eye brows. I STRONGLY suspect that there is a "low pass" filter in the camera to overcome the Bayer pattern that cuts off this detail in the source camera. I think the best thing to do is to use an 8k or 4k camera, and keep the native resolution if you intend to crop it, ever. But when you upload or export, why bother with more than 1080p? Save yourself a lot of time rendering and bandwidth.

1080p is more than enough. What they did to put the ILLUSION that it’s terrible is the compression of the video quality. RU-vid is criminal with this. ;)

I really thought 4k and 8k cameras was for having room to do crop and image stabilization. As a user with a 1080p sRGB screen like 99% of the population... I think I don't need such amount of pixels.

Honestly the only reason the C100 stood out was the dynamic range compared to your main cam. But standalone, it looked great!!!

And then there's me, still happily making 1080p videos and wondering if I'll ever need to graduate to 4k 😅

The red undertones of your hair are really noticeable in the difference between the cameras - almost more so than the resolution. Don't know if it is just 10 years of color science, the color grade, etc. But that is the part that really stands out to me between the two.

7:34 holy crap,. that's what I call "crispy".

4K is big but 8K - much more storage - "visual" returns ...eeeh I agree with Sara

That Sony HVR-Z7U on the left at 1:20 isn't a cinema camera. It's an HDV format, ENG application camcorder. We still get the point of what you were saying though so it's no issue but just wanted to let you know.

Nice video 📹

5:14 This can be done in *Davinci Resolve* 😌

Always I watch you in 1080p

Sara and Justine AKA iJustine are my favorite for Tech videos. Are you going to do a video on the new Macbook lineup?

What makes 8K exciting is the pixel density improvement for larger monitors. Even a 32" screen is too large for 4K where the optimum size peaks at 27", unless you don't mind moving the monitor out which diminishes the reason for getting a larger monitor in the first place unless done due to an eye condition (yes, for every rule exclusion events do exist which might apply to you).

I love your videos

Canon T3i has started so many careers. Hall of Fame camera

I do love my Samsung NX1 from 2014

0:29 LMAO as another sufferer from Gear Acquirement Syndrome, I love you for that clip! 🤣😂

Oh my 😮

While the 4k footage from the Sony is sharper, I like the color science of Canon. Looked more soothing atleast to my eyes.

But to honest Sara, 8k is starting to be a consideration in terms of image quality you're getting and improving and now it's showing differences from 1080p, 4k and 6k even like for example, Samsung announced the S23 Ultra with enhanced 8k with better image and finally 30fps and also have you ever tried Sony a7 IV? I say that because it can change the perspective of how you saying in the video. Plus AI is not reliable enough for upscaling, trust me I tried. In conclusion, I would consider 8k to be in the future but not close than you think but there's a reason it would need it someday so?

When 180 and 360 video become more popular, you'll require much more than 8K to get the 4K sharpness you're use to, but in 360. Closer to 16K if you want to approach retina realism. It will be a thing small AR/VR glasses go mainstream.

Sara, what is your favorite Budget cinema 4k Camera that you have used? My husband and I have been making videos on building our home and I am ready to upgrade to a big girl camera. I just don't have $6k for an FX6😅

we do need 40mp stills. for 3x2 sensor, 40mp equals 8K video natively, in Fuji XH2 etc.

Pixelmator Pro on Mac just added video support, and you can use super resolution ML. Warning, a 7 second clip on an intel mac will be super strenuous. Just get the new Mac Mini

Also, you can tell the true 4k is a little sharper ,but with out reference it would be hard. However, finding a camera that is sharp enough is the harder part.

100%!

I feel there is no reason to go beyond 4k. I still render my 4k finished videos in 1080P anyways. If I'm making something that might actually get seen on a movie theater size screen. Then I'd render that in 4k

In the old days of film, Leica and Nikon made cameras for still photography that were built to last for decades, if well cared for. Occasionally the film stocks would change, but the cameras remained the same. We may be getting to the point of diminishing returns on digital cameras. The new “upgrades” every couple of years with new features that “you can’t live without” may not become so important. But today’s consumer marketing dictates a built-in obsolescence. However, If I’m going to spend several thousands of dollars on a camera, I want it to last more than a few years.

I only ever watch footage in 1080 because most of us consume content on our phones whether it's YT, IG or TikTok and it really doesn't make a difference. YT compresses the hell out of all videos regardless of the quality you shoot or edit it in. The idea of 8k is just a joke. We're not walking Dolby equipped cinemas. I work in TV and spend my days working on TV shows across drama, docs and entertainment and 99% of them are 1080 not 4k.

This gives off “you’ll never need more than 640k of RAM” energy.

I Can definitely tell

Thumbs up for baby Sara

Looking at the 1080p footage I first thought it was out of focus, the 4k upscale is definitely convincing.