Video in HD or 4K?

Would you like videos in HD or UHD (1k/4k)? or do you not care about the resolution?
Hope you like…
73 de LA3NGA @ LA/TM-011 (again…lol)

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The content and production is far more important than anything else.

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I agree with Richard. Content for sure over technology.

But to answer the question. HD is good enough.
Using tripods, image stabilisation and smooth movement of camera are more relevant for a pleasant viewing experience.
I like recording some scenes on 4K to have a chance to zoom in during editing. But Youtube is compressing anyway the hell out of the video. You can see that when you download from youtube studio what is left over. An about 1 GByte upload gets compressed down to ~ 150 MByte.

73 Joe

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Great tips Joe! My gimbal is coming soon :wink:

I think a gimbal is maybe a bit too much.

Modern action cams like Go Pro 7 / 8 or DJI Osmo Action have great stabilization and are robust and waterproof. For me that is important too.
If you use a phone it is a great improvement.

Joe, I use an iPhone11 but the selfie-stick does not make for good pictures because I am too shaky…
We will see how the gimbal works, only downside I can see is weight.

Hi Henning
Thanks very much for the video. I like most others am more interested in the content rather than HD or 4k. Anyway keep up the good work and thanks very much for the qso.
73
Nick G4OOE

Thank you for the QSO Nick! Always fun on the summits, you chasers make it that way :wink:

Hi Henning
Many thanks for the QSO and S2S
Great to see you on your summit.
73
Dave G3TQQ

Thank you Dave! I love S2S :smiley:
73
Henning LA3NGA

There is a huge difference between 1080p and 4k on YouTube if you’ve got a lot of detail to capture AND that detail matters AND they’re viewing it on a high resolution screen. :wink:

It doesn’t make much difference at all if you’re in your shack or in the back yard but if you’re in the great outdoors you can see a really significant difference (but again, only if they’re using a decent res monitor).

4K down-resd to 1080p also looks better than raw 1080p to me.

Having said that - high resolution bad content = bad video. low resolution good content = good video. :slight_smile:

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Hi Henning,

As I understand it, the only way to see the difference between HD and 4k is to view the content on a 4k quality monitor, preferably one that is more than 1 metre wide. I do not view amateur radio videos on such a wide HQ monitor and usually use my Ipad, or my desktop PC which has a monitor running at about 1920 pixels width. Any greater resolution than that causes the video to be compressed down to that size, so your 4k image gets trashed somewhere along the way, even if you do manage to upload it to a server that stores it without compressing. And as others have said, sites like youtube compress and then compress more.

So in my view, 900 or 1080 pixels wide is quite good enough. This is not glossy magazine print material. Save your upload time and file storage space for other more demanding applications where you will need the resolution.

73 Andrew VK1DA/VK2UH

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For reference folks I just did a quick experiment.

I took a screenshot out of one of my YouTube videos on an old, bog standard 1080p monitor.

I played the video at 4K, and then at 1080p and captured the same frame.

The 4K capture is significantly sharper than the 1080p capture.

Your results may vary, but that’s more than good enough for me to keep creating content at 4K :slight_smile:

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Henning,

Thanks for the video and my preferences are:-

  • Taking the trouble to produce the video in the first place;
  • The content;
  • The format - HD is more than adequate.

73’s
David

Thanks for all your feedback!
I have space on my HD and my wwwline is good so I guess I will find a good solution.
Chris: What is your frame rate? You still got a rather sharp picture even if you are running… (or is that internal stabilisation?)
73 de LA3NGA Henning

Hi Chris,

Interesting result. I found the following comment about viewing nominally 4k video on a 1920x1080 display:

“ A 1920x1080 monitor can only display that many pixels. A 4k video has enough information to display four times as much: 3840x2160, so four 1080p monitors in a 2x2… So your 4k video gets resized to 1920x1080 ; it becomes four times as small, and that’s what you’re viewing.”

As there are many conversions performed between recording an MPEG video on a camera, including the original compression performed in the camera, some unpacking in an editor, repacking the edited content into a new file at possibly a new resolution, then storing it on a web server with yet another compression potentially destroying some content, then the user computer unpacks that compressed content and tries to display a nominally 4k video with 8 million pixels churning out 25 times a second, on a screen that can only display less than a quarter of that, and possibly not as fast a frame rate, I do wonder at what point the process for the 4k video makes it look better on a practical size PC monitor. One of the compressions is done better with the higher nominal resolution, or a decompression is producing better approximations, producing better guesses at lost pixel data. However I don’t know and i’m not an expert by any means, I just look at the numbers and wonder how it happens. And then I usually view it on a 10 inch ipad screen, with even fewer pixels available.

Whatever the deal, your videos are great due to the content, so I doubt if it would matter what resolution you use, I and no doubt many others will continue to watch and enjoy!

73 Andrew VK1DA/VK2UH

Yes sir you’re dead right - one of the key differences is that a down sampled video while having less pixels, was generated from a source which had a lot more and so you end up with more data to work with. You have a lot more data from which to generate each pixel and so errors are better corrected (chroma subsampling). One key area this shows up is on the edges of objects which is why the image looks sharper, and then when things get compressed good becomes bad and bad becomes terrible. End result, the down sampled video looks better.

So while a 1080p image only has a certain number of pixels, and having more doesn’t seem useful - not all pixels are “generated equally” as it were. :slight_smile:

I use 24 frames per second Henning and software stabilization - nothing crazy at all! :smiley:

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Good points, I am not surprised it ends up being better. Whether I can see the difference on an ipad screen, I don’t know. But if I watch your videos on a 24” screen no doubt it will look great!

73 Andrew VK1DA/VK2UH

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