Does Vegas have to downscale the preview?

Doesn't the monitor have a setting to do that?

I don’t think a monitor can do that. It will display the resolution it can display, anything outside the monitor’s capabilities will not be displayed at all.

Be aware that with a 4K monitor you will have to upscale your windows output for text, apps and other items at least 125% or more, or you will not be able to read your icons and drop down menu's in Vegas because they will be very tiny. I do not have a 4K monitor, but an ultra wide 3440x1440 and I need to upscale 125%.

I also see that you have V14, well let me tell you from my own experience, V14 does not scale as well with high DPI monitors as V15. I was glad they improved this in V15. I had difficulty reading the tiny menus and text in V14 on my ultra wide.

I recently upgraded to a 32" UHD monitor and really like it. Vegas' interface is not quite as crisp as some apps, but it isn't too bad (windows 10 scaling set to 150%). Great benefit of an UHD monitor is the ability to see your 4K footage in it's full glory - very very detailed! Other benefit is a big increase in screen "real estate" but oddly enough your brain gets used to this very quickly and it just feels the same as before.

Performance wise, I haven't noticed any difference between 4K and HD timelines on either 4Kor HD monitors. Not a scientific test, but FWIW.

Personnally, I see differences in performance when preview in 4K or smaller resolutions. But you do not need to preview full resolution all the time if it's uncomfortable. So no, according to my experience a 4K monitor will not speed up preview, possibly slow it down.

(But, doing both photography and video, I think that the good thing about 4K, and the bad thing as well, is that it shows you much more flaws of your images and raises you quality standard (unless you are really targeting people small screens). Hence it can help have a better/more accurate view of your render anyway.)

 

Thanks for your input.

Windows stuff display is not a concern, as I have 2 monitors and the 4k would be for preview only, but if it's not that much of an effort for V14 to downscale to my HD monitor, it won't be worth the hassle and money for now I guess.

My primary reason to shoot in 4k would be the increase in sharpness and texture when downscaling to 1080p, not to actually export in 4k.

My primary reason to shoot in 4k would be the increase in sharpness and texture when downscaling to 1080p,

I've never seen that claim substantiated before. Do you have some tests or SSIM comparison?

There has been quite a bit of discussion about this on various camera forums (eoshd for example). I don't know if a straight down convert makes any real difference, but there certainly are real practical advantages for reframing, digital zooming, panning, and stabilization. Also, you can see a difference between HD and UHD on an UHD monitor - but you need to be close (for a 55" TV I would say no more than 6 ft; for a desktop computer monitor the resolution difference is obvious at any typical viewing distance.)

there certainly are real practical advantages for reframing, digital zooming, panning, and stabilization.

No mistake, with that I agree completely.

Of sampling alchemy, I remain unpersuaded.

Yes, a good Full HD camera will likely give you a better image than a poor 4K one.
(And usually with less risks of strobe/stutter, rolling shutter effects etc.)

It 's not a myth at all. I see it daily on countless productions on my HD TV,( especially on ARTE TV for the Europeans ); the difference in definition and sharpness is striking, to the point where I can tell right away which documentary was simple straight to disc HD and which was a 4K production downscaled.

This, btw, is also why lens quality has become so cruicial.

Just look at this rather unsofisticated demo:

At first inspection, the image zoom on the left is exactly what I would expect. In fact, the left screen in the "Normal View" comparisons are sharper in every example

The image on the right looks like it was cropped from 4k, not zoomed from 1080. .

Which exactly why 4k source is great in 1080p projects.

And 1080p is great in 720p projects.

And 720p is great in DVD projects.

No argument from me there.

I have to disagree. It clearly states that it's not cropped in 4k, but downscaled from 4k. The left side is a 1080 shot, the right side is a 4k shot downscaled and rendered to HD. No cropping except for the similar zoom ins on both.

All the 250-500% zooms are clearly sharper than the straight from 1080 render on the left. As I said, I've seen countless examples in documentary productions as well, and it was more than obvious, to the point where even "normal" non video tech people mentioned how incredibly defined the picture was.

Compare the L/R Normal Views in each example.

What conclusions do those lead you to?

take it from the Sony website:

"Another really important use of 4K will be allowing filmmakers to crop into their images in post, while still maintaining a 1080p resolution, declares Leitner. “Plus it’s good for downscaling for 1080p or 2K delivery. 4K images turn out much sharper than images that were natively shot at 1080p or 2K.”

https://www.sony.co.uk/pro/article/broadcast-4k-filmmakers-1302

I will try and do a test comparison with my A7S and a Shogun Flame next week.

"Another really important use of 4K will be allowing filmmakers to CROP into their images in post, while still maintaining a 1080p resolution, declares Leitner. “Plus it’s good for downscaling for 1080p or 2K delivery. 4K images turn out much sharper than images that were natively shot at 1080p or 2K.”

Errm, how is that not precisely what I just said? We've all been doing this for years...

Now, if you will look closely at the "unzoomed" Normal View, the downrezzed 4k is not "sharper" than the native 1080.

"Zooming" by cropping and "Zooming" by upscaling are two entirely dissimilar uses of the same term, thus the compelling appearance of ambiguity in that example. I have no issue with the former!

Yep, agree with Musicvid. The 1080p native is much sharper than the downrezzed 4k. But obviously, when enlarged the 4k holds up better.

“Plus it’s good for downscaling for 1080p or 2K delivery. 4K images turn out much sharper than images that were natively shot at 1080p or 2K.”

which...erm...is precisely NOT what you said. I should have left out the first part of the citation.You keep talking about cropping and zooming in without loss when rendering a 4k to HD, a nice feature of the process of course, but not my point at all. You insist that the downscaling from 4k to HD will not look better than a native HD, but logically, if there's no loss in picture information when zooming into a HD frame within 4k, the non zoomed image is by definition so much higher that there must be a difference.

What seems to be misunderstood here is that the author of that clip did NOT crop inside the 4k and render in to HD. He cropped the 2 resuting clips, meaning the HD from the 4k and the native HD on their own. What you see are not a 4k clip and a HD clip. You see 2 HD clips. The difference in quality in the zooms is evident proof that the downscaled HD has so much more picture information than the native HD, hence the better zoom sharpness.

I'm saying the following, just to clarify.:

Shoot in 4k, No cropping no zooming. Render to HD. You render from 4x the image information, resulting in a sharper and more defined picture than a native HD.

"Zooming" by cropping and "Zooming" by upscaling are two entirely dissimilar uses of the same term"

again - I am NOT talking of cropping, nor zooming. Just the simple difference in definition between a native HD and a HD downscaled from 4k.

I'll do a demo with a better cam than a Gopro like in the clip I linked.

Also, here's some possible explanation, taken from the National association of Bradcasters, illustrating my point: Start at "oversampling"

https://books.google.lu/books?id=MJ4uDwAAQBAJ&lpg=PT1697&ots=Xi3LdkDfRF&dq=4k%20footage%20downscaled%20to%20hd%20is%20sharper&hl=de&pg=PT1697#v=onepage&q=4k%20footage%20downscaled%20to%20hd%20is%20sharper&f=true

I am thoroughly confused as to this exercise. I am out of here.

Me too, unable to replicate...

I am thoroughly confused as to this exercise. I am out of here.

 

It's seriously not hard to understand though.

Not hard to understand, but I think a healthy case by case scepticism would be wise.

1) The GoPro example you posted is simply unbelievable (the 1080 aliasing is terrible) - there is some kind of post processing flaw going on there (IMHO). That camera probably can't resolve 1080 lines at the optical/sensor level anyway, so there is some electronic "magic" going on in the camera.

2) How do you really know what camera / format / post workflow was used on TV shows? Is detailed, accurate information really available for these shows? (Not trying to discredit you, just saying be careful about drawing conclusions.)

3) My personal experience using a Panasonic GH4: the 1080p was not very good, so yes, in that case down-sampling from UHD probably makes sense. In this case I think you are seeing the difference between "good" down-sampling in the computer vs "bad" down-sampling in the camera (it all starts from the same sensor readout so it needs to be down-sampled somewhere). I believe this difference is not apparent on the GH5 (yet to test.)

This explanation, of course, all falls apart if you are comparing different cameras. e.g. Canon c100 HD vs GH4 UHD. - I guess this is the point of view that Musicvid and David-Tu are coming from. Also, some cameras can "crop in" to get 1080 from the sensor without binning - so this would be a very clean signal that may be better than the whole sensor down-sampled.

Someone please stop me.

3840*2160=8294400

1920x1080=2073600

8294400/2073600=0.25

1-0.25=.75

Thats a 75% loss of DATA in the downconversion, and 0.00% increase from native 1920x1080.

Except for one overlooked downconversion factor called "dithering."

Dithering reduces jaggies from downconversion by introducing noise. Vegas has used a a pattern dither, which is particularly bad.

Noise degrades the final resolution from the theoretical 1920x1080 to something lower.

Therefore, the actual resolution is less than 25% of the native 4k, and less than the native resolution of 1920x1080.

I challenged you to provide quantified SSIM tests to prove your theory, to which you seem completely indifferent.

You have been fooled into believing that something else is taking place by possibly deliberate internet hype (imagine that) as was fully explained earlier.

Do you really believe the right-hand Normal View images that you provided are sharper? Those are NO cropping, NO zoom, as you have been so purposeful in reminding us. David-tu and I believe the left-hand image is sharper.