Thanks. So if I have 50% 4k content and 50% HD content, you are recommending that I produce a 1080p master and let the projection team "upsample" it 4k projection? Right?

A more elegant solution might be to see if you can stitch your mixed formats together in Videoredo and burn as 4k BluRay, which will play them seamlessly, although many of us aren't set up to do that yet, and I certainly haven't tried.

In any event, yes, your theoretical losses will be somewhat less with a 1080p master, depending on the ratio of 4k to HD material.

If your project has half of its media as native 4K, then you should output 4K. If the other video is 1080p, then it is also widescreen, so you should not need to use any background images to fill in blank space. Vegas does a good job of upscaling 1080p to 4K, I do it all the time in my projects.

That's interesting Frosty. I didn't realize that Vegas was "upscaling" the video. Are your projects projected on a large screen big enough for 400 people to view? I'm wondering if that is a difference between encoding for internet or other small screen formats.

Maybe I am thinking about this wrong but if you have a resolution of 3840x1600 and you drop in a 1920x1080 video, to make it fit the resolution, you are effectively zooming in 100% because you have to enlarge x2 to get it to fit into the 3840 resolution.

Sorry, if that is worded poorly.

@I am erikd

"I am producing a final file delivery output of 3840x1640."

I would be willing to get down in the weeds a little before I vote.

1) Do you know the native resolution of the projector at this venue? If it's UHD (3840x2160), I would be inclined to render 3840x2160 and leave the black at the top and bottom of the frame if your output really is 3840x1640.

2) How are you going to deliver the file? Optical media, as a file on a USB flash drive or playing from a computer that actually does have a 4K (3840x2160 or 4096 x 2160) video output capability.

I need to check this but I know that the screens are made 3:1. I found this too extreme for my taste and opted to go with UW4K 3840x1600 (not 1640 as I said earlier). We would put drapes on the outside edges to prevent seeing pillar black bars and to get an aspect ratio that is more to my liking.

This is a fairly swanky place and they have good facilities. They have a computer that actually does have 4k video output capability.

Vegas' bicubic upscaling is horrid by today's SOTA.

Upscalers available in ffmpeg and Avisynth (Lanczos, Spline) are better.

Neither is better than upsampling in a hardware player, to promote a commonly shared opinion.

From your description, I think a mixed-format 4k BluRay might be the way to go.

Why encode blu-ray (and be restricted to its spec, keep in mind he wants to use a non-standard resolution) when they have a computer capable of playing an even higher quality digital format straight off of an external media source?

That's interesting Frosty. I didn't realize that Vegas was "upscaling" the video. Are your projects projected on a large screen big enough for 400 people to view? I'm wondering if that is a difference between encoding for internet or other small screen formats.

Maybe I am thinking about this wrong but if you have a resolution of 3840x1600 and you drop in a 1920x1080 video, to make it fit the resolution, you are effectively zooming in 100% because you have to enlarge x2 to get it to fit into the 3840 resolution.

Sorry, if that is worded poorly.

 

 

As MusicVid says, if you are concerned about max quality, the projector itself probably has a good upscaler in it, but if you have to have the videos mixed into the same project, your only way to keep the true 4K video 4K resolution and still be able to use the 1080p shots in the same video is to put them through Vegas' upscaler or to use one of the methods MusicVid described above (they are higher quality indeed). You won't be able to have the video dynamically switch between native 1080p and 4K in the same clip without any sort of upscaling. It's one or the other.

So, for max quality, you will want to first upscale the 1080p clips to a very high quality 4K intermediary format using the methods MusicVid mentioned, then edit those into a 4K project in Vegas with your native 4K clips, then output 4K from vegas.

If the clips can be played back separately, as in they do not have to be part of the same video, then keeping them native resolution is the way to go.

What if I just produced the whole thing in 1080p and then had them upscale it to 4k? How would that compare to producing a 4k resolution file-projected 4k- and a mix of 4k and 1080p shots in the video?

If you did that, you are taking the shots that you say are native 4K, and reducing their pixel count 4x, so you are losing a ton of quality, especially for such a large screen. That said, it may be better as far as keeping the look of the video consistent to downgrade the 4K shots to 1080p, but I personally would go with a mix of upscaled 1080p and native 4K shots.

Nobody can tell you until you provide some details about the projector that will be used. For 720 projector even 1080 is overkill.

Nobody has yet mentioned the Vegas Smart Upscale FX. You could try that on the 1080 clips and publish at the resolution of the delivery format (3840x1640). Feels like a better solution than publishing at 1080, but it also depends on the proportions of the 2 resolutions in your project.

So many features slip into vegas without me noticing, lol... I will have to start using that. I wish it would just let you put in the desired resolution, rather than putting in what multiple of the original size you want.

Thanks Nick. That's a new one on me too. Have you had clean results with this personally? Is it similar to Instant 4K where it works with sharpening and other tricks to try and make the image look sharper.

I thought I'd try the Smart Upscale FX before I forget. I had a video of a tree trimmer working within billions of branches, but I could never get the CRF bit rate below 150 Mbps. This example should have some diagonal lines to expose jaggies. Pixel peep this.  

Dieses Beispiel sollte einige diagonale Linien haben, um Treppeneffekte freizulegen. Pixel peep this.  

Unfortunately, I can't start the video

your only way to keep the true 4K video 4K resolution and still be able to use the 1080p shots in the same video is to put them through Vegas' upscaler

@fr0sty

Just wanted you to know that the ability to play mixed formats and resolutions in the same file ​​​​​is the reason I suggested muxing and burning 4k BluRay, given the capability.

Again, hardware upscaling door-to-door is preferable in my opinion, thus the suggestion if it works.

I do see a disadvantage to a separate encoding step with software upscaling to achieve the same display resolution, so why not see if one can avoid it and spend a lot less time in the process?

Again, I've only done mixed-format DVDs in the past, so I don't know what other challenges will pop up.

@ walter-I

"Unfortunately, I can't start the video"

Download the video and play on your 4K device.

Interesting comparison John. My quick eyeball glance does pickup a noticeable difference in sharpness but that was only watching it on my mobile phone. Thanks.

I thought I'd try the Smart Upscale FX before I forget. I had a video of a tree trimmer working within billions of branches, but I could never get the CRF bit rate below 150 Mbps. This example should have some diagonal lines to expose jaggies. Pixel peep this.  

To my eyes smart scale is sharper than no filter. How does it look next to bicubic upscaling in Vegas?

Been busy mopping and vacuuming and haven't thought about it much.