It's like we're waiting for...

[aaronhead14]

Um, you are blowing up a 1920x1080 image to 3840x2160. The individual frames of a video are not vector graphics. It loses quality when you blow them up. I have seen it. Just take a simple AE project, produce it at 1080p, then go back and blow it up. I can tell the difference. It does not look as crisp and as good as the 1080p one did. Just like when I watch 1080p footage full screen on my 2560x1440 monitors, it looks worse than on a native 1080p display because it is blown up. You cannot gain image data just by blowing up the image. If you can, why not just take raw 720p footage and blow it up to 16K? It WILL NOT look crisp.

I have tried it. I upscaled one of my title sequences from 1080p to 4K and it looked HORRIBLE at 4K because....it did not magically generate extra pixel color information for the 4x resolution increase.

This is like saying "Generate a 100x100 image in Photoshop. Now blow it up to 200x200. SEE how it MAGICALLY gained those extra pixels and color data?" No, you blow up an image higher than it's original size it looks bad. 100x100 vector image CAN be blown up to 10,000x10,000 and look crisp.

Well all I have is Spectrum internet, so that is probably why it sucks for me. But I cannot expect my clients to download a 4K video because it does not benefit them AT ALL. and I get massive requests to even serve videos at 720p due to our crappy internet in our country.

I think you're fundamentally misunderstanding everything there is about resolution and image quality. Haha. Nobody EVER said the image magically becomes higher resolution when you upscale it. You're making that up. Nobody said that.

Also, upscaling an image does NOT make the image look worse. That's 100% false. Upscaling doesn't change the way the image looks at all. The footage will look exactly the same. 1080p will not look "worse" when being upscaled. BUT, it WILL receive LESS visual compression when being uploaded to sites like YouTube. This is a FACT. Higher resolutions don't suffer from visual artifacting upon compression as much as lower resolutions do. You don't have to agree with the facts, but they're still facts. If this weren't the case, then why do major film studios upscale their 2K films to 4K for consumer delivery on platforms such as Vudu and 4K UHD Blu-ray? ANSWER: Because those delivery platforms are compressed, and higher resolutions react to compression better than lower resolutions.

No one's saying that you have to deliver in 4K to your clients, so you can shut up about your clients. No one cares. Keep delivering in 720p. Go for it.

But you can't go around telling people crap that's not true. Upscaling IS a very normal and common way to combat compression. IT JUST IS. Deal with it.

 

[jeff7117]

I think you're fundamentally misunderstanding everything there is about resolution and image quality. Haha. Nobody EVER said the image magically becomes higher resolution when you upscale it. You're making that up. Nobody said that.

Also, upscaling an image does NOT make the image look worse. That's 100% false. Upscaling doesn't change the way the image looks at all. The footage will look exactly the same. 1080p will not look "worse" when being upscaled. BUT, it WILL receive LESS visual compression when being uploaded to sites like YouTube. This is a FACT. Higher resolutions don't suffer from visual artifacting upon compression as much as lower resolutions do. You don't have to agree with the facts, but they're still facts. If this weren't the case, then why do major film studios upscale their 2K films to 4K for consumer delivery on platforms such as Vudu and 4K UHD Blu-ray? ANSWER: Because those delivery platforms are compressed, and higher resolutions react to compression better than lower resolutions.

No one's saying that you have to deliver in 4K to your clients, so you can shut up about your clients. No one cares. Keep delivering in 720p. Go for it.

But you can't go around telling people crap that's not true. Upscaling IS a very normal and common way to combat compression. IT JUST IS. Deal with it.

Yep.

 

[Ethosik]

I think you're fundamentally misunderstanding everything there is about resolution and image quality. Haha. Nobody EVER said the image magically becomes higher resolution when you upscale it. You're making that up. Nobody said that.

Also, upscaling an image does NOT make the image look worse. That's 100% false. Upscaling doesn't change the way the image looks at all. The footage will look exactly the same. 1080p will not look "worse" when being upscaled. BUT, it WILL receive LESS visual compression when being uploaded to sites like YouTube. This is a FACT. Higher resolutions don't suffer from visual artifacting upon compression as much as lower resolutions do. You don't have to agree with the facts, but they're still facts. If this weren't the case, then why do major film studios upscale their 2K films to 4K for consumer delivery on platforms such as Vudu and 4K UHD Blu-ray? ANSWER: Because those delivery platforms are compressed, and higher resolutions react to compression better than lower resolutions.

No one's saying that you have to deliver in 4K to your clients, so you can shut up about your clients. No one cares. Keep delivering in 720p. Go for it.

But you can't go around telling people crap that's not true. Upscaling IS a very normal and common way to combat compression. IT JUST IS. Deal with it.

How am I misunderstanding it? It DOES look worse. I have done it. Took a 1080p output of a title sequence, made it 4K. Looked at it on a 4K monitor and it DID not look as clear as the 1080p one did on the 1080p display.

"shut up about my clients". Why do you have to be so god damn rude? WHY should I blow up my 1080p footage to 4K if I am not delivering 4K?

"Upscaling doesn't change the way the image looks at all" YES IT DOES. You are taking a picture fit for a 1920x1080 canvas and BLOWING IT UP to fit the 3840x2160 canvas. I HAVE SEEN IT. I took a title sequence, blew it up to 4K and it looked worse on a 4K display.

So you are saying we can take a 200x200 video and blow it up to 4K and it will not look worse?

 

[aaronhead14]

It DOES look worse. I have done it.

No, it doesn't look worse. Not unless you're doing something wrong (like using compressed codecs such as H264). If you're using a visually-lossless codec (such as ProRes, DNx, or Cineform), it will NOT look worse. It will literally look exactly the same.

"shut up about my clients". Why do you have to be so god damn rude?

You're right. That was rude. I apologize. But this is a discussion about image quality, not a discussion about clients and their ability to download files from the internet. So my statement still stands: no one cares about your clients.

WHY should I blow up my 1080p footage to 4K if I am not delivering 4K?

You shouldn't, if you don't want to. But you also shouldn't whine and complain about others who choose to do it. My argument is simply that there are reasons for upscaling 1080p footage to 4K. But I have NEVER said that YOU need to do it. Deliver your footage however you want. I'm just trying to prevent the spreading of misinformation. Upscaling to 4K DOES have its benefits, and it IS a very common way to prevent image artifacting upon compression.

I apologize if I've been rude. Please accept my apology. But please don't spread wrong information around on the internet.

 

[Ethosik]

No, it doesn't look worse. Not unless you're doing something wrong (like using compressed codecs such as H264). If you're using a visually-lossless codec (such as ProRes, DNx, or Cineform), it will NOT look worse. It will literally look exactly the same.



You're right. That was rude. I apologize. But this is a discussion about image quality, not a discussion about clients and their ability to download files from the internet. So my statement still stands: no one cares about your clients.



You shouldn't, if you don't want to. But you also shouldn't whine and complain about others who choose to do it. My argument is simply that there are reasons for upscaling 1080p footage to 4K. But I have NEVER said that YOU need to do it. Deliver your footage however you want. I'm just trying to prevent the spreading of misinformation. Upscaling to 4K DOES have its benefits, and it IS a very common way to prevent image artifacting upon compression.

I apologize if I've been rude. Please accept my apology. But please don't spread wrong information around on the internet.

So making a 200x200 video into 4K will not make it look bad? How does it gain the extra color information for the extra pixels?

I am not spreading misinformation. I have seen the differences of my 1080p footage on a 1080p monitor and it looks clearer than it being upscaled to 4K on a 4K monitor. Looking at the 4K footage on my 1080p monitor is the same though.

 

[aaronhead14]

So making a 200x200 video into 4K will not make it look bad? How does it gain the extra color information for the extra pixels?

Do a test. Take a 200x200 video and upload it to YouTube. Then, take that same 200x200 video, upscale it, and then upload the upscaled version onto YouTube. The upscaled version WILL look better, because it will appear less compressed.

 

[Ethosik]

Do a test. Take a 200x200 video and upload it to YouTube. Then, take that same 200x200 video, upscale it, and then upload the upscaled version onto YouTube. The upscaled version WILL look better, because it will appear less compressed.

I am not talking about YouTube here. Just using Windows Media Player I can clearly see the difference between a 1080p in a 1080p display and upscaled 4K on a 4K display. Upscaled to 4K on a 1080p display looks the same as the 1080p footage though. But that is the same with blowing up a 100x100 image in Photoshop to 200x200. It looks horrible at 200x200, but if you zoom 50%, it looks the same.

 

[aaronhead14]

I am not talking about YouTube here. Just using Windows Media Player I can clearly see the difference between a 1080p in a 1080p display and upscaled 4K on a 4K display. Upscaled to 4K on a 1080p display looks the same as the 1080p footage though. But that is the same with blowing up a 100x100 image in Photoshop to 200x200. It looks horrible at 200x200, but if you zoom 50%, it looks the same.

Haha! Well, of course 1080p footage is going to look better on a 1080p display than on a 4K display. That has nothing to do with the upscaling, though. That's just how things work: low resolution images will always look worse on a high resolution display. That's why VHS tapes look horrible on 1080p TVs but look relatively fine on SD CRT TVs.

BUT, on the 4K display, 1080p upscaled will not look any worse than the native 1080p. It will look the same.

Also... Windows Media Player?? What??

 

[Ethosik]

Haha! Well, of course 1080p footage is going to look better on a 1080p display than on a 4K display. That has nothing to do with the upscaling, though. That's just how things work: low resolution images will always look worse on a high resolution display. That's why VHS tapes look horrible on 1080p TVs but look relatively fine on SD CRT TVs.

BUT, on the 4K display, 1080p upscaled will not look any worse than the native 1080p. It will look the same.

Also... Windows Media Player?? What??

That was my point though. I upscaled my 1080p title sequence to 4K and looked at it on the 4K display and I could tell it was upscaled.

Am I missing something here? Is there just an "Upscale" button? I need to drag my 1080p footage and ZOOM in for it to fit the 4K resolution then export it. It does look zoomed in when I view it.

Edit: I think I know why we have a disconnect here. Yes, 1080p on a 4K display looks the same as the upscaled 4K on the 4K display. That was basically my point. Native 4K looks much crisper because you did not magically gain color information when you upscaled to 4K. That is what I was talking about. I thought you were saying (even with my extreme case of 200x200) that ANYTHING upscaled will look just as good as native 4K or whatever K.

 

[aaronhead14]

Edit: I think I know why we have a disconnect here. Yes, 1080p on a 4K display looks the same as the upscaled 4K on the 4K display. That was basically my point. Native 4K looks much crisper because you did not magically gain color information when you upscaled to 4K. That is what I was talking about.

Got it. Yeah, definitely a disconnect, haha. You're right, you don't gain any information by upscaling to 4K. But you DO prevent losing information when upscaling to 4K (when compression is involved, that is). So that's why people do it.

In short, if you're delivering to YouTube or Vimeo, or even Blu-ray, upscaling will make the image look less compressed than if it weren't upscaled. This is why people do it.

But if you're just delivering a visually-lossless file to your client, then upscaling won't make a difference in quality. It will only make a difference if compression is involved.

Glad we figured out our disconnect, haha. YES, you're right, upscaling to 4K doesn't make 1080p better; it just preserves the 1080p image and prevents it from looking worse upon compression.

 

[Ethosik]

Got it. Yeah, definitely a disconnect, haha. You're right, you don't gain any information by upscaling to 4K. But you DO prevent losing information when upscaling to 4K (when compression is involved, that is). So that's why people do it.

In short, if you're delivering to YouTube or Vimeo, or even Blu-ray, upscaling will make the image look less compressed than if it weren't upscaled. This is why people do it.

But if you're just delivering a visually-lossless file to your client, then upscaling won't make a difference in quality. It will only make a difference if compression is involved.

Glad we figured out our disconnect, haha. YES, you're right, upscaling to 4K doesn't make 1080p better; it just preserves the 1080p image and prevents it from looking worse upon compression.

Yeah, and they are the type that will prefer a sacrifice in quality for a smaller file size so they don't have to wait hours to download/buffer it

I really wish our country would have better internet. Stupid monopolies. All I have available is Spectrum and even at 300mbps, I still struggle at 4K streaming.

 

[deconstruct60]

...

I really wish our country would have better internet. Stupid monopolies. All I have available is Spectrum and even at 300mbps, I still struggle at 4K streaming.

That may be your neighbors habits more than Spectrum. 4K distribution to 10's or 100's of millions of random viewers doesn't scale anywhere all that much better either. It is a bad idea that folks don't want to get in the way of selling a new round of TV sets.

 

[itdk92]

That was my point though. I upscaled my 1080p title sequence to 4K and looked at it on the 4K display and I could tell it was upscaled.

Am I missing something here? Is there just an "Upscale" button? I need to drag my 1080p footage and ZOOM in for it to fit the 4K resolution then export it. It does look zoomed in when I view it.

Edit: I think I know why we have a disconnect here. Yes, 1080p on a 4K display looks the same as the upscaled 4K on the 4K display. That was basically my point. Native 4K looks much crisper because you did not magically gain color information when you upscaled to 4K. That is what I was talking about. I thought you were saying (even with my extreme case of 200x200) that ANYTHING upscaled will look just as good as native 4K or whatever K.

I just guess the misunderstanding is that aaronhead14 is talking about RAW footage, while you are thinking about regular footage?

...

So you upload lossless to smth like YouTube? (ProRes, exc?)

 

[Ethosik]

I just guess the misunderstanding is that aaronhead14 is talking about RAW footage, while you are thinking about regular footage?



So you upload lossless to smth like YouTube? (ProRes, exc?)

Yeah but 1080p upscaled is still not as good as native 4K, which is what I was getting with the discussion. That was the misunderstanding. Just like blowing up a 100x100 image to 200x200 makes it look worse than a 200x200 native image.

 

[itdk92]

Yeah but 1080p upscaled is still not as good as native 4K, which is what I was getting with the discussion. That was the misunderstanding. Just like blowing up a 100x100 image to 200x200 makes it look worse than a 200x200 native image.

Uncompressed 2K can be as good as compressed 4K, detail-wise.

Anyways, new Mac Pro next year + Pascal coming to the Mac

Coincidence?

 

[edgerider]

I've updated the CPUs on my workstations from v2, to v3, to v4 and the speed bump has been worth it each time.

If you're seriously still using Westmere though I don't expect you to care about performance.

if you care about performance you need pcie lanes...

my 5.1 with 128 gb of ram and two x5690 absolutely smokes a imacpro in all video editing software...
because it has a pcie expender with 4 p4000 GPU, a 24 bay sas drive array and 4sm951 in a raid0 scratch disk...

only benefits of more than 12 core and newer processor is for virtualization...

in most of the case xeon ev4 will be slower than a high end i7 or i9 with a higher clock.

if you only talk about mac, so far the most reliable / stable / powerful machine is a macpro...
a friend just send back his imac pro for refund because of that...
he did spent 10k€ in very boosted imac pro and a 4k render in premiere was twice as fast on my machine...

so of course any new ryzen hackintosh/pc/linux Diy computer can do tbe same for 3000€.... or maybe less...

but if you want to remain on mac so far a maxed out 5.1 is the fastest and most reliable machine money can buy.

had a very cool fackinthosh 7 years ago with a quad i7 3770k @4.2 ghz... 32 gig of ram, a gtx 690... was a very powerful machine... but you had to pray anytime you would do any hardware/software update.

in my work i have to ad/ remove pcie card all the time, and this is a thing at which no other system is better than osx : plug and play...
if you buy a « mac compatible » pcie card you plug it and instal the driver if needed and it just work every ****ing time... on the fackintosh i alway had to do bios upgrade, and fideling... it was just a pain in the but...

 

[Mago]

Apple's managers has no way to evade they responsibilities with this huge issue.

The tcMP could have been regular update w/o need to re-invent the Mac Pro, maybe wont be the best workstation, but best than nothing.

The TDP corner excuse, didnt live enough, there are a lot of knowledge on how to rise the Thermal Core TDP to 1200Watt if required, not rocket sciente, its named dual phase change cooling (aka heathpipes), much more expensive than that aluminum core, but cheaper than having to fully retool the MP assembly line.

The sameway Apple got into very expensive errors:

1. not to open the GPU form fact (As not to use std GPU form factor), limiting GPU offering and closing Updates to the mac pro.
2. the same way, kicking off Nvidia and Vulkan, Metal is a wonder really, but METAL IS NOT AN OPEN STANDARD as VULKAN, so developers need to re-code or sometimes (if possible) to use binary on-the fly translators to run the support the MacOS/iOS thus SHRINKING the APP ECOSYSTEM, this was the most expensive error for Apple than not updating the Mac Pro itself.
3. Dismiss the Mac lines as revenue source, simple iOS doesnt live w/o Mac to develop iOS apps/media, what they think?

My guess, is Apple has a huge EGO problem among it Managers and Staff, also seems getting hired at certain Apple's workplace its a huge privilege they prefer not to share even if it means having not enough staff to fulfil development times.

Apple sadly resembles me PDVSA (venezuela state oil corp) before Hugo Chavez, there Nepotism and Employe-Gangs controlled the corporation, everything was done by external contractors, to be part of PDVSA professional staff, you have either to be related to the staff or being part of a corrup deal with some, otherwise you get in as contractor, most staff actually do nothing, then PDVSA was on strike to try kick off Chavez, Chavez soon was aware all he need to resume PDVSA operations was to hire the contractors as PDVSA staff and fire former useless staff, he did it and he won, that wont happen if PDVSA staff designation wasn't biased by nepotism or corruption and actual meritocracy (a joke then) I blame they for curren sad and desperate situation at Venezuela, one of the most beutiful countries, with some of the most open and beautiful people I remember.

I dont see a similar future (at least not soon) at Apple, as many things could happen before a disaster like PDVSA (like management cleanup, READ: FIRE COOK, FEDERIGHI, and all the unproductive APPLE's Maffia).

Hopefully I'm working now in a Linux Workstation, I have not to care on GPU/CPU Brands, as long I pick carefuly the hardware I dont have software issue, Linux distros lack luxuies as Mac OS continuity, but always you have N ways to outcome that minor "disadvantages".