Hi All,
Technology marches on and more and more websites are now offering 4K video. Restrained Elegance has always been at the forefront of high resolution and high quality, so I’m adding 4K MP4 video as an option to the site. I’m uploading the first updates now, they’ll appear on the site in June if testing all works out OK.
Does anyone have a strong objection if I stop delivering the “MP4/iPod” small MP4 files as standard? Even smartphones have screens big enough to cope with HD now and it would be one less format for me to encode, upload and manage.
If everyone is OK with it, I’ll just put up the full HD 1080p version and the 4K version where there is one.
Some new videos will still have 1080p maximum resolution.
We’ve been shooting in 4K for years, but we’ve been doing it as a route to the highest-quality 1080p footage. Which means we’ve sometimes planned to be able to crop in on the scene in post, or shot full HD in slow mo for some sequences for more emotional impact.
So where the footage supports a 4K export, I’ll do it. Until camera tech lets me shoot 4K at 100+ frames per second some new films will still be limited to 1080p full HD. I mean, that’s only Blu-Ray quality 😉
Hywel
Dat 4k resolution. But yeah, I think discontinuing the MP4/ipod files is reasonable in this day and age. The format and resolution imo is redundant in this day and age.
I agree, in principal, with moving forward with the shift to 4K videos as the technology keeps advancing. But I have noticed one thing that might want to be kept in the back of the mind at least for the short term. A few days ago I downloaded a 4K custom video I ordered from RE. It played fine on my Windows 7 overwritten with Windows 10 home PC with the Windows media player that came from Microsoft with the Windows 10 update. However, it would not play properly on my windows 7 laptop at work. Now obviously that will be an older version of the Windows media player so perhaps the kind of issue encountered is not unexpected (audio was fine but no video). I have not had a chance to try something like the VLC media player on the laptop yet and I’m sure the 1080p version of the video will play correctly. I have no idea what percentage of people are still using Windows 7 but it might make sense to hold onto the 1080p videos for a little while longer just to ensure purchasers don’t get cut off from viewing the videos too quickly. I will try downloading the VLC player to my laptop (if corporate security allows it), see if the 4K video will play on that in Windows 7 and leave another post when I see what happens. Just my two cents.
Hi Jeff,
I’ll be uploading the 1080p videos for everything, for the foreseeable future. I’m only discontinuing the low res mp4 (it was 640×480 or something like that) because even smart phones play 1080p fine these days. So all videos will have 1080p, plus a 4K version if available.
Cheers, Hywel