Why doesn't LMG work in 720p

[Nardella]

So I just got finished watching the unboxing for the 10Gb switch and router. One of the reasons cited for getting it was that LMG writers often need to view raw 4K footage on their computers. 

 

And I thought, wow, working in 4K is really expensive, workstations, servers, networking gear that costs thousands and thousands of dollars, wouldn't a software solution be cheaper, perform better, allow remote editing and allow editing on laptops? I'm guessing that the software solution just doesn't exist or is poor quality. Maybe there is some benefit to editing in 4K for the editors (I doubt an editor would create a different video if working in 720p instead of 4K. But I wonder, could it theoretically be made to work well, maybe for a company with a lower budget? Here is what I have in mind:

 

When the raw footage is put on the server, 720p files are created automatically, those are the files that are used to work with, when it comes time to export, encode and such, the software automatically switches from the 720p files to the 4K files so that the resulting product is 4K.

[lewdicrous]

I'm guessing it's because they record at 4k or 8k, iirc, that's why the raw footage is so large.

Spoiler

 

 

[Dredgy]

4 minutes ago, Nardella said:

So I just got finished watching the unboxing for the 10Gb switch and router. One of the reasons cited for getting it was that LMG writers often need to view raw 4K footage on their computers. 

 

And I thought, wow, working in 4K is really expensive, workstations, servers, networking gear that costs thousands and thousands of dollars, wouldn't a software solution be cheaper, perform better, allow remote editing and allow editing on laptops? I'm guessing that the software solution just doesn't exist or is poor quality. Maybe there is some benefit to editing in 4K for the editors (I doubt an editor would create a different video if working in 720p instead of 4K. But I wonder, could it theoretically be made to work well, maybe for a company with a lower budget? Here is what I have in mind:

 

When the raw footage is put on the server, 720p files are created automatically, those are the files that are used to work with, when it comes time to export, encode and such, the software automatically switches from the 720p files to the 4K files so that the resulting product is 4K.

They actually shoot and edit in 8K.

 

What you are proposing is called proxy footage and indeed is a solution that works well for basic non-linear editing (deciding where to put cuts etc.) and for companies with lower budget. There is a good chance LMG uses proxy footage at some point in their workflow (I know they had an encoding server at one point). Most editing software supports a proxy workflow out of the box.

 

The reason it’s not always needed is that editing software can usually do it on the fly - for instance in Premiere you can load in 4K footage and just set live playback to 1/4 or 1/8th resolution. Switch to full res when you need to see fine detail.

 

You only really need full resolution for effects work and colour work, but if you actually have hardware that can do it in full quality, it makes for a nicer experience.

[Firewrath9]

B/C its LMG.

 

makes 100k computer when 10 10k computers are better.

 

 

[TetraSky]

Because they don't just make youtube videos on their channels, they also do commercials for products outside of youtube and that needs to be high res.

 

It also matter with Youtube's terrible video compression, the higher the resolution video you feed youtube, the better the quality of the lower resolutions will be.

Also, it's LMG, they always go for overkill.

[manikyath]

well, they didnt get high res cameras "for teh lulz", its all a matter of quality.

when working with a 720p video file, you cannot lose any quality in the process of editing it, without dropping below 720p quality.

 

as for your idea of editing with the 720p files, and letting a render box take the 4K versions of those files once the edit is done.. i could see so many ways of that bringing issues..

 

the idea is that the editors get the best possible quality to start from, giving them more "headroom" to play with, and at the end whatever their editing software's timeline is showing, will be the finished product.

 

2 minutes ago, Dredgy said:

They actually shoot and edit in 8K.

as far as i'm aware they only use 8K for the "money shots" so to say.

[Spotty]

3 minutes ago, Nardella said:

When the raw footage is put on the server, 720p files are created automatically, those are the files that are used to work with, when it comes time to export, encode and such, the software automatically switches from the 720p files to the 4K files so that the resulting product is 4K.

I also wish I only paid for 25mbps internet from my ISP, but there was a button on my router I could press to convert it in to 1gbps speed.

 

What you're suggesting just doesn't work. You can't take a small, low resolution video file and then export it as a higher resolution video. You will just be stretching a crappy 720p video to 4k resolution - and in doing so you will lose a huge amount of quality in the process.

Unless you're just talking about what the "Video Preview" window option is set to in Adobe Premiere? In which case that would only help the local machine resources and won't reduce network load.

You need to work with the original footage files to be able to export it at 4k resolution without losing huge amounts of quality and making it look like trash.

 

I think these days LTT use 8k raw footage that then gets edited and exported as a 4k video file when the project is finished and it is ready for upload? Maybe Edzel can confirm if they record in 8k or 4k these days? @Edzel Yago

I'm not sure what they do, but it wouldn't surprise me if most of their recordings are still done in 4k just to save space on those RED SSDs. 1TB fills up fast if you're recording in 8k.

[Dredgy]

16 minutes ago, Spotty said:

I also wish I only paid for 25mbps internet from my ISP, but there was a button on my router I could press to convert it in to 1gbps speed.

 

What you're suggesting just doesn't work. You can't take a small, low resolution video file and then export it as a higher resolution video. You will just be stretching a crappy 720p video to 4k resolution - and in doing so you will lose a huge amount of quality in the process..

 

Its called proxy editing and very much does work. Basically you have 2 files with the same name in different folders that are the exact same video but at different resolutions, lets say 4K and 720P (you shoot in 4K and downscale a copy for working with). The 720P file is the proxy. You edit with the 720P file - it uses less resources so is easier to work with, especially when you’re just cutting up footage and don’t need full resolution.

 

Then when you export you basicallyjust change the working directory from the 720P folder to the 4K folder (and change a few other settings). Since the files have the same name and are the exact same footage, the export will use the 4K files as the source and not the 720P footage, but the edits will still be applied the same. 

[Crunchy Dragon]

1 hour ago, Dredgy said:

They actually shoot and edit in 8K.

As far as I know, they currently only edit in 4k.

 

The purpose of the $100k machine is to let their editors work in 8k.

[takagi19]

1 hour ago, Crunchy Dragon said:

As far as I know, they currently only edit in 4k.

 

The purpose of the $100k machine is to let their editors work in 8k.

 

47 minutes ago, VegetableStu said:

oh so it's a long-term actual thing? o_o

Wait...I thought that $100k editors' PC project is just for videos and testing the feasibility of having 6 editors edit on it at the same time, and then it gets disassembled after.

[Sauron]

3 hours ago, Nardella said:

When the raw footage is put on the server, 720p files are created automatically, those are the files that are used to work with, when it comes time to export, encode and such, the software automatically switches from the 720p files to the 4K files so that the resulting product is 4K.

It's possible, sure, but it's not ideal - it's harder to judge how good the video will look, whether it's ok to crop some of it or not etc. It's probably more complicated to add certain effects, although I'm not 100% sure. On top of that, you'd be adding complexity to the system with a secondary transcoder and the editors would probably need to check the final outcome anyway at some point before it's exported.

 

And of course, the beast machine is also there to help render the video quickly; once you have a 100k$ server you don't really care about dropping 10k on a few editing rigs.

[Crunchy Dragon]

3 hours ago, takagi19 said:

Wait...I thought that $100k editors' PC project is just for videos and testing the feasibility of having 6 editors edit on it at the same time, and then it gets disassembled after.

Last I checked, their plan was to have 6 8k editing stations on it.

 

That's the cause for all the high end hardware going into it, it's not just because it's LTT and over the top.

[Nardella]

7 hours ago, TetraSky said:

Because they don't just make youtube videos on their channels, they also do commercials for products outside of youtube and that needs to be high res.

I've heard this said before, but never by someone from LMG, got any confirmation of this? 

[TetraSky]

1 hour ago, Nardella said:

I've heard this said before, but never by someone from LMG, got any confirmation of this? 

They made this for example on the Kingston Channel. But I'm sure there are much better ones out there.

[Edzel Yago]

On 9/15/2018 at 7:37 AM, Spotty said:

I also wish I only paid for 25mbps internet from my ISP, but there was a button on my router I could press to convert it in to 1gbps speed.

 

What you're suggesting just doesn't work. You can't take a small, low resolution video file and then export it as a higher resolution video. You will just be stretching a crappy 720p video to 4k resolution - and in doing so you will lose a huge amount of quality in the process.

Unless you're just talking about what the "Video Preview" window option is set to in Adobe Premiere? In which case that would only help the local machine resources and won't reduce network load.

You need to work with the original footage files to be able to export it at 4k resolution without losing huge amounts of quality and making it look like trash.

 

I think these days LTT use 8k raw footage that then gets edited and exported as a 4k video file when the project is finished and it is ready for upload? Maybe Edzel can confirm if they record in 8k or 4k these days? @Edzel Yago

I'm not sure what they do, but it wouldn't surprise me if most of their recordings are still done in 4k just to save space on those RED SSDs. 1TB fills up fast if you're recording in 8k.

 

We shoot in 8K and use the extra Ks to zoom/pan digitally. We've tried working with proxies but it's kind of a pain in the butt and with our hardware and turnaround times, it's easier to just work with the raw footage than to create and deal with proxies.

We use cineform after editing so we can re-export with minor changes much faster.

[spellmanuk]

linus made a video on this subject a few months ago