For me, good products are the melding of great creativity and technical savvy. Which means, as technology progresses we must stay abreast. For me 4k is the new ‘buzz word’ floating around. In short it is video with a horizontal resolution in the 4000 pixel range. I would like to discuss how it relates to the corporate/documentary industry.

4k was a big topic at NAB 2013, and it seems to be a source of contention on line. Most of the arguments against 4k online surround storing and the processing power needed to edit and finish a project. The affirming positions tend to talk about resolution and clarity of the image. Lets go through each of these and discuss how it relates to the corp/doc market.

One of the main tenets of the corporate market is a fast turn around, which means shooting/editing in a format that is high quality and easy to edit and 4k takes a lot more power than 1080p. So the argument stands that the increase in quality is not worth the increase in power. But I feel that this is something that will be solved in time, through more efficient codecs, faster hard drives, and better computing power.

I think the most compelling argument against 4k in the corporate sphere is that the increase in quality is not noticeable enough to just Justify the extras costs associated with processing the footage. In the corporate sphere many clients use DVD and SD internet videos as their main voice to the world, and while 4k is nice, 1080p serves this market fine. However, there will be a day when Blu-ray and 1080p streaming will be the standard. When this happens, I feel that 4k will also start its inroads into the corporate market.

In conclusion, 4k is the new buzz word, and its resolution is astounding, but I feel that it will be the format that within a few years, after internet speed and Blu-ray adoption picks up, that will be the ubiquitous standard in which we all tell our stories.