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Comment by usaphp | Hacker News Reader

> "Linus from LinusTechTips should be happy, as they just invested in a pair of 8K video cameras. Time to submit my own acquisition request"

I have never understood what's the point of investing in such an expensive and new tech for videos for YouTube, most of the tech channel videos on YouTube will be non relevant really fast so it's not like you are future proofing...in two years from now still very few people will have 8k screens, and cameras will cost at least 50% less. Storing 8k videos will increase storage costs and processing bandwidth too.

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> I have never understood what's the point of investing in such an expensive and new tech for videos for YouTube

these people are professional content makers. they make their living from buying/receiving gear and reviewing it on youtube. this isn't a hobby. youtube is big media now. very, very big. "just because you don't use it doesn't mean nobody else does."

if a film editor, or professional photographer, or rich guy, or web developer, or options trader, or magazine designer, or whoever is in the market for an 8k display and/or camera rig, they go to youtube and watch the reviews.

but in general... you know we used to have 640x480 screens and 20MB hard drives, right? that was 'normal', and 1024x768 seemed excessive. welcome to the forever now.

I believe a lot of people shoot in higher resolution than intended output because they want to be able to crop the video and still have desired resolution.

I just want to have nicer text.

I don't think they're rendering 8K video to youtube. They're probably just using 8K raw footage for editing, and then outputting the final version as 4K.

In fact they edit most of the video in 1080p because it's easier and faster. Then they upscale to 4k when they send it to YouTube because the extra bandwidth they get for the 4k stream makes a noticeable difference. They keep close-ups and B-roll in 4k because it's easier to edit anyways, and it looks really nice.

For editing you usually use proxy low-res versions of your 4k/8k/16k content to get optimal speed and then just do the final rendering at your result resolution.

I don't really remember but I think that they had a video where they talked about it. I think one of the conclusions was that youtube's own compression loses a lot of the quality improvements, and as it can be more difficult in general to work with/encode they do a lot in 1080p

It's like programmers who start learning a hot new language before it's production-ready. You want to get ahead of the curve so that you understand the technology and can take full advantage of it once its time comes.

(And I'm sure that for a professional video person, it's not just "use it like your old camera, but it produces better output." There will no doubt be subtle changes needed for the best output, whether lighting, scenery, filters, workflow, or what have you.)

We programmers just happen to be really fortunate that the hot new tools we want to learn are usually free.

Off the top of my head:

- Cropping can be more flexible.

- Higher resolution = better IQ at lower resolution than sensor at that resolution, because sensors have a bayer pattern.

Some YouTube channels upgrade to higher resolutions as soon as they can afford it. If they are one of the first, their videos will be watched as demo content by any users that look for material to take advantage of their new higher resolution monitor. You could see this phenomenon when video titles all had “HD” in it. Later it changed to “4K”. And soon it will change to “8K”. It is used to attract viewers.

Well I just invested on a PC with an i7 more than a thousand euros so that I can do web development on it. It will probably give me a maximum of 5% speedup over my 6-year-old PC but that's still worth it. What I develop needs to run on the dirt-cheap mobile phones too, which is what 90% of my users have, and even then it still makes sense.

It's a tech tips channel, do you realise how many videos they get out of reviewing their own kit?

They will get media coverage just by having these equipments. This article is an example.

digital zoom

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