When shooting in 4k and editing in 1080p timeline , what should i export?

[mrrap4food]

i noticed that when i edit a 4k video in a 1080p timeline , i have alot of options to export, i want to keep the best quality as possible

so should i export at 1080p? or still at the 4k export, i noticed that when i export it in 4k , and upload to youtube it says 1080p60 , and i shot everything in 24 frames, and the quality kinda suffers,  in my opinion on my 4k monitor nativly playing back on my media player it looks extreamly good, what are your thoughts

[Graeme Bull · Accepted solution]

If you've set your sequence to 1080 then you'll want to export at 1080. If you want to export at 4k then edit in 4k. I believe there is a loss of quality when you edit and have to scale down the footage and then when exporting at 4k it then has to scale it back up. Not sure why youtube is detecting 60FPS, I would check your sequence settings to see if it's 24 or 60 maybe.

[mrrap4food]

hi!

thanks for the comment, ive read that if you resize the 4k to 1080p in a 1080p time its supposed to look better because your getting more pixels, honestly it looks the same to me, i think im still testing , can anybody else comfirm?

[Meg The Dog]

If you are editing on a 1080 timeline, you are ending up with the exact same amount of pixels as if you started with a 1080 source.

The advantage of shooting in 4K and editing on a 1080 timeline is that you can zoom the image in/reframe/reposition the image on the timeline up to  +50% without any artifacts.

If you were to do this with a 1080 source, you would see image degradation.

MtD

[excited_Genie16B8]

If you transcode your original 4K, 8 bit, 4:2:0 video file to a 1080 Cineform RGB file, you will get better color resolution for things like green screen and heavy color grading, but I suspect that's not critical for your work here.

If you have a 4K display in your living room, then I recommend editing and exporting at 4K.