Shooting and working in 4K is nothing new to professional film makers and compositors, but with the announcement of the JVC GY-HMQ10 being priced at under $5,000, 4K is finally within reach of prosumer and hobbyist videographers. However, most TVs and computer monitors will still max out at 1080p, so what’s the point? Personally, I don’t see 4096 × 3112 pixel TVs entering the average American’s living room any time soon, since if you’re sitting ten feet from the screen, the TV will have to be 80 inches before you’ll be able to see the difference between 4k and 1080p.

Even if your final output is still 1920×1080, you’re still going to get quite a bit of use out of 4k footage once you’re in post production. 4K footage is a whopping four times as many pixels as 1080p, and if you’ve ever had the experience of editing HD footage down to a final SD output, you know those extra pixels are a glorious luxury to have. It’s not uncommon to have a shot you’d like to crop and re-frame in post, and if you have four times the pixels, the amount of flexibility you have is enormous.

Additionally, shooting high resolution for green screen keying will make your keying process much simpler. With four times the data, your keying software should have an easier time differentiating the green pixels you want to key from the edges of your subject. Similarly, if you plan on doing any motion tracking, a more detailed image should help your tracker to stay on the points you’ve defined.

Now for the bad news. Much higher resolution images means much bigger files. The JVC GY-HMQ10 shoots to a variable bit rate h.264 file, which should be manageable, but if you’re editing in Final Cut Pro and have to trans-code to ProRes, file sizes are going to be enormous. If storage is a problem, plan on shooting in 4k selectively, and sticking to 1080p for the bulk of your footage.

It’s worth noting that with files being compressed to h.264, much of the color data will be lost. We’re excited to get our hands on some GY-HMQ10 footage to see exactly what we can do with it.

Codecs may not be on the radar for the average video producer, but they are necessary for presenting video. Google opted for exclusive use of WebM on Google Chrome last Tuesday, which makes the new codec a solid competitor to the widely used H.264. Whether you encode in H.264 or WebM, it will soon determine which web browser keeps your video playable. That alone doesn’t sound too bad, but a large portion of your viewers will miss out unless you encode your video twice. While WebM is said to offer more in creativity, the larger struggle for video producers is to cater to both codecs, thus increasing workload and requiring more storage.

With time and usage, we will see which codec is used more widely, afterall, both H.264 and WebM join an already long list of codecs that have graced the pull down menus of video editing software.

As our lives become increasingly immersed in mobile media and digital entertainment, a question has surfaced: Flash or H.264? Just as the battle started to gain some momentum, new data has indicated that the H.264 format may have already won. According to Encoding.com (via TechCrunch), the H.264 format is used by 66 percent of all videos, whereas Flash has fallen from 69 percent to 26 percent of all video in just the last year.

The popularity of H.264 comes at no surprise. After all, the H.264 codec is supported by all kinds of video hardware and software, as well as video sharing sites such as YouTube (not to mention, Apple’s biased support and undeniable preference for the format). Despite its popularity, legal concerns have emerged regarding the use of the codec by consumers.

A recent concern comes from blogger and MIT graduate Ben Schwartz, who said “A lot of commercial software comes with H.264 encoders and decoders, and some computers arrive with this software pre-installed. This leads a lot of people to believe that they can legally view and create H.264 videos for whatever purpose they like. Unfortunately for them, it ain’t so.” Schwartz supports his claim with text pulled from specific software licenses.

According to an article on Gizmodo.com regarding the topic of H.264 licensing, if you’re making money (selling your product to the end-user) from video encoded or decoded with the H.264 codec you need to acquire a license. In February, MPEG LA announced that the AVC Patent Portfolio License, which the H.264 codec belongs to “will continue not to charge royalties for Internet Video that is free to end users”… at least until December 31, 2015.

It’s easy to feel overwhelmed at times with all of the legalities surrounding video production. The key is to stay well-informed. Learning about new technologies and making sure to read the restrictions listed in the fine print can help you avoid legal problems. Choosing to stay in the dark will only cause issues down the road. After all, you’ll never know whose toes you may be infringing upon.

Elgato has released a new h.264 encoding product for Mac. The Turbo.264 HD is similar to their previous Turbo.264 product in that it is a thumb drive sized h.264 encoder that’s very powerful with an extremely easy to use interface.

However the Turbo.264 HD adds new features including AVCHD support for camcorders, that allows you to quickly preview and transfer your files directly to your mac or iphone from the camcorder.

We really liked this product before, and gave it a Best of the Year award. We’re eager to try out the HD version soon.

Press Release Below:

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