I finally stopped chasing 4K and my edit workflow got way faster

Last month I was cutting a 20 minute doc piece for a local nonprofit here in Austin. I kept insisting on 4K footage from my mirrorless camera. Every render took forever, my laptop fans sounded like a jet, and I was losing whole evenings just waiting on exports. Then my buddy who does corporate work said he shoots a lot of stuff in 1080p and upscales for delivery. I tried it on a smaller project and honestly the client could not tell the difference. Now I shoot 4K only for slow motion or heavy reframing, everything else is 1080p. My turnaround time dropped by maybe 40 percent. Has anyone else dropped resolution for speed and regretted it or found the same? Curious what the tradeoff point is for other people.

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richard_ramirez24d ago

97% of my work is real estate walkthroughs so I actually went the other way and shot 8K on a drone once. Let me tell you, that file size killed my whole afternoon because my PC kept choking on the proxy files. Now I just shoot 4K on a locked tripod and barely touch anything in post. But yeah, I get what you're saying about clients not noticing, I had a guy ask why the grass looked too green once and that was after I spent 3 hours color grading. So honestly, if your output is mostly for web or a small screen, 1080p is kinda the sweet spot and nobody's gonna pixel peep a donation appeal. The only time I miss the extra res is when I need to crop into someone's face for a talking head, but even that's rare.