Heading for a resolution revolution

摘要

One of the things that the post production industry loves more than anything is a good bunfight about standards.There's no fun in buying equipment that everyone else has and working in exactly the same way, as that gives you no opportunities whatsoever to put clear blue water between you and your contemporaries. No, what you want is to be able to turn round and spectacularly dis other manufacturer's products and other facility's working practices whenever possible, and luckily the rate of technological development over the past couple of years has given rise to plenty of opportunities for such bad behaviour. 'You're still using Box Y to do that? Good Lord, you have to reboot to work at different resolutions with that. How quaint'. And resolution is exactly where it seems the next battleground will be drawn. Nosing round the vast aircraft hangers that masquerade as the Las Vegas Convention Centre out at NAB this year, if you kept your ears open you could hear more and more talk of a desire within post to work at 4k (or, perhaps to be more accurate, a wish being foisted on it by the movie industry). And seeing as how the industry has only just got used to dealing with 2k images, this has the potential to give plenty of people the chance to spend a fortune, upgrade their kit and then shake their heads sadly when they hear of their competitors stuck to working at the bad old inferior resolution.