4K / Ultra HD for TV broadcast animation?

[handobro]

Hi,
Advice please hive mind. We have been asked to create a pilot animated show for Television / Streaming. Netflix standards recommend shows be Ultra Hd. Is this the case for animations made for all TV companies/broadcasts? Or are animations still mainly made in HD.

Thanks in advance.

[slowtiger]

Most standard styles in 2D animation don't look any different in 4K. So there's no need to do this. However, producers and broadcasters like the hype and fall for buzzwords like "4K is the future" and such.

Two practical considerations:
1. If you seriously work in 4K you need hardware up to the task, and you will have to deal with increased rendering times. Does the budget reflect this? (Those who do 4K: does it make a difference in playback performance wether you work in 4K or 2K with the same scene?)

2. As long as you do vector only in Moho, it doesn't matter which resolution you start with since you can always change it and render the scene in 4K. Only your bitmap elements (backgounds etc) need to be in a big enough resolution right from the start. (Out of habit I overscan my bitmap stuff anyway, so going 4K wouldn't be a real problem for me: Moho handles a 4K BG as gracefully as a 2K one.)

[handobro]

Awesome, that makes sense, we'll be using both vector and bitmap images so we can overscan as you mention. Thank you for taking the time to reply.

Most standard styles in 2D animation don't look any different in 4K. So there's no need to do this. However, producers and broadcasters like the hype and fall for buzzwords like "4K is the future" and such.

Two practical considerations:
1. If you seriously work in 4K you need hardware up to the task, and you will have to deal with increased rendering times. Does the budget reflect this? (Those who do 4K: does it make a difference in playback performance wether you work in 4K or 2K with the same scene?)

2. As long as you do vector only in Moho, it doesn't matter which resolution you start with since you can always change it and render the scene in 4K. Only your bitmap elements (backgounds etc) need to be in a big enough resolution right from the start. (Out of habit I overscan my bitmap stuff anyway, so going 4K wouldn't be a real problem for me: Moho handles a 4K BG as gracefully as a 2K one.)

[Greenlaw]

In my experience, the standard for animation on streaming TV services is FHD (1080p) for 2D shows and HD (720p) for 3D shows.

It really depends on the production's budget and schedule because higher resolution means longer render times and a greater attention to small details (in other words, a lot more work.) For many television animation productions, I think 4k is prohibitively expensive, and much of what's presented as 4k now is probably just being upscaled in post. Plus, as slowtiger noted, for many typical 2D cartoon styles, you probably won't notice the difference.

[chucky]

I stream Netflix in 4k , looks great.
On my medium sized 4k monitor anything with a sharp edge looks fuzzy even at 1080p, I get why UHD would be a desirable standard especially with future proofing.
Also , although I do not have those jumbo screens, anything that need to be super sharp like text or with great detail looks fuzzier, the bigger the screen gets.

It wasn't so many years ago, I remember being involved in a discussion ( on a broadcast tv production) about rendering SD and 4:3 ratio , oddly being standard for the day and what the network had asked for - mostly because 'not everybody had hd screens even though bluray was totally a thing-, I made the strong suggestion to render above the confusingly low 'local requirement' at HD and 16:9, instead.
It proved to be the wise option.
By the time the production was finished, the standard had changed to HD widescreen.
The network's requirements turned out to be low because of a boiler plate contract made by lawyers that had overlooked resolution.



I render in 4k whenever I can afford to recently.
If you can do it it, then do it.
What is also a great compromised is 1440 output from Moho, then render the final edit at full 4k in post using the best upres option you have at your disposal .
Then you tick the UHD box, and it's certainly sharper than 1080.

If you can't then don't, but always max out the quality wherever you can, I think.

[Greenlaw]

If you can do it it, then do it.

Exactly!

For many users/studios, this is usually an economic decision. For me personally, I barely have the patience to animate/comp at 1080p, let alone 4k.

Good tip about working in 1440. That should be a decent compromise.

[chucky]

For many users/studios, this is usually an economic decision. For me personally, I barely have the patience to animate/comp at 1080p, let alone 4k.

, Yes, as you say Dennis, affording the time is the big deal and linked inexorably to money.
Sanity, also linked to time. There's nothing much worse than crunching a deadline and watching a long render come out, only to see an error that could have been fixed five times in the time it took to spit out the export.
Noooooo

[BigBoiiiJones]

Not sure if it applies but in Japan everything is animated between 720p to 900p and upscaled to 1080p for all TV, ONA, and OAV anime. Anime is hardly animated at native 1080p unless its a movie or a high budget tv anime. As for the west I think most animation is animated at 1080p but I do know some newer animation titles are being made in 4K or at least upscaled to 4K from 1080p.

[chucky]

Not sure if it applies but in Japan everything is animated between 720p to 900p and upscaled to 1080p for all TV, ONA, and OAV anime. Anime is hardly animated at native 1080p unless its a movie or a high budget tv anime. As for the west I think most animation is animated at 1080p but I do know some newer animation titles are being made in 4K or at least upscaled to 4K from 1080p.

I'd say pretty confidently that that is history, but I am checking with my contact who runs an animation studio in Tokyo, will get back to you on that.

[chucky]

Minimum for Netflix animated series 3840x2160.

https://partnerhelp.netflixstudios.com/ ... ns-Series-

https://partnerhelp.netflixstudios.com/ ... 20approval.

Interesting that 'anime' is lower, but go high, or face obscurity I think.

[slowtiger]

Unfortunately there's a lot of misunderstanding in this field, even among professionals. Contracts by clueless lawyers are a thing. Buzzword-drunken managers are another. And of course there's end-user marketing.

4K is more than any human actually can see. As a rule of thumb, our retina's resolution equals to roughly 2000 pixels horizontally in an 80° field of view. That's why you don't need more that HD in cinema, really, and not at home either.

Home video is a story of constant quality drop. Your expensive large 4K screen does a lot of dirty tricks to degrade the quailty of anything it shows: blow up low resolution while adding lots of blur, "colour correct" films until they look like the cheapest video possible, "interpolate" between frames because, marketing said, 60 fps must be better thatn 24, right? Add to that Samsung whose newest line of TVsshows advertising which you can't switch off.

That's the home situation. Broadcasters aren't any better. Sloppy frame rate conversions introduce shattering and stutter to everything, multiple up-and-down-and-up-again scaling leaves you with material barely watchable. The advertised 4K streaming trickles down to Realmedia blockyness (anyone remembers?) because of, you know, technical difficulties.

Producers. Do it for cheap, let it look expensive is their motto. The better ones know the difference between a lo-res render for checking animation, and a high quality final output, also the difference between compressed and uncompressed and where to use which. The other ones ... well.

All said, it's surprisingly simple to choose the correct resolution for a job.

Code: Select all

1. Content:
live action --> 4K
3D/CGI      --> 4K
2D          --> 2K

2. Production resolution:
3D/CGI      --> 4K
2D          --> 2K
(depending on hardware and playback speed a smaller preview resolution may be used)

3. Bitmap elements:
always 4K

4. Final render:
TV/Streaming: 2K, unless specified and paid for higher resolution
Cinema: 4K, unless short film/student film

Whatever you do, never forget that using 4K instead of 2K means 16 times the size, so your processor power, graphic card, and storage needs to be up to the task, and on every machine in the pipeline. Also consider transfer speed when working remotely / use a central asset server.

As I said, Moho is pretty well prepared for this, as long as your bitmaps are large enough you could start and animate a scene in 720p and render it in 4K with best result.

[chucky]

As I said, Moho is pretty well prepared for this, as long as your bitmaps are large enough you could start and animate a scene in 720p and render it in 4K with best result.

Agreed, that thing about 4k being more than the human eye can see is one of those idioms that was coined through( IMO) cherry picked criteria and conditions which include proximity .
I remember reading all that when it landed and rolled my eyes , which aren't that great these days but still can definitely tell when I'm using this 55 inch 4k monitor is displaying ( not all) but many things ( especially fine text) in UHD or HD.
So I can't deny the evidence of my eyes to completely agree on that one... with my full respect of course.

I can agree that many streaming services have horrible resolution- well it's the compression actually.
I watched 'the green knight the other night on amazon ( hd) and it was pretty much ruined by banding, artifacting and a bunch of other compression related evils that reminded me of that game of thrones debacle, .
Netflix 4k compression looks a whole lot better, but between HD and UHD there although being noticeable, I go between without caring at all.

I'm sure kids sitting 3 feet in front of the box can certainly see the jaggies in a SD or even HD cartoon with a progressive scan.