4K Blu-ray vs. Blu-ray Differences

What are the differences between normal blu-ray file sizes and 4K blu-ray? Are 4K blu-rays ripped and edited the same way normal blu-rays are? Do they require different software or a much more powerful editing rig?

UHD BD’s can be 50 to over 100 GBs in capacity. Also can be triple or quadruple layer discs.

Looking at my uncompressed mkv rip of Independence Day 4K, it’s at 42.4 GB.

Bitrates can be nearly 100mpbs. Editing 4K videos takes a lot of power. If I have to edit in 4K I use a mix of NLEs like Davinci and After Effects.

As far as authoring 4K Blu-ray at the moment, well you better be rich. There is no consumer level software available. There is a tsmuxing variant (I can’t remember the name) that is attempting this but has severe limitations as it only works with BD50 discs and does not retain HDR metadata and can only mux streams and no menus and it’s also at a bitrate of around 30mpbs.

It’s still early on in UHD BD’s life.

As far as rig specs go for editing, yeah you’ll want at minimum 8 cores and 32GB of RAM as well as at least an NVidia GTX 1060 to help edit.

Hey, railerswim! Thanks for the thorough explanation. I wondered if it was too soon to worry about 4K blu-ray. Editing normal blu-rays can be a challenge.

darthrush said:

I was actually curious about this myself as for some cropping of shots will be done for my TLJ edit and I wanted to use the 4K source just for those shots but I guess I can’t. For reference I have Intel core i7, 8 gb ram, and a gtx 960 video card.

Having some shots in 4K shouldn’t be a problem. They will just take longer to render and preview.

Most UBDs are HDR, but the HDR isn’t done well (especially for older releases).

Also, since most UBDs are older releases, it would be upscaled from 2K or less. Even ones shot on film would’ve most likely had a 2K (for BD) or even reusing 1.2K DI (for DVD, yes, that happens, e.g, bourne M1 looks as sharp as 1.2K on UBD).

Do they require different software or a much more powerful editing rig?

Maybe, but you needn’t a more powerful PC to edit. Many editors commonly edit with LQ clip proxies which they then should substitute for HQ clips before the final render, except when they forget.

Eg. EX_MACHINA: text on BD looked sharp, but the footage looked DVD-quality. Probably a case of forgetting to un-proxy the footage. UBD looks 2-3K quality though.