“Is it in 4K?” is one of the first questions clients ask, and the honest answer is often “it depends which 4K you mean”. TV, cinema and the phone all use different numbers for what sounds like the same thing.
The resolution also decides other things later on: how much you can reframe, how heavy the files get and whether a vertical cut holds up. Picking it is a decision for the day you plan the shoot, not the day you export.
In short
- Full HD is 1920 x 1080 and UHD is 3840 x 2160, which is what TVs and YouTube call 4K.
- DCI 4K (4096 x 2160) and its flat and scope crops only matter if you’re making a cinema DCP.
- Aspect ratio is a separate decision: 16:9 for screens, 9:16 at 1080 x 1920 for vertical, 4:5 and 1:1 for feeds.
- Shoot at the highest resolution you’ll deliver, or higher if you need to reframe, and never scale a smaller source up.
- Higher resolution needs more bitrate, or it looks worse than a good 1080p file.
The standard resolutions
These are the sizes almost every job uses. All of them are 16:9 except the old standard definition ones:
| Name | Pixels | Where you meet it |
|---|---|---|
| SD | 720 x 480 / 720 x 576 | Archive footage |
| HD (720p) | 1280 x 720 | Old web and lighter proxies |
| Full HD (1080p) | 1920 x 1080 | Most corporate, web and TV |
| 1440p | 2560 x 1440 | YouTube and screen recordings |
| UHD (4K) | 3840 x 2160 | Premium streaming, big screens |
| 8K UHD | 7680 x 4320 | Rare in delivery |
1080 is the workhorse. ITU-R BT.709, the HD standard behind most TV and web video, is built on 1920 x 1080, and it’s still what most feeds and laptop screens show at full size.
UHD is exactly four 1080p frames in a two by two grid, so a UHD master scales down to 1080p cleanly. YouTube labels 2560 x 1440 as “2K”, which isn’t the cinema 2K below.
SD shows up mostly in archive material. Old 720 x 480 and 720 x 576 footage used non-square pixels, so it looks stretched or squeezed if the timeline doesn’t interpret it correctly.
4K on TV and 4K in cinema
Outside the cinema, 4K means UHD, 3840 x 2160. Cameras, TVs, streaming services and YouTube all use the word that way.
Digital cinema follows the DCI specification, which defines a 2K container of 2048 x 1080 and a 4K container of 4096 x 2160. A DCP doesn’t fill the whole container. It uses the crop for the film’s aspect ratio:
- Flat (1.85:1): 1998 x 1080 in 2K, 3996 x 2160 in 4K.
- Scope (2.39:1): 2048 x 858 in 2K, 4096 x 1716 in 4K.
For a corporate film that also screens at an event or a festival, the DCP is a separate deliverable made from the master by whoever builds it. Ask which container and ratio the venue expects before you lock the grade.
Resolution and aspect ratio are separate decisions
Resolution is how many pixels. Aspect ratio is the shape. A 1080 x 1920 vertical has the same number of pixels as a 1920 x 1080 horizontal, just turned on its side.
When the film’s shape doesn’t match the frame, you get bars. A 2.39:1 grade inside a 16:9 frame has black bars at the top and bottom (letterbox), and a 4:3 clip in 16:9 has them on the sides (pillarbox). Some specs want the bars burned in and others want the native ratio, so it goes on the spec sheet.
For social, the common sizes are 1080 wide: 1080 x 1920 for 9:16, 1080 x 1350 for 4:5 and 1080 x 1080 for 1:1. Platforms change their feed rules often, so check the current help page before a big campaign.
Getting a vertical out of a horizontal master is its own job, and our post on reframing for social goes through it.
What to shoot and what to deliver
Shoot at least the resolution of your largest deliverable. Scaling a 1080p source up to UHD adds pixels but no detail, and the client sees soft edges on the first big screen.
Shoot higher when you’ll reframe. A full-height 9:16 crop from a 16:9 frame keeps about a third of its width. From UHD that’s enough for a sharp 1080 x 1920 vertical, and from 1080p it isn’t. The deliverables list post has the math.
Deliver what the screen needs. For most corporate and social work that’s 1080p, with a UHD master when the client asks for one or the video plays on a large screen.
More pixels need more bitrate. YouTube recommends 8 Mbps for a 1080p upload and 35 to 45 Mbps for 4K at standard frame rates. A UHD file encoded at a 1080p bitrate looks worse than a clean 1080p file, as our video encoding best practices explain.
Safe areas: the part of the frame everyone sees
Not every pixel you deliver survives to the viewer. TV overscan, a social app’s buttons and a caption bar all cover the edges.
EBU R 95 sets the TV safe areas for 16:9: action safe sits 3.5% in from each edge, about 93% of the frame, and graphics safe sits 5% in, about 90%. Keep faces and action inside the first and every title, logo and lower third inside the second.
Vertical apps cover more than that, with buttons on the right and captions at the bottom, and each one puts them somewhere slightly different. The lower thirds checklist covers placing text that has to survive every crop.
How this works in RecReview
Each version shows the resolution read from the file, next to its length and frame rate. A review copy that went out at 1280 x 720 instead of 1920 x 1080 shows up before anyone starts commenting.
On a computer, the Guides button in the review player draws action safe at 93% and title safe at 90%, plus a rule of thirds grid and one delivery crop at a time: 9:16, 4:5, 1:1 or 16:9. The client can scrub through the horizontal master with the 9:16 crop on and comment on the exact frame where something falls outside it.
AI Review reads the text on screen and flags important text cut off at the edge of the frame, alongside spelling mistakes.
Original in the quality menu plays the uploaded file at its full resolution, while Auto adjusts the streaming copy to the viewer’s connection. In the client portal, the download window lists the resolution with the size, length and frame rate, so whoever gets the master can check it against the spec before downloading.
