Is it possible to render 4K videos?

[jwagenhauser]

I tried to render 4K (UHD) videos, but I got the message that Windows only supports 2048x2048.
Is that a limitation of my hardware or the actual maximum?
Looking forward to your feedback!

[blackdot]

hmm. i'm getting the same dialog. have an gtx980 and an i5 3570k. maybe really a windows restriction? i'm on win7

\edit\... hmm the manual says this though:

Movie files can be exported at any desired width, height, and frames per second, up to very high resolutions limited only by graphics hardware. In fact, Magic allows movies to be exported at resolutions and frame rates that are usually several times higher than current high-definition standards.

[Sadler]

It is a little less convenient but rendering to PNG is the way to go here. Just tested a 3840x2160 render and put it back together with ffmpeg. It's definitely not real-time even for a simple waveform.

ffmpeg -r 60 -f image2 -s 3840x2160 -i pic%04d.png -vcodec libx264 -crf 25 -pix_fmt yuv420p test.mp4

[Magic]

Yeah, unfortunately PNG is the only 4K+ option for now. It is pretty slow, but it will support any resolution your graphics card supports, usually up to 16384x16384.

Eventually I am hoping to add some other 4K+ export options, such as H.265, VP9, or AV1.

Keep in mind though: exporting your Magic project at 3840x2160 will always be much slower (maybe even 4x slower) than 1920x1080, no matter what export format you use.

[blackdot]

but if we export movies it doesnt matter if it takes a while, right? we could just export stuff over night and then transcode it afterwards into sth else.

btw i looked into ffmpeg recently, it supports h265 as well as HAP. it's really amazing.

[Magic]

but if we export movies it doesnt matter if it takes a while, right? we could just export stuff over night and then transcode it afterwards into sth else.

Yup, I just meant that the export would take longer than before. If you don't get a full 8 hours' sleep like you should, the export might not be done when you wake up .

btw i looked into ffmpeg recently, it supports h265 as well as HAP. it's really amazing.

Yeah, actually the main reason I couldn't use ffmpeg originally was licensing. A lot of the ffmpeg formats are commercially owned which would have required our company to pay a licensing fee for encoding (although not usually for decoding, which is why the VideoFile module can use ffmpeg). It gets pretty complicated quickly. So anything Magic supports in the future has to be simple enough for us to deal with.