Noob Question?? First post.

[Thomas Killian]

So I just got into video. I have gear, what I don't get is if my DJI Osmo shot 4k as does my I-phone, but my Nikon and Sony cameras don't... Do I shot in the highest quality of the best camera? Or do I shot in 1080 only.

Ps: I can edit 4k as my pc is great.

[Gareth Watkins]

Originally Posted by Thomas Killian

So I just got into video. I have gear, what I don't get is if my DJI Osmo shot 4k as does my I-phone, but my Nikon and Sony cameras don't... Do I shot in the highest quality of the best camera? Or do I shot in 1080 only.

Ps: I can edit 4k as my pc is great.

Well basically you can downscale 4K footage nicely to 1080 and it'll fit well with your native HD shots.. However, up-scaling to 4K from 1080 (especially off a DSLR) will almost certainly not look good up against 4K even if it comes from a phone.... a final project in 1080 should be the best you can get from your gear.

[Jeff Pulera]

The benefit of shooting 4K if you can is that you can edit that footage in a 1080p project, and then be able to zoom/reframe on the 4K footage as needed, gives you more leeway in post, with no quality loss.

So go ahead and shoot 4K if that might benefit you, then just edit everything together as 1080p HD.

You didn't say what NLE software you use. If Premiere - when you put a 4K clip into 1080p Sequence, right-click and choose Set to Frame (not Scale to Frame). Set to Frame will scale the 4K clip to fit the HD "frame" you are editing in, however if you then want to zoom in on the footage (using Adobe Motion effect) it will use the extra pixels from the 4K source, so you can go up to 100% scale with NO quality loss at all.

Important note - be careful with frame rates of recordings. You don't want to mix 24p with 30p or 60p. However, it is FINE to mix 60p and 30p, since 60p clips will edit in a 30p project, and in fact can then provide smoother slow motion because of the extra frames available.

Thanks