Emerging 4K cameras are the next generation of video. In the future, we may see H.265/HEVC codecs for Ultra HD formats, but for now, please use H.264 high profile at level 5.1 for 4K support. 4K Ultra HD consumer displays have a 16:9 resolution of 3840 × 2160 (8.3 megapixels)
Reasons:
1. There are no hardware H.265/HEVC chips yet for consumer devices
2. Even when those chips do come out in 3-5 years, they will still support H.264
3. H.265/HEVC transcoding math is extremely slow (64x64 DCT & 12-tap interpolation)
4. 4K is great for mastering and digital cinema (10 GB per minute edit codec)
5. 4K is costly bandwidth for digital cable to the home (Bitrate 2x higher vs Blu-ray)
6. About 90% of consumers can't tell the difference between 1080p and 4K
7. There is no 4K disc standard to replace Blu-ray (only 25 GB single layer)
All that said, when H.265/HEVC is ready, you can be sure we will have something amazing. For now, just encode in H.264 high profile at level 5.1 for 4K support. That is what you were watching at CES. We can support these ultra large files over 100+ GB using Aspera transport to our private cloud.
H.264 level details
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H.264/MPEG-4_AVC#Levels
4K format details
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/4K_resolution
4K sample from Gizmodo
http://gizmodo.com/5914426/the-first-cinema-resolution-movie-download-available-to-consumers-is-160gb-and-absolutely-breathtaking
UPDATE April 20, 2013 Las Vegas: Just saw about a dozen 4K displays at NAB from various manufacturers and encoding providers. Some were playing back on custom H265 quad-SLI hardware, etc... Unfortunately, all were heavily noise reduced with lots of blurring on medium detail areas. Completely defeats the whole point of a higher resolution. Most engineers I spoke with said they expect to see real consumer H265 sometime in 2016. Sony unveiled 55" and 65" sets in its XBR series; at $5,000 and $7,000, respectively, they're significantly more affordable than their 84" predecessor ($25,000) shown at CES.
UPDATE March 30, 2014 Las Vegas: Most HEVC 4K samples still showing very heavy blurring and noise-reduction. Only a few prototype chips being shown. Samsung pricing 55" UHDTV at $2,500 and 65" UHDTV at $3,500.
AVS Forum discussion:
http://www.avsforum.com/t/1515895/hevc-x265-is-here-any-media-players-capable
Latest OpenHEVC commits:
https://github.com/OpenHEVC/FFmpeg/commits/hevc_optimized
Doom9 HEVC discussion:
http://forum.doom9.org/archive/index.php/t-170051.html
It will be a while before HEVC is fully supported in browsers and mobiles, most estimates are 2016.
