A short tutorial demonstrating how to export 4K video from Descript. Key points: (1) account limits matter (hobbyist plan restricts exports to 1080p); (2) inspect each source clip’s metadata to confirm native resolution (examples given: 1920×1080 and 3840×2160); (3) change the scene editor output from Full HD to 4K (Ultra HD) to enable 4K export, and ensure a true 4K source clip is present for a genuine 4K export.
Questions this video answers
Hobbyist plan
1920×1080 (Full HD)
3840×2160 (Ultra HD)
You know, descript is capable of exporting at 4k, but how come when you go to export, it says max 1080p and the other ones are grayed out? Well, first of all, it might depend on your account. If you're on the hobbyist plan, you're limited to 1080p exports. So that's step number one. Next, there's a couple things to check and set in order to export at 4K. The first thing to know is right here in the project files. These are where all the source files that are being used in your video live. If you click on one of these, like this stock video that I currently have in my project, it opens up this preview. And if I click on this little eye icon down here, that's going to show me the metadata for this video. So right there it says resolution. And the resolution of this is 1920 by 1080. So right off the bat, there would be no reason to export this video at 4K, because the source video itself is not 4K. But the next thing you need to do is close out of that. Come up to this thing in the top middle of your scene editor, click on that. Come down to where it says other, click on that. And right here where it says Full HD. Full HD is going to be 1080p. But if you click on that, you can Change it to 4K, which is Ultra HD. Click on that. And now, even though my underlying video is 1080, I'm overriding it as 4K. And if I go to export resolution, I can now Change it to 4K. But again, that does me no good if the source video itself is 1080p. So I could delete that. I could choose a different video. Let me check out the metadata for this. That one is a true 4K video, 3840 by 2160. I can put that into my video. I could check the aspect ratio. It's 4K. I'll now be able to export at 4K.
