Can Raspberry Pi 3 record 4k video stream?

Question

I just want to record the 4k video stream from the camera NOT want to play it on Raspberry. Can raspberry pi do this using vlc ?

Answer 1

The official Raspberry Pi Camera does not support 4K, so No - If that is what you wanted.

If you have a USB 2.0 4K camera¹ that can dump encoded data then yes. As long as the driver is picked up you can use any software you like to capture the stream, even UV4L userspace driver.

I do not think USB 2.0 has enough bandwidth for RAW² capture but possibly if the camera encodes it for you with h.265³ it should be fine. You just save the stream to your drive.

^{1 - Something like the PanaCast Panoramic 4K Resolution USB Camera - But Linux compatibility may be limited
2 - 4K at 24fps RAW - 4096 x 2304 x 24 x 12 / 8 / 1024 / 1024 = 324MB/s
3 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_Efficiency_Video_Coding}