YouTube announces support for 4K video resolution

By on Jul 9, 2010 at 3:00 PM
Services July 9, 2010

YouTube 4k

Today, at VidCon 2010, YouTube announced support for what it is calling 4K videos; meaning videos shot in their original aspect ratio “all the way up to 4096p.” Here is what YouTube had to say:

Today at the VidCon 2010 conference, we announced support for videos shot in 4K (a reference resolution of 4096 x 3072), meaning that now we support original video resolution from 360p all the way up to 4096p. To give some perspective on the size of 4K, the ideal screen size for a 4K video is 25 feet; IMAX movies are projected through two 2k resolution projectors. [...] We always want videos on YouTube to be available in the highest quality possible, as creators intend. [...] Because 4K represents the highest quality of video available, there are a few limitations that you should be aware of. First off, video cameras that shoot in 4K aren’t cheap, and projectors that show videos in 4K are typically the size of a small refrigerator. And, as we mentioned, watching these videos on YouTube will require super-fast broadband.

You can check out several videos shot in “4K” here…let us know if your decrening eye can notice the difference.

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  • dave

    WOW!! nice!! anyone has the link so we can watch the highest res video available?

  • http://www.intomobile.com Simon Sage

  • Adam

    I’m confused. If 1080p has 1080 horizontal lines of resolution, then wouldn’t 4096×3072 have only 3072 lines of horizontal resolution, and thus be 3072p, not 4096p?

    • Channan

      Beat me to it. I’m pretty sure this would be 3072p.

    • Ivan

      I, too, am confused, couldn’t find any explanation yet.

      My best guess is that this is just one of those horrible naming inconsistencies that are so common in video tech.

  • http://twitter.com/mistercarter7 mike

    i think it’s so stupid and a waste of time and free space in youtube servers
    you not only need a superfast broadband conection but a superfast processor and GPU in your computer or you’ll see the video frame by frame

    • http://ARMdevices.net Charbax

      4K is the future of TV and movies and Youtube is the future of TV and movies. Google TV could support 4K soon.

      Next year, all HDTV and projectors could be 4K and for cheap, it’s just about them using a processor technology from 2008 instead of still using the same 1080p processors we had in 2002.

    • Ivan

      I don’t understand all the complaints. By far not all videos will be in 4K. And it’s not like Google won’t offer scaled down versions as alternative. I’m sure YouTube will let you watch in crappy 480p for years to come.

      In my opinion, it is always best to use the highest possible quality at any point in time. The only reasons I can think of to scale down are environmental factors (less power consumption, etc). From a technological point of view however, I really fail to see how more quality should be worse.

  • Joe C.

    And this is useful for who? The two people that have 160 inch 4k tvs? Or the other two that have the 4k projectors. 4k downsampled to to 1080 or 720 won’t look better than 1080 or 720, but there’s a chance it can look worse because of artifact from resizing.

    This is what YouTube is working on? Most videos shot with decent cameras still look like shit on YouTube anyway

    • http://ARMdevices.net Charbax

      The only reason we don’t all have 4K HDTV and projectors yet is cause LCD manufacturers prefer to focus on that 3D fad thing. They should rather just use the latest processors in next generation HDTVs and we could all have 4K HDTV and Projectors on the market next year.

      Youtube’s 4K stream is 24mbit/s, same bitrate as 1995 DV format and same as 2008 AVCHD format. The bitrate is not too high. Many people can get more than 24mbit/s download speed at home.

    • Ivan

      Also, offering people higher definition is not only about providing better quality to end users at this point in time. YouTube is the main storage facility for video (at least in the Western world); it’s a gigantic library filled with content from all over the world.
      I welcome any effort that aims to protocol history in the highest possible quality.

      The Library of Congress could also just digitize books and save them as text files on a web site. It would make them easier accessible for everyone and be much more cost effective. But no one would even think about that because throwing away value when you don’t have to is a bad idea.

      YouTube is (thankfully) about more than helping people watch cats dance Salsa on their mobiles.

  • Mike V.

    1080p looks better on my Macbook Pro than this. It’s way too pixelated and compressed. You’re gonna need an amazing GPU for this to look like it should.

  • FriarNurgle

    Oh, that won’t take long at all to buffer with my ISP.

  • PetPet

    LOL and it’s still uglier than a well compressed 720p

  • John Ellenich

    They need to update their bit-rates first… I can see artifacts in the 4k footage, and in the 1080p and in the 720p…

    Plus it looks bad scaled down…

  • Lime

    27″ iMac 2560×1440

  • http://music.kwaping.com Kwaping

    Did you mean to write “your discerning eye”, or is that a new word for me?

    • DG732

      I was wondering the same thing

  • http://twitter.com/chrispgriffin Chris Griffin

    Oh, good, I can finally watch YouTube videos on my 300 inch Samsung.

  • politicalslug

    I myself am I little confused. I was under the impression that 4K meant four times the resolution of 1080p. Since 1080p implies 1920 lines of horizontal resolution and 1080 line of vertical resolution, it seems logical that 4K should be 3840 lines of horizontal resolution and 2160 lines of vertical resolution (2160p).

    Of course, if 4096p is really the vertical resolution, then in keeping with HD’s standard 16:9 ratio, we would be left with a horizontal resolution of about 7282.

    However, since the article points out that the vertical resolution of 4K is really just 3072p, then the horizontal resolution (given a 16:9 ratio) would only be about 5461 lines of resolution.

    The whole problem stems from the use of a 4:3 (standard or fullscreen) ratio for the resolution, rather than the current widescreen ratio of 16:9. Because of this, it’s far more likely that 4096 would be the the horizontal resolution, with 2304p being the vertical resolution. That’s not so bad, and in fact is slightly higher than four times current 1080p HD.

  • Brad

    This is completely pointless, unless you actually have a super high-res screen. The guy with the $6 million home theater (Google it, it’s insane) would probably enjoy it, since he has a commercial grade projector that outputs four times the resolution of a 1080P TV. The problem with this is that your computer hardware has to work so hard to scale the resolution down to fit your screen, that it actually hurts the image quality, instead of helping it. For me I see virtually no visual quality difference in general (and I’m known to be picky about video quality), and the 4K stream doesn’t play smoothly, and has areas of pixel distortion at times. Perhaps more advanced graphics hardware would help, but again, it’s pointless, because there’s little to no gain. The 1080p stream looks just fine on my 1680×1050 widescreen monitor, so I’ll stick with that.

  • Yousif Akram

    Heres a 4k video

    • PejHod

      Erm… No, more like an incorrect set of Apple accessories supposed to be unboxed from an iPhone 4 box, voiced over by a 10 year old.

  • http://doxienews.com Matt

    Those of you who say this is pointless are right. It’s stupid of Google to do this before 4K TVs are popular. Likewise it would be stupid for people to make 4K TVs before 4K video is available!

    Therefore, everyone should just take your advice and just do nothing, lest they risk being called stupid by a blog commenter.

    After all, why would readers of a tech blog even care about technological progress. Everything anyone does is just stupid, I should know, I read blogs.

    • Dwayne chapman

      Well how many people really watch youtube videos on their TV’s now anyways? How about they work on advancing the quality of the videos to better match current equipment sold rather than having an option for that bandwidth hogging video which practical equipment to properly watch it is a little ways off. Well there is only a half dozen or so videos in “4K” so this really isn’t that huge of a story imo.

  • sirpaul

    It looks the same as 720p…and i have a decent GPU :/ idk what the point of this is. Most ppl dont watch youtube vids of homemade explosives on their TV anyways.

    • SquareWheel

      It looks the same as 720p if your hardware is only capable of 720p.

  • Mitch Cumstein

    Who knew Col. Sanders wore sky blue dress shirts? I always thought he was a crisp white shirt kinda guy.

  • http://alghienkad06.student.ipb.ac.id/ thea

    so wonder

  • Derek

    There is one mistake in the post. The term of HD should be 4096p, but 3072p. All xxxxp is based on the vertical pixels not the horizontal one.

    • Derek

      Sorry, shouldn’t be 4096p, but should be 3072p

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