4K video on Youtube!

[amirm]

Yes, you read that right. Youtube has started to host 4K video.

What is 4K video you ask? Highest resolution consumer format is Blu-ray at 1920x1080. 4K video is shorthand for 4096 x 2304 pixels of resolution. In other words, 4K is > 4X the resolution than 1080p video.

You can read more about it here: http://youtube-global.blogspot.com/2010/07/whats-bigger-than-1080p-4k-video-comes.html

Here is a list of 4K videos: http://www.youtube.com/view_play_list?p=5BF9E09ECEC8F88F

Be sure to click on the resolution button on the player and select "Original" as per above article.

I have always said how much easier it is to offer higher resolution video on the Internet than any classic standardization effort. This is final proof of that. With one blog and bit of engineering, and unlimited bandwidth budget by Google, we have video that leaves 1080p in the dust -- as far as resolution is concerned that is.

 

[ack]

Time to get that Red One

 

[RBFC]

My computer must be a bit outdated, since I got stop-action blips as I watched. Still shots looked very good, though.

Lee

 

[amirm]

I should have warned about that. Flash video is a pig to decode. Latest version (10) uses hardware acceleration and likely would be the only combination that decodes this properly. My dual core laptop also starts and stop pretty bad.

 

[mep]

I have a brand new computer I just built for my kitchen that has an Intel MB, Intel I5 570 processor, 4 gigs of DDR3 1600 Mhz Ram, an ATI Radieon HD 5770 video card, and I can't run it cleanly either. I have the Adobe Flash 10. something player so I don't know what the deal is. I should certainly have enough horse power to run these videos.

 

[Mark (Basspig) Weiss]

Youtube hasn't yet mastered 720P video, and then they jumped onto 1080P and now 4K? I have to say that the clarity and detail is nowhere near 4K, nor 1080P. The color subsampling is abyssmal, to say nothing of the compression artifacts when anything moves.
This is a lot like those numbers games marketers play when selling products like televisions. "100,000:1 contrast ratio" etc. The picture may be technically 4K raster, but it doesn't resolve anywhere near that much detail, as the original footage. I've shot 720P that looks as good or better than those examples. Youtube is playing a numbers game. But granted, in a few years, quality will improve. Remember just four years ago, Youtube resolved 1/4 of VHS picture quality.