For more than half a year now YouTube has supported 1080p videos but today they raised the bar even more by supporting native resolution videos up to 4K or 4096p 3072p (4096×3072) 2304p (4096×2304). While cameras that actually record in this format are quite a bit out of the grasps of the average YouTuber this allows for much higher quality content to be uploaded and stored on YouTube’s servers and in turn be delivered to viewers. Five years ago HD cameras were too pricey for most consumers, who knows where we will be in five more years.
Just to give some perspective on what exactly the size of 4K is, the ideal screen size for a 4K video is 25 feet and IMAX movies are projected through two 2k resolution projectors. So what this means is it will look *really* crisp on your 15″ laptop screen.
In order to try this feature out, on any video that supports it pick “Original” from the format selection popup on the youtube player. Since there are so few videos currently in this format a playlist has been created to feature them.
(Note: Embedded player does not support 4k yet. Watch on YouTube)
UPDATE: Thanks to all those who have written in saying 4096×3072 is actually 3072p not 4096p. Originally on YouTube’s announcement post for this feature they referenced 4096p as being the format which is why we used it here as well. The correct way to refer to this format is just 4K, or 3072p if you want to think of it in those terms.
UPDATE 2: It looks like YouTube updated their specs on what they support again changing it from 4096×3072 to 4096×2304 or 2304p. Still impressive, but it’s starting to lose the coolness a little. Thanks to Quboid for the tip.
[via youtube's blog]
{ 18 comments… read them below or add one }
Wow, that looks pretty damn awesome considering I’m playing it on a 24″ LCD 1080P monitor.
“So what this means is it will look *really* crisp on your 15″ laptop screen.”
No, it won’t, unless it has a 4k screen, and those don’t exist for laptops yet. Your average laptop won’t show a difference between this an 720p – even 1080p is beyond the screen’s capability.
4096×3072, that sure is an impressive vertical TV.
Damn! Imagine that foto cameras had that res like yesterday…
I think this video taxed my video card so much that aero stopped working for firefox until I restarted it.
4K is great, and I can’t wait until it becomes as mainstream as 1080p. However, this 4K YouTube thing has to compress the video quite a bit to fit it in a reasonable small file size. There are a lot of macro blocks visible in the video, and I would contest that properly compressed 1080P video would look better than this 4K YouTube content. I can’t deny that this looks better than YouTube’s 1080p mode, simply because of the higher bitrate.
By the way, I’m viewing this on a 1440P screen, 27″ 2560 x 1440 Apple Display.
Ah ha, this is a perfect match with Google’s gigabit Google Fiber for Communities. Makes a lot of sense.
er… isn’t that 3072p?
You must have mixed things up. 1080p, 4096p etc is the number of pixels _vertically_.
Hence for 4096*3072 it would be 3072p.
The term 4K is also used, and in this case it’s the _horizontal_ resolution.
I love seeing people say it looks better on their screens. Especially the Apple Display guy. Sir you have a 1440p screen, it displays it as 1440p and cuts the extra vertical lines out. DA with an Apple product yet again. No point for this until we have monitors running 4096p.
4K video is NOT 4096p. 4K refers to HORIZONTAL resolution of the image. A 1080p video has 1080 VERTICAL lines of resolution. At 16:9, a 1080p video has 1920 pixels horizontally. If comparing apples to apples, 4K video is 3072p, not 4096p.
4096×3072 is 3072p NOT 4096p
Just a comment for the IMAX reference: They use (2) 2k projectors double-stacked together for brightness… not to achieve 4k of resolution.
It looks like Google have corrected the article *again*
“At 4096 x 2304 pixels, 4K is over four times the size of 1080p.”
So it’s 2304p.
This is bogus. YouTube doesn’t even give videos enough bitrate for 720p, let alone 1080p or 4K. The commenter that said this is not even DVD quality is correct. There are artifacts all over the place due to the excessive compression / low bitrate. Also, if they really wanted to show off high resolution, they should make the player have a 1:1 (unscaled) display mode where you can pan around, or at least view the center, if your display isn’t high enough res to view the video at the resolution you’ve selected.
Maybe in 5-10 years YouTube will allow enough bitrate for 4K. For starters, how about at least supporting 720p properly?
I agree with Tom.
Great news!!!
I just upload a 4K clip on Youtube. Enjoy!
4K Resolution Timelapse – American Cities
My laptop is 1080p 15.6″
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