YouTube adds support for 4096p (not a typo!)

[woodyear99]

WTMC @ that resolution.....tho I know in a few years we'll look back and scoff at those low res 1080p videos we used to watch :p Gotta love technology yes just keeps on gettin better.

http://socialblade.com/show/2010/07/09/youtube-adds-support-for-4096p-not-a-typo/

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 4096p (4096×3072).  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.

[Philosophical45]

*blink blink*  what the french toast... that's crazy!

[EmpireKing]

my monitor will explode if i attempt to view such a thing


edit: o.O wow WOW.....looks great

[woodyear99]

Was lookin for some samples....found this one....

http://techblips.dailyradar.com/video/surf-nyc-4k-resolution/

[SPK]

Technically, shouldn't that res be referred to as 3072p? After all, the moniker is usually dictated by the number of vertical pixels...just sayin'.

Also, just to balance out the hype slightly:

https://www.digitalsociety.org/2010/07/youtube-adds-4k-video-capability-but-how-improving-1080p-first/

[woodyear99]

Damn it was too good to be true

https://www.digitalsociety.org/2010/07/youtube-adds-4k-video-capability-but-how-improving-1080p-first/


Update 6:13PM Pacific – You can see a so-called “4096P” file here  on YouTube.  I downloaded the file to analyze it and discovered that the file is worse than the 40 Mbps 1080P files my DSLR produces because it only allocated 6.445 Mbps to the H.264 High Profile 5.1 4096×2304 video stream and 119.2 Kbps to the AAC stereo audio stream. Google should not be calling this “4096P” because it is way over compressed 2304P. The bitrate isn’t even good enough to be production 480P DVD quality.

Update 7/10/2010 – Some people are suggesting that providing a higher resolution (2304P in this case) is still beneficial for static content.  That’s true up to an extent, but we’re already beyond any reasonable level of compression.  YouTube 720P (30 fps) is already over-compressed at 332:1 and you can see immediate resolution loss as soon as there is any kind of movement.  On really complex scenes, it can start to look worse than a 360P quarter-resolution video.  Even on low complexity video, YouTube 720P image quality still suffers noticeably compared to broadcast HD.

YouTube 1080P (30 fps) is even worse off than YouTube 720P because it is compressed 429:1.  You can really begin to see a lot more quality loss even on relatively static and easy-to-compress scenery.  This is why I actually crop my YouTube 1080P videos at the top and bottom to a 2.35:1 aspect ratio so that there is more bandwidth budget per pixel (24.3% fewer pixels to be more precise).  I also use 24 fps instead of 30 fps so that I can reduce the number of frames by 20%.  By running 1920×816 @ 24P, the uncompressed bitrate is now cut down to 902.4 Mbps (down from 1.5 Gbps for full 30 fps 1080P).  Since YouTube still allocates 3.5 Mbps of video bandwidth to anything with either 1920-wide or 1080-high dimensions, the new effective compression ratio for my cropped 24 fps video is 258:1.  While that’s still over-compressed compared to 150:1 compression broadcast video, it’s way better than 429:1 compression.  Furthermore, you get more of that “film look” which is a cheap trick to impress people.

As for the new 4096×2304 30 fps files that YouTube is now supporting, the compression ratio is some absurd ratio of 1132:1 compression.  It’s no wonder the so-called 4096P sample on YouTube looks worse than 10 Mbps broadcast 1080i over-the-air broadcast HD.

Furthermore, there are no displays out there that can handle 4096×2304 resolution so it’s meaningless to reserve 6 Mbps for 2304P.  There’s not even many people can afford to buy $50K 2160P displays.  It would be much more useful if Google allocated 6 Mbps to 1080P mode but that would be too popular for Google to handle because too many people would start uploading 1080P to get a 6 Mbps of bandwidth for their videos.  By using a practically nonexistent 2304P standard and falsely advertising it as 4096P, Google gets to have a token ultra high definition application that attracts unjustifiable hype but doesn’t actually have to deliver 6 Mbps of bandwidth to its users.

[SPK]

lol woodyear, you are aware I linked to the same article before your post, but thanks for quoting the finer details here directly.

[woodyear99]

Nah I was responding to your article after reading it :p Thanks for posting it, shows that ppl really need to test these things since by just looking at HD stuff you may not even be able to tell the difference on a small screen lol.

I was noting the updates at the end of it, his tests really revel is the youtube/google marketing machine at work :p Still good to see at least they trying to get higher res videos started even if ppl don't have the hardware to support it. They need to stop the misleading advertising tho lol.

[TG.Saga]

yuh need ah sexy monitor now just to watch youtube ^^

[TriniXaeno]

yeah not cool, when they pulling stunts like that.

but on the plus side, driving hype about such insane resolutions could actually get more people on the HD bandwagon, which in the end of it all, benefits everyone.

good riddance to the era of shitty pixelated internet video clips

[TG.Saga]

yeah not cool, when they pulling stunts like that.

but on the plus side, driving hype about such insane resolutions could actually get more people on the HD bandwagon, which in the end of it all, benefits everyone.

good riddance to the era of shitty pixelated internet video clips

HD for the win ^^

[Beomagi]

There's a lot more than just the video that will have to change for this.
Consider your own "infrastructure"

1 - Harddrive space. Because we've been stuck at 2TB drives for too long...
2 - Hardware decoding - surely this will need a boost, because at more than 4 times the pixels, 4096x2304 (16x9) will surly kill most video decoding solutions
3 - Videocard - When 1920x1080 monitors hit, drivers pushing this resolution were complete sh!t now we don't just need drivers for this res, but also more power. Can a single card handle 4096x2304? Forget decoding, how about fillrate?
4 - Dual link DVI is needed for today's 30" behemoths pushing 2560x1600 because a single link dvi only handles 1920x1080. We're going to need a new standard for a single link handling over 4 times this bandwidth.
5 - Monitors - the only monitors I know of pushing these resolutions are used in hospitals.
6 - Hollywood/Sony - someone is going to have to bend them over and show them the squirrel, because I'm done with dealing with DRM BS, upgrade this or you can't do that. Install my propietary driver before doing that. Atapi rootkits and the like.

I think people would have been on the HD bandwagon if the transition was smoother. Those with non-HDCP compliant 1080p monitors/TV - I feel for you.

We need companies that stand behind consumers on this bandwagon. And I don't mean those waiting for us to drop the soap.