YouTube Shoots for the Moon, Introduces 4K Videos

Late last year, YouTube introduced support for 1080p HD videos enabling anyone with a high quality camera to showcase their stuff in the best possible way. But there’s high quality and then there’s high quality, YouTube is now launching support for videos shot with 4K cameras, a rather new breed of very high resolution video cameras, usually out of the reach of most amateur filmographers.

“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,” Ramesh Sarukkai, YouTube Engineer, announced.

When YouTube started playing 1080p videos, it seemed like that would be enough for most people. Consumer electronic devices, certainly the vast, vast majority of TVs sold, support video resolutions of up to 1080p. The best quality videos that are available in the mainstream, on Blu-ray discs, also top out at 1080p.

But if people stopped at, ‘good enough,’ humans would have never invented fire, sports cars or sliced bread. The same sense of pushing the boundaries that put a man on the moon is also driving YouTube in pursuing even higher quality videos. OK, so maybe it’s not exactly the same thing as going to the moon, but support for 4K videos is pretty impressive in its own right.

4K videos are roughly four time the size of plain old 1080p ones. Like YouTube notes, the ideal screen size for a 4K video is 25 feet (7.6 meters). And 4K projectors are not something you’re going to be able to buy at your local electronics store.

That said, there are some computer monitors out there that have a higher native resolution than 1080p and it’s good news for enthusiasts who want to show off their impressive home cinema setup. Granted, there aren’t that many 4K videos available on YouTube, the site lists five, but that number is going to grow in time.

You can switch to the 4K resolution by selecting "Original" in the video quality menu. The embedded player doesn't seem to support the new resolution so you're going to have to go to the site to see a 4K video, like the one below, in action. And don't feel too bad if it brings your computer to its knees, it happens to a lot more people than you'd think.