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YouTube Adds 'Leanback,' Support For 4K Video
teh31337one writes with news that YouTube has announced support for 4K video, which runs at a resolution of 4096 x 3072. From their blog: "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. ... 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." They provided a small playlist of videos shot in 4K. This announcement comes a few days after YouTube debuted "Leanback," a service that attempts to find and serve videos you'll like based on past viewing habits, as well as offering a simplified method of browsing.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Super_Hi-Vision
4k video is so legacy.
"Who is the Journal of Quantum Physics going to believe?" --Stephen Hawking
Now I can enjoy horse porn in glorious 4096 x 3072!
Youtube makes a horrible mess of 1080p Hi-Def video and uses far too much CPU to display, on my system much more than the original HD video does, what would it do to video with more detail than Hi-Def?
Take Nobody's Word For It.
how many people out there actually have the hardware to enjoy these videos?
Well, I can think of at least two - Sergey Brin and Larry Page.
OK, I am downloading one just to try it out, there's no way in heck I can stream it, I can't even stream "normal" you tube vids yet, just can't get a good enough internet connection around here for that. So..what is this ultra high resolution for again? Who has a 25 foot screen at home? Why the bandwith wasteage? Really, just an honest question, if the bulk of humanity can't watch this in the manner it was designed for..why bother? Isn't this like driving around a 3 ton SUV to get to work in? Aren't we supposed to be all doing our part to just stop wasting resources for the hell of it? Just "because you can" is somehow bad when it comes to some forms of energy use, but other forms get a pass because it's connected to a computer? Google is supposedly "green", I am not seeing pushing this as being all that "green". How about "good enough" video quality with less megs being needed to be transferred instead, as a focus?
I just tried a couple seconds at 1080p, and a couple of seconds at 4k on a 1080p screen, and found the difference to be quite noticeable in the details. The downside was that my 8800GT can't actually play 4k video faster than 4fps. How about instead of a 4k option almost no one will use, we try a 1080p option that doesn't have massive blocks, fringes, and blurring.
I'd be far more impressed by this news, had it not been for YouTube's dismal implementation of 1080p, which in reality is only 1920x540. Yes, they effectively do 1080i, but remove one of the frames entirely.
This should prove the point: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MyFGDHPm-tc
It's called Blu-Ray. Expecting to see true 2K on a free streaming site is asking a lot. I just watched a 1080 video on Youtube that looked nice for streaming. Was it true 1080P, no, deal with it. It wasn't that long ago that live streaming video was a frame every 5 minutes. It was a big deal when people started streaming multiple frames a second at extreme low res. The rate of advancement is breathtaking.
I see it already, the army of Slashdotters saying "no one has the bandwidth for this" and "no one has the video hardware for this" and "YouTube's implementation of this sucks." Well, that's ok. The point is that they're pushing the limits. Remember the first time you saw any video at all on a computer? Chunky, blocky, slow, tiny video coming off a CD-ROM in the early 1990's, perhaps? Yeah, it sucked, but the point was that they were showing something that would, eventually, evolve into something useful. Without the crappy CD-ROM graphics of the early 1990's, there would be no YouTube today. Someone's got to be the first to try it, someone's got to get the technology out there so it can be improved. Wouldn't you like to eventually watch YouTube in HD directly on your television? Today you've got to jump through hoops to do that. Tomorrow it might be as effortless as watching YouTube on your desktop computer.
Tired of FB/Google censorship? Visit UNCENSORED!
James Cameron (Titanic, Avatar, etc.) says that higher frame rates are more valuable than higher resolution. He wanted to do Avatar at 48FPS, but the technology wasn't there yet. The sequel probably will be at a higher frame rate. Cameron points out that 4K resolution is worthless beyond the first few rows of the theater, but frame rate benefits all viewers.
It's a real issue for Cameron, who, as a director, likes sweeping panoramas with high detail. If you pan slowly over a high-resolution scene at 24FPS, there are visible artifacts. This precludes certain shots which look great and ought to be in the movie. It's necessary to defocus slightly or add motion blur for certain shots.
So YouTube should work on getting their frame rates up, not their resolutions. Let's see some IMAX movies at 48FPS on YouTube.
And a million internet tubes cried out in pain.
"Holy fuck! How many pixels by how many! What? HOW MANY? WTF? o_O We're gonna need a bigger pipe!"
I watched it and now am impressed! 1080p suddenly looks like RCA Studio 2 console, with giant pixels.
839*929
Youtube is pretty much unwatchable now, between the annoying boxes people put on videos to the annoying ads. I may never find out about their new features, because I don't go there anymore.
When YouTube ditches Flash for Javascript and HTML5 video, we'll all be able to hack YouTube with browser add-ons like Greasemonkey to disable the annoying boxes people add to videos when/if we want, or move them so they don't obscure the video.
There are no consumer 4k monitors out there, none. You CAN find 4k large displays if you try. Barco makes some that are close (3840x2160) like their LC-5621 but that costs nearly $40,000. 4k is just not the sort of thing you find on a desktop PC or in a consumer's home.
As such doing video on a site like Youtube in it is worthless. Actually it is worse than worthless since, as you noted, it overloads the decoding ability of current hardware and causes slowdown. There is just no point, at all, on current desktop systems. Until they have displays that can handle the image and graphics hardware that can handle the decoding it doesn't do shit.
As you said, they need to improve their 1080p stuff. Reason is that their 1080 stuff... well... isn't. I mean yes, it is encoded at 1920x1080, but the compression is so heavy that you do not really get that level of detail. I mean consider that Blu-ray usually runs in the realm of 25mbps H.264 for 1080p. Youtube's problem with regards to visuals isn't resolution, they can already handle the resolution of all but the biggest computer displays (27" and 30" LCDs are slightly past 2k, but that's as high as it goes). Their problem is that they compress things to a very low bitrate to aid in streaming.
So fix that first. Don't add a 4k option, add a 1080p HBR (high bit rate) option. Until you are streaming high enough bitrate to make 1080p look real good, there's no point in going any higher. Once you've got that, then maybe add 2k for the really big monitors (not that a 2k source is easy to get). Don't add 4k until there is actual 4k hardware in homes. That day will come I'm sure, but probalby not for another 5-10 years.
> Feet? Come on, grandpa Simpson! Why the hell do you people insist in using
> that primitive measurement system?
Ok, ok. 1.5 rods.
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
SHV is experimental tech. They are playing with it right now, but it isn't in use anywhere, even in the pro world. It is just proof of concept and early testing.
4k is the high end of cinema. 4k is normally what you scan in and process film at (it is considered to be about the same as good 35mm). You can also get monitors that are very nearly 4k, and the high end digital cinema projectors are 4k. It is a currently used and in production format. If you go to a new, spiffy, digital theater and watch a movie like Avatar, it is probably a 4k projector (though some places with smaller screens use 2k instead, which is just a bit higher than 1080p).
There's a difference between "Technology that is being developed," and "Technology that is being used."
Take Ethernet. 100gb is currently under development. There are test units that exist, and the standard was finalized last month. However it is not a deployed technology. Your network does not have 100gb Ethernet backbones. 10gb is currently the fastest Ethernet out there. It is the fastest deployed in actual networks right now (fastest Ethernet, I know there are faster POS lines and so on).
So it is accurate to say 4k video is the highest for now.
It's really fun to watch people like you squirm. In fact we all use a perfectly proportioned system here in America, but we've made a pact that when we get on the internet we will use Standard just to mess with you guys. Then we talk about it at parties.
Qxe4
Who has a 25 foot screen at home?
Well, someone must be buying them, when even Walmart has them for sale:
Draper Cineflex Cineperm Fixed Frame Screen - 25' diagonal NTSC Format
Really, just an honest question, if the bulk of humanity can't watch this in the manner it was designed for..why bother? Isn't this like driving around a 3 ton SUV to get to work in?
No.
It's more like the open air cinema projects that began in the silent era:
Open Air Cinema, Open Air Cinema & Film Aid in Tanzania
FilmAid International
Aren't we supposed to be all doing our part to just stop wasting resources for the hell of it?
I am tempted to argue that the geek sees bandwidth as waste - any resource as a waste - only when someone else has it - uses it - and is willing to pay the price.
The argument is specious anyway.
The 4Kx2K movie can be stamped onto a cheap plastic disk. Delivered by mail or streamed off a satellite.
Bandwith is a problem only when you want instant gratification.
Does it really matter if the 4Kx2K Monsters vs Aliens takes two or three days to download in the background at very low priority?
Little known secret: All people who use “feet” as a measuring unit, are foot fetishists. ;)
Even less known secret: All people who don’t, quietly assume it anyway. ^^
Any sufficiently advanced intelligence is indistinguishable from stupidity.
Whoever wrote this does not know anything about IMAX. IMAX is not projected digitally, let alone with a 2K digital projector.
35mm film is about equal, or a little better than, 4K digital in terms of resolution. Most all of the time when you go see a movie these days, it is still being projected on 35mm film. It's cheaper than a digital projector and looks better. When you went and saw Avatar in 3D it was being projected in 2K (for almost everyone) digital and that's why you could see the pixels on the screen. 2K is NOT good enough for anything but very small movie screens. Anyone who says it is is not a cinematographer (I am) and has never used both a 35mm film camera and the best digital cinema cameras (I have), and probably doesn't know what a cinematographer even really is. 99% of all big-budget films are still shot on 35mm film because it is simply the third-best image-capturing method out there, better than ANY digital camera in existence today. It is also much more expensive, but on large films the price of film is a drop in the bucket compared to everything else.
The second best cinema image-capturing method out there is 65/70mm film.
The best is IMAX.
IMAX is 65/70mm film travelling through the camera horizontally; each frame is about 2.75 by 2 inches. That is enormous. It's like a medium-format still camera...except 24 times a second. Here's a comparison of IMAX to regular 35mm film (most digital cinema cameras have sensors, by the way, about exactly the same size as a 35mm film camera): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Imaxcomparison.png
IMAX is NOT projected on 2K. "Digital IMAX" is. Digital IMAX is pretty much useless and is not even as good as standard 35mm film projection; it uses two 2K projectors overlapping each other to give a slightly higher than 2K theoretical resolution to the image; for those of you with still cameras, 2K is about equal in resolution to a 6- or 7-megapixel camera. Congratulations. Your $1000 SLR has way more resolution than a digital cinema projector that costs a half million dollars.
Real IMAX, i.e. horizontal 65/70mm film, has an estimated resolution of about 104 million pixels; you would need a 12K x 9K digital sensor to even come close to the resolution of IMAX. No one makes those and no one will for a long time, if ever. The highest-resolution digital photographic sensors outside of the military are probably Hasselblad digital medium format backs; they are about 60 megapixels, or half the resolution of IMAX film, and they are still cameras capable of only about one frame a second.
IMAX is not 2K. Digital IMAX is not IMAX.
IMAX is film. Film is incredible.