Videos with 8k resolution appear on YouTube

The first videos with a resolution of 7680×4320 pixels have appeared on YouTube. The option to choose the 4320p resolution can be selected by clicking the cogwheel, but it doesn’t seem to be offered in all browsers yet.

That writes 9to5google after the release of the video ‘Ghost Towns’ that was uploaded last Sunday. In response to the video, Google tells the tech blog that “8K video has been supported since 2010” and that “8K labeling was already added earlier this year.” The oldest screenshot showing an experimental YouTube player with 8K labeling is no more than a month old on Reddit.

The Ghost Towns video was shot with a RED Epic Dragon 6K camera in portrait orientation. The video was then stitched together with Adobe After Effects, although some shots were upscaled 125 percent from 6K to 8K, according to notes on the Neumannfilms YouTube channel.

It’s not surprising that Google would like to have 8K content with 360-degree videos and virtual reality in mind: it takes much higher resolutions than 4k to give such content an apparently high resolution.

In the latest version of the YouTube app, version 10.21.58, a Google Cardboard icon has also been added since this week so that a video can be displayed stereoscopically directly from the app.