San Francisco — Late last year, Google owned popular video-sharing website YouTube introduced support for 1080p HD videos empowering anyone with a high quality camera to demonstrate their stuff in the best possible way. But over the weekend, YouTube announced support for so-called “4K” video, a format four times the size of current 1080p HDTVs.
Although the number of videos made available by YouTube in the new format will certainly be somewhat small, but YouTube said that the company wanted to support films with the highest video quality available.
“Today at the VidCon 2010 conference, we announced support for videos recorded 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 said in a blog post later on Friday.
Of course, the proof of 4k’s excellence is in the pie, which is why YouTube has a special playlist of five films that can be played back in their original 4k resolution. As Sarukkai warns, viewing these flawlessly requires considerable bandwidth speed, as well as the right gear.
When YouTube commenced playing 1080p videos, it looked like that would be adequate for most people. Consumer electronic devices, certainly the vast, vast majority of TVs sold, support video resolutions of up to 1080p. Furthermore, the best quality videos that are available in the mainstream, on Blu-ray discs, also top out at 1080p.
However, the consciousness of pushing the boundaries that put a man on the moon is also driving YouTube in pursuing even higher quality videos. Largely confined to the digital cinema, 4K videos are roughly four time the size of plain old 1080p ones. 4K videos will eventually come to the home on the back of a new HDMI specification as well as some advanced camcorders. According to Wikipedia, about 98 percent of digital cinemas use 2K projectors.
You can swap to the 4K resolution by choosing “Original” in the video quality menu. The integrated player also does not seem to support the new resolution, so you are going to have to go to the site to see a 4K video, like the one below, in action. And do not feel shocked if it brings your computer to its knees, it happens to a lot more people than you would think.
The company also declared a grants program, where YouTube will invest $5 million in content creators that the company considers as creative and resourceful.
“We have more than 10,000 partners, and 94 of Ad Age’s top 100 advertisers have operated campaigns on YouTube and the Google Display Network. We have made great progress in the last five years. But we think we can do better,” George Strompolos, a partner development manager for Youtube, announced in a blog post. “That is why today we are disclosing the YouTube Partner Grants program that will invest five million dollars across select new and emerging YouTube partners. Our aim is to alter the state of the creation of new ideas and production models from some of our most innovative and original content partners for the benefit and advancement of the entire industry.”
The grants will cater as an advance against the partner’s future YouTube revenue share, YouTube said. Partners will be chosen based on video views, subscribers, growth rate, audience engagement and production expertise, and then called to join. The funds may be used to invest in better production equipment, marketing, or to hire more staff.