YouTube Flaunts First 8K Video, But We Doubt You Can Play It

Here's a fun fact -- YouTube has supported 8K video since 2010. The label for 8K video (4320p/8K) was only added "earlier this year," according to Google, but support for the crazy high resolution has been baked into YouTube for the past five years. The thing is, who has the equipment to shoot video at that resolution? Not many, which is why the recently uploaded "Ghost Towns" is likely the first 8K video on YouTube.

Ghost Towns was uploaded three days ago and is a short 2 minute and 8 second video, but due to the buzz it's receiving on the Internet, it's already up to more than half a million views. It was filmed by Luke and Marika Neumann using a RED Epic Dragon 6K in portrait orientation and then stitched together in Adobe After Effects. According to the video's description, some of the shots simply scaled up by 125 percent from 6.1K to meet the 7.6K standard.

One thing that's interesting about the RED Epic Dragon 6K is that it's one of just a few available cameras that can record 8K video. Others include Astro's AH-4800, Ikegami's SHK-810 8K, and Hitachi's SK-UHD-8060. All but the AH-4800 were unveiled at the National Association of Broadcasters 2015.


Now here's the rub -- your hardware probably doesn't support 8K video, not until the rumored 8K iMac emerges. It obviously takes an 8K monitor to play back that kind of resolution, but also some serious hardware and plenty of Internet bandwidth for smooth visuals. When the day comes that you're equipped to watch 8K videos on your PC at home, you'll be able to fire up 8K YouTube videos on Chrome or Safari