Most people don't have a monitor or TV that supports 4K resolution, so why go to 8K? There's only one answer: Because you can.
As 9to5Google noted Tuesday, a YouTube video entitled "Ghost Towns in 8K" (above) can be seen in 8K, or 4320p resolution.
The video was filmed by Luke and Marika Neumann, who used a RED Epic Dragon 6K camera in portrait orientation and then stitched the resulting footage together in Adobe After Effects to get the 8K resolution.
That's 7680 × 4320 pixels or 33.2 megapixels. For comparison, a common 4K video standard is 3840 × 2160 pixels or 8.3 megapixels — by pixel count, 8K is roughly four times the quality of 4K video.
The Ghost Towns in 8K video on YouTube offers several high-definition resolution options, including 8K.
We're sure it looks beautiful, but we can't really enjoy it in all its beauty, because 8K monitors (like 8K-capable cameras) are currently really hard (though not impossible) to come by. Even if you had one, you'd need some pretty powerful hardware to be able to watch the video stutter-free.
A Google spokesperson told 9to5Google that YouTube has actually supported 8K videos since 2010, but it only added the 8K quality setting as a possibility "earlier this year."
It's nice to see YouTube jumping far ahead of the curve when it comes to ultra high definition video. We just wish there was a way to watch the damn thing.
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