Folks:
In an effort to win a prize for highest ratio of technology to subject matter interest, I have directed and co-starred in a 4K video. Location: our kitchen. Camera: Sony RX100 IV
- a version compressed by Adobe Premiere to about 10 Mbps (147 MB file size)
- a version compressed by Adobe Premiere using the “YouTube 4K setting” (491 MB file size; about 40 Mbps supposedly)
This raises a few questions…
- why doesn’t YouTube just refuse to let people upload stuff like this? Or limit them to 720p?
- can you see a difference between the versions? Or does YouTube compression render the differences in the original file quality irrelevant?
- can you get smooth playback at true 4K? (for me the answer is “yes” with Windows Media Player locally on this Windows 10 desktop, “no” with VLC locally, “yes” with streaming YouTube on Verizon FiOS, “no” with streaming YouTube on Comcast)
On the 23″ HP monitor that came with my system, no, I can’t see any difference.
For me, watching they looked the same. When I focused on the refrigerator buttons the “YouTube 4k setting” was definately a little “fuzzier”. I get smooth playback – I have UVerse DSL – tested to about 1.9mbs download speed.
Overall though both some good quality video.
On my 2.5K 30″ HP monitor, on a Comcast business-class plan (125Mbps), Google Chrome for Mac with Flash disabled, so it’s the HTML5 video viewer running, it is pixelated and low-res for about 2 seconds, then it catches up. I guess they are biasing for immediate gratification over absolute quality. Looking at the artwork on the fridge, which seems to be where sharpest focus is, I can’t really tell the difference either.
As for 720p, the 20th Century called, and it wants its pseudo-HD back, along with interlaced video.
1. Moore’s law. Storage costs are astoundingly low these days.
2. YouTube serves different versions depending on the capabilities of your machine and net connection. 4k videos look quite impressive on my Pixel, for example. (Not sure if that is real 4k resolution.)
3. Can’t test add I’m currently on my phone.
Quality looks the same on 13 in HD (1920×1080) chromebook, your head movements a bit blurry in both, otherwise sharp, no stutter.
On my 30″ monitors 4k looks the same as 1080, but 60Hz looks very much sharper than 30Hz. 60Hz is available on YouTube by changing from the Flash video player to YouTube’s HTML5 video player.
Here’s a 1080p60 video for example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=COWmTz0vNyI
No big deal difference. To my eye, at full screen resolution, the top file “looks” a wee bit sharper. Can’t say whether it simple contrast or real resolution (acuity). I focused on the artwork on the fridge. Whatever it is it ain’t much.
Monitor: color calibrated, NEC 27″ (2560×1440)
The smaller file streams to me at 43,824 Kbps, the larger one at 47,686 Kbps. Both versions dropped 2%-3% of all frames on my somewhat busy mac pro displaying on a UHD monitor.
So it looks like youtube is serving up a nearly identical internal-for-posterity transcode of each file that you uploaded.
There are visual differences, though. The portion of each frame that has motion (faces, balls, dogs, etc) look similar enough to be called “the same”. There is a pretty big difference in the static areas of each frame, eg, the kitchen cabinets, the doors. It could be that the lower bitrate encoding has more B-Frames than the higher one, making it more difficult for a sensical resurrection of the “static” objects given the slight sway of the camera. Or it could be that the static portions just happen to have a more obvious and blatant geometry than the moving portions. Either way, there is clearly more detail and nicer contrast in the larger version. The larger version looks subjectively better.
Can you determine the color palette? Supposedly when you take 4K 4:2:0 and downsize it to 1080p or less, you get 4:2:2 color.
what you upload is only the beginning.
Youtube converts to different resolution and codecs when you upload a file
and vends it out different things to
different pc, TV, browser, network, bandwidth, etc.
Google is keen on VP9 instead of H.264 for 4K. so it will require the powerful pc
or Processor like latest Skylake to support VP9 at hardware level for
decoding. or powerful GPU to do the same.
If you know what you are doing then you can ask youtube to give
precise codec if you know that right url request or
if you know youtube-dl.sh which download the file to your pc to see
how youtube has re-encoded your file.
Bleh, even full-screen, with either video, youtube only gives me “360p”.
This is with Firefox on Linux, no flash plugin. I think their “HTML5 player” is still a second-class citizen or something.
We have a 4k computer setup. 105Mb/s internet, gigabit wired throughout inside the home, an nvidia 970 overclocked and an Asus 4k@60Hz 28″ monitor. Intel i5-3570k quad core overclocked to 4.2Ghz.
Wireless won’t stream it except for 5Gb/s AC. Without using hardware acceleration on the video card, 4k won’t play smoothly using the cpu to decode/display.
You can most certainly see a detail/quality/richness difference, but in my opinion not enough to justify the size of the files, the high level of streaming data, and the iron required to show it. In a very large tv (over 60″) it looks great providing you have the high quality source material, which outside of tv showroom displays is tough to come by. If I were buying all new gear for a PC I’d consider the 4k monitor as its only a few hundred extra. I wouldn’t replace any recently bought 1080p tv set or monitor with a 4k unit at this time mostly due to limited source material.
I can’t wait until someone tries broadcasting in 4k, dvr’s start recording 4k (requiring 10TB drives), and the ISP’s widen the enforcement of data caps on internet connections. I use 600GB a month on mine just watching a few hours of netflix and my son looking at an hour or two of youtube.