CD / Resolution - YouTube

[Pixelated effect, inaudible sound]

Ah, that's better.

Okay, let's do this.

The digital world is a world of discrete little elements making up larger complex wholes.

Elements that make up pictures are called picture elements, or pixels for short.

And the resolution of an image is the number of pixels it's made of.

It takes a lot of them before the illusion of continuity even begins,

so this number tends to be very high and impractical to say.

Instead, we say a factor of the number - the horizontal and vertical dimensions.

Higher resolution means finer quality, and for many years that was the exclusive domain of film.

Although, film stock doesn't really have a resolution.

There is a finite amount of silver halide crystals in the emulsion of a film frame, but their individual sizes vary.

Their average size also varies depending on the film speed.

Smaller crystals make the film less sensitive to light, but produce a clearer image.

Larger crystals make it more sensitive, but can cause a grainier look.

Still, even the noticeable grain varies randomly from one frame to the next,

so in full motion footage looks smoother and more organic.

The uniform neatly arranged pixels of digital video don't have that luxury.

What you see is what you get, and for a while what you got was around just five or six hundred lines of standard definition.

The only way to make improvements to quality was by designing higher resolution sensors and side cameras.

But ultimately they still had to output everything to the same standard def.

There wasn't even wiggle room with aspect ratios, for instance on DVD, both 4:3 and 16:9 pieces of content

had the same exact resolution of 720 by 480 pixels - squeezed on playback in one case, and stretched in the other.

But eventually the rise of high-definition and web streaming kicked off an arms race of

growing resolutions marketed to professionals and amateurs alike -

even saying both dimensions got too cumbersome.

So we mostly dropped the horizontal. This created sneaky marketing opportunities.

One of the first cameras to make HD quality accessible to mid-level filmmakers was technically able to shoot in 1080p,

but the recording format was DVCPRO HD where the horizontal pixel count is only

1280 just 2/3 the 1920 square pixels of broadcast HD, but that's okay - we still loved you.

The resolution war only escalated from there.

Terminology was abbreviated more as digital intermediates of movies shot

on film adequately captured the intricacies of 35-millimeter at 2K resolution.

But this was barely higher than the HD formats already becoming available in consumer camcorders.

Cinematographers experimented with shooting movies in 3K as consumers were already throwing Ultra HD TVs

into their shopping carts. Full-frame 4K became the new resolution of choice in Hollywood.

But before theaters could even finish upgrading all the digital projectors 4K cameras were commonplace in mobile phones.

Big budget franchise films adopted a digital equivalent of 65 millimeter as the standard acquisition format.

But amateur video makers could already download affordable software capable of handling 8K footage.

In a final desperate move the Hollywood resistance unleashed the ultimate weapon: IMAX.

65 millimeter film stock pulled through the camera gate horizontally for a maximum exposure area of over 5 square inches.

It's the highest quality motion picture acquisition format currently possible.

One can only imagine the ungodly resolution the consumer market will retaliate with.

Why can't they just stop fighting and realize they have different needs?

Using the highest available resolution makes sense for creators concerned with future proofing their work.

After all, old sitcoms that had the foresight to shoot on film have enjoyed a second life in HD.

Ones that shot on tape, not so much. But there is a point of diminishing returns when it comes to cranking up resolution for at-home viewing.

It's been nine years since YouTube began supporting 4K videos.

But almost no one gets that resolution automatically set as the optimal quality in their player, let alone watches on a 4K screen.

YouTube also supports 8K resolution.

But you probably didn't even know that. Why would you? The screens you watch things on aren't getting any bigger.

There is a study that purports downright magical benefits an 8K resolution on reasonably sized screens,

but it seems to be sponsored by a company trying to sell those screens. And the fact remains that even the latest

state of the art IMAX laser digital projection systems designed for screens the size of buildings are not 8K.

Do you really think you'll ever need it in your room,

when even a humble,

well-lit and sharply focused,

1920 by 1080 videos such as this, would look flawless projected on a regular movie theater screen?

Which maybe it should be. It's probably the only way I'll ever get my content on the big screen.

Content? Ugh, I'm such a YouTuber. What happened to my filmmaking ambitions?

I have plenty of creative original ideas y'know. Like I've got this one,

it's about a guy and he has powers and like -- but like the powers are like actually ---