YouTube now has its first-ever 8K (4320p) video

If you’re one of the very, very few people who actually has an 8K monitor for their computer, you’ll be pleased to hear that YouTube has its first-ever 8K video for you to watch. Although the ability to watch a 4320p video at 60FPS has been available on YouTube for a few months now, nobody actually posted such a video until earlier this week. Known as “Ghost Towns,” the two-minute video shows off some gorgeous shots of an abandoned mining settlement. 

You can now watch a video in 8K on YouTube, provided you have the necessary gear to run it. The two minute video, called “Ghost Towns,” was uploaded to YouTube in recent days. It appears to show an abandoned mining settlement. But the truly notable thing about this video isn’t the content – it’s the fact that it offers the option to watch it at 4320p, or 8K. Of course, very few people will be able to view this as intended, as the equipment necessary for such playback simply isn’t widely (or affordably) available. Indeed, there aren’t even many 8K camera out there for shooting such content. In fact, this very video is a bit of a bodge job. It was shot on a RED Epic Dragon 6K camera in portrait orientation, then stitched together into an 8K landscape video using Adobe After Effects. Some shots were simply scaled up 125 percent from 6.1K. As Google told 9to5Google, YouTube has actually supported 8K since 2010. However, the specific 4320p/8K setting was only added as an option in the menu earlier this year.