May 19, 2010

How to Play WebM Video on YouTube

If you want to try WebM, the open video format released by Google, you first need a browser that supports it. For now, WebM is not supported in a stable version of a browser, but you can install a Firefox nightly build or an Opera build. I download Opera 10.54, which is more stable than the nightly builds of Firefox.

After installing the browser, go to YouTube's HTML5 experiment and click on "join HTML5 beta". To find videos that are available in the WebM format, use YouTube's search feature and append &webm=1 to the URL, like this: http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=web&webm=1.

Click on a video and you'll notice that YouTube no longer uses Flash or H.264. There's even a messages that makes the video player more cluttered: "HTML5 * WEBM".


YouTube converted a small percentage of videos to WebM. A search for [web] returns 4,610 WebM videos, while millions of other videos aren't available yet in this format. Check Opera's blog post for more information about the WebM format, embedding WebM videos and more examples of WebM videos.
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12 comments:

  1. BosslyMay 19, 2010 at 1:18 PM

    Firefox fall on Fullsceen

    ReplyDelete
  2. Bryan KirkMay 19, 2010 at 5:54 PM

    It doesn't work for me. I just get a spinning logo instead of the video (I'm using the Labs build of Opera that has WebM support added).

    ReplyDelete
  3. SwadhinMay 20, 2010 at 1:43 PM

    it's in latest chromium build http://blog.chromium.org/2010/05/webm-and-vp8-land-in-chromium.html

    ReplyDelete
  4. bb(tm)May 24, 2010 at 1:26 PM

    full screen with javascript in the opera version available. google it.

    ReplyDelete
  5. AnonymousJune 13, 2010 at 9:15 AM

    Latest Chromium Build 6.0.435.0 (49649)14th June 2010 isnt working.

    ReplyDelete
  6. AnonymousJune 16, 2010 at 1:01 AM

    I don't get what the point of the exercise is if we have to get proprietary flash in order to play WebM content within a HTML5 (draft) and WebM enabled browser. Sure Google gets to give Apple the finger via MPEG-LA. But the internet isn't any freer or accessible as long as we still have to run these videos via flash and Adobe remains the guardian of all media on the net.

    ReplyDelete
  7. Alex ChituJune 16, 2010 at 1:04 AM

    @Anonymous:

    Of course you don't need Flash to play WebM videos. That's the whole point of adding native video support in web browsers: playing videos without installing plug-ins.

    ReplyDelete
  8. AnonymousJune 16, 2010 at 2:21 PM

    Safari 5 doesn't work...

    ReplyDelete
  9. AnonymousJuly 4, 2010 at 7:12 AM

    safari only supports h264.

    ReplyDelete
  10. AnonymousJuly 13, 2010 at 3:16 PM

    Full screen DOES work, but you need to click on the "clip" icon next to the full window icon, then expand THAT window.

    Running Firefox 4.01b

    ReplyDelete
  11. AnonymousMarch 22, 2012 at 5:35 PM

    ok, I got this, and all it did was seriously screw up my PC. I am royally pissed.I uninstalled, and it's still messed up. All I ever get with youtube vits now is the spinning buffer symbol, except now it's sort of skewed and off-center as it spins. did this thing permanently mess up my PC? How do I fix this?

    ReplyDelete
  12. UnknownApril 7, 2012 at 9:46 PM

    Please help cant play yyoutube videos on ps vita

    ReplyDelete

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