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November 15, 2007

YouTube to Introduce High-Quality Videos

YouTube doesn't innovate too much and many of the features introduced lately have already been available elsewhere. Unlike other video sharing websites, YouTube is entering the mainstream and a big audience means a lot of pressure and responsibility.

CNet reports that YouTube intends to offer higher-quality video streams in the near future. "Although YouTube's goal, [Steve Chen] said, is to make the site's vast library of content available to everyone, and that requires a fairly low-bitrate stream, the service is testing a player that detects the speed of the viewer's Net connection and serves up higher-quality video if they want it." Steve Chen said that the high-quality streams will be available in the next months, but only for some of the videos. This is probably the reason why YouTube's bulk uploader increased the size limit for a video from 100 MB to 1 GB.

According to Wikipedia, "YouTube's video playback technology is based on Macromedia's Flash Player 7 and uses the Sorenson Spark H.263 video codec. (...) [The video] has pixel dimensions of 320 by 240 and runs at 25 frames per second. The maximum data rate is 300kbit/s." Flash Player 8 introduced a better codec: On2 TrueMotion VP6, which is used by blip.tv.

YouTube recommends to use these settings when you upload videos: MPEG4 format, 640x480 resolution, MP3 audio and 30 frames per second.

Other video sites already offer high-quality videos. Stage6 from DivX shows high resolution videos, but it requires a special plug-in. Vimeo has a channel for high definition videos: the maximum resolution is 1280 x 720, 12 times higher than the one available at YouTube.

9 comments:

  1. I think the more appropriate statement would be that YouTube will introduce higher resolution videos.

    ReplyDelete
  2. I would be surprised to not see these higher resolution videos use the H.264 codec. H.264 support will be available in the next Flash player 9 update -- codename "moviestar".

    Both AppleTV and iPhone already deliver YouTube videos via H.264. So YouTube has already converted many videos to this use this codec.

    ReplyDelete
  3. YouTube has new high quality video standards, and from my experience DivX is producing the best results thus far as shown here:

    Youtube Hi Def
    http://www.squidoo.com/youtubehd

    ReplyDelete
  4. Have you heard that YouTube is now offering you the choice between lower and higher quality video playback? I have a post about how you can watch YouTube videos in High Quality by simply adding some code to the URL. Copy & paste is all you need to know!

    http://chvnx.com/2008/03/youtube-hack.html

    ReplyDelete
  5. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_y8Qp98u-Dk

    Check that one out! The image is pretty good for that many small particles in background.
    The audio, well, it's better than the HD broadcast itself. Not sure if it's too loud but I don't hear any distortion that annoys me....

    ReplyDelete
  6. youtube can never provide any good videos.But does anyone here know a good videos site??????

    ReplyDelete
  7. Hi Guys,

    I am not trying to plug here but I was having trouble working out how to watch, create and embed high quality video in Youtube. I found out the easist ways and have recently put up a website that explains it all.

    The site is totally free. I have even included a script that generates the high quality embed code for you with different options. So it's even easier.

    You can take a look at: www.youtubehq.info

    It's free and I'm trying to help the guys that don't know or make it easier for the guys that do. Thanks, Mark

    ReplyDelete
  8. i want to tell you all, nothing above the comments can be use, i have tried all of 7 comments, useless! please don't give a fake comment can you?

    ReplyDelete
  9. Really Stage6 was best when compared to all those,in terms of streaming as well as quality.

    ReplyDelete

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