Youtube : All New Videos are transcoded into WebM


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All YouTube uploads now in open-source WebM codec

.....Currently, there are countless devices used to record videos and hundreds of different video file formats. Even more, certain web browsers that you use to view video online only accept certain ?codecs? - or programs used to encode, transmit and playback video files - and others require plug-ins (converters) to integrate the video file with the browser.

Despite these complexities, one of our key aims is to deliver great content to you wherever you are - regardless of device, browser or other technical specification, so you never have to remember that complicated ?power adapter converter? to watch a video.

To that end, all new videos uploaded to YouTube are now transcoded into WebM. WebM is an open media file format for video and audio on the web. Its openness allows anyone to improve the format and its integrations, resulting in a better experience for you in the long-term. As we work to transcode more videos into WebM, we hope to reduce the technical incompatibilities that prevent you from accessing video while improving the overall online video landscape.

Transcoding all new video uploads into WebM is an important first step, and we?re also working to transcode our entire video catalog to WebM. Given the massive size of our catalog - nearly 6 years of video is uploaded to YouTube every day - this is quite the undertaking. So far we?ve already transcoded videos that make up 99% of views on the site or nearly 30% of all videos into WebM....

http://youtube-global.blogspot.com/2011/04/mmm-mmm-good-youtube-videos-now-served.html

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So what does this mean for overall audio quality? I use Youtube as a source for music streaming (no, I do not download from there, as the current quality is yuck), and I'm curious what bitrates the new codec's qualities offer.

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why would you use youtube for music streaming ? it's a video service, it's no good for audio. Why not use an actual music streaming service ?

anyway, it means nothign good, every video I've tested the WebM or in general all the html5video movies have had horrible quality compared to the flash, and they generally use more cpu and gpu. way to go forward.

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So a new plugin to watch new videos?

Firefox 4, Opera 11.10 and Chrome 10 all have WebM built-in. IE9 has a plugin available, don't think support for safari is out yet.

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Firefox 4, Opera 11.10 and Chrome 10 all have WebM built-in. IE9 has a plugin available, don't think support for safari is out yet.

This. So quit crying about it you babies. :p

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Only in Google's mind 720p/1080p + webm equals quality similar to h264.

It isn't that great for mobile browsing either as of what I'm aware it's not native html5.

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It isn't that great for mobile browsing either as of what I'm aware it's not native html5.

How do you mean? The HTML5 spec doesn't specify any particular codecs.

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Native as in browser support. ( iOS Safari goes with H264 - same with WP7 ) With MS and Apple backing it, a common file support/markup won't be drafted anytime soon!

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Firefox 4, Opera 11.10 and Chrome 10 all have WebM built-in. IE9 has a plugin available, don't think support for safari is out yet.

Safari plays WebM content via Perian just fine. If you don't have Perian installed and you're running OS X you're doing it wrong.

WebM is one step forward in the right direction, getting rid of MPEG-LA. Anyone who actually cheers for those guys should have their heads examined.

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why would you use youtube for music streaming ? it's a video service, it's no good for audio. Why not use an actual music streaming service ?

anyway, it means nothign good, every video I've tested the WebM or in general all the html5video movies have had horrible quality compared to the flash, and they generally use more cpu and gpu. way to go forward.

It depends on the encoding settings used, H.264 excels at higher quality settings, but of course sites like YouTube don't use those settings since they're so slow. At the quality settings YouTube is pushing out, WebM and H.264 aren't really distinguishable (hell, it's hard to tell Theora and H.264 apart at those bitrates)

Also, studios aren't uploading blu-ray quality videos to YouTube, the vast majority of these videos are from web cams/handycams and have been mangled via low quality settings before they ever got to YouTube.

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For those of you thinking VP8 is bad quality it isn't. It isn't that much worse than h.264 and it is still being developed to make it less cpu intensive and better quality. Sure there isn't much hardware support at the moment but that is changing. The Nvidia GT 520 card supports hardware decoding of WebM/VP8 and i'm sure the new ati's out later this year will probably have this. Intel will likely be forced to add support if ATI do this. As for mobile phones there are chips that are coming out soon with hardware decoding support, its just a matter of time until all new smartphones, cpus and gpus have support for hardware acceleration.

Flash is incredibly resource intensive and provides jerky video even on powerful pc's, WebM has been very smooth for me on youtube (requires enabling at youtube.com/html5).

Ahh, does this mean why I couldn't get any audio out of YouTube on IE9 but it worked fine in Chrome?

http://tools.google.com/dlpage/webmmf

there is the preview of the plugin for IE9, you need to enabled html5 at youtube.com/html5

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And it starts, soon to come a pay version of youtube with some "channels". All part of the plan.

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Apple's still a big force in the industry and unless Apple add support for it I imagine there'll be quite a bit of resistance to come.

Both Apple and Microsoft have only committed themselves to h264 out of the box support then add on top of that big name hardware vendors in the consumer and professional market place might have given lip service to WebM but the reality is seen when it comes to actual shipping products rather than promises to ship the products. All Google has had so far are companies promise or show interest - neither promise or show interest equals actual products shipping today, right now and that is where one lives - not what might happen in 10 years time but what are hardware and software companies shipping today in volume.

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I'm sure Google knows more about the complexities and forward thinking than you do.

And I'm sure that Google is aware that the h.264 which is better in any way doesn't cost them anything, but they just want their stuff out there, even if it is of lower quality.

But, as always, the software should be free guys are now masturbating that their god has given them another gift.

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