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Higher-Resolution YouTube Videos Currently In Testing

Posted by Zonk on Mon Mar 03, 2008 01:10 PM
from the someday-that-dog-shall-rule-the-world dept.
The Internet Media
jason writes "YouTube has never really been known for streaming videos at a high resolution, but it appears that they are taking early steps at providing higher quality videos. The project was announced last year by the site's co-founder Steve Chen, and now appears to be in the earliest stages of deployment. By adding a parameter onto the end of a video's URL you're able to watch it in a higher quality (in terms of audio and video) that is actually quite noticeable. Not all videos have been converted at this point, but they do have millions upon millions of videos that they need to do."
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[+] High-Quality YouTube Videos Coming Soon 134 comments
mlauzon writes with the news that YouTube's co-founder Steve Chen has announced high-quality video streams are in the works for the popular site. He spoke today at the NewTeeVee Live event, discussing the challenges facing the project and when we can expect to see less grainy social videos. "The need to buffer the video before it starts playing will change the experience. Hence the experiment, rather than just a rapid rollout of this technology. On stage, he said the current resolution of YouTube videos has been "good enough" for the site until now. Chen told me he expects that high-quality YouTube videos will be available to everyone within three months. Chen also confirmed that in YouTube's internal archive, all video is stored at the native resolution in which it was sent. However, he said, a large portion of YouTube videos are pretty poor quality to begin with — 320x240. Streaming them in high-quality mode isn't going to help much."
Submission: Higher-Resolution YouTube Videos Being Tested by Anonymous Coward
[+] News: YouTube Adds Full-Length Television Shows 197 comments
thefickler writes "YouTube has moved to put full-length television shows on its site for the first time. Historically, YouTube has hosted a bewildering and attractive variety of video clips, the vast majority of which have been under ten minutes in length. YouTube has announced that it had finalized a deal with CBS to offer shows such as Star Trek, MacGyver, Beverly Hills 90210, and The Young and the Restless. I can't wait to watch The Young and the Restless!"
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Higher-Resolution YouTube Videos Currently In Testing 50 Comments More /

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  • How will they handle the higher bandwidth needs???

  • Sweet (Score:5, Funny)

    by QuantumRiff (120817) on Monday March 03 2008, @01:13PM (#22625720)
    Cause dammit, I want crisp, clear flames when I'm watching a 15 year old set himself on fire!

    • Re:Sweet (Score:5, Funny)

      by ArcherB (796902) * on Monday March 03 2008, @01:23PM (#22625876) Journal

      Cause dammit, I want crisp, clear flames when I'm watching a 15 year old set himself on fire!
      Exactly what I was thinking... well, except my thoughts dealt with 2 girls, a cup of something and corn... but the idea was the same.

  • Converting (Score:5, Insightful)

    by RandoX (828285) on Monday March 03 2008, @01:13PM (#22625726)
    they do have millions upon millions of videos that they need to do.

    Really? I would argue that of the millions of videos on the net that I think need to be at a higher quality, very few of them are on YouTube.

  • iPhone quality? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by SuperKendall (25149) on Monday March 03 2008, @01:16PM (#22625764)
    I'd noticed that using the iPhone to view videos on WiFi, gave a notable better picture than the web version. I think the flag is accessing the same video the iPhone makes use of.

    AppleTV also makes use of this higher level of quality I believe.

    • Re:iPhone quality? (Score:5, Interesting)

      by moderatorrater (1095745) on Monday March 03 2008, @01:27PM (#22625956)
      I think it's the resolution difference between the iphone, your tv and your computer monitor. On the iphone or your TV, the resolution is closer to that of youtube, so you don't notice the low quality, whereas on your monitor, they can devote 30 or 40 pixels to the aliasing on the low quality video. I noticed this effect a year and a half ago when watching youtube videos through a computer hooked to a tv - the video looked nearly perfect because of the resolution difference.

      Just goes to show you that sometimes, lower quality is better.

      • Re:iPhone quality? (Score:4, Informative)

        by nevali (942731) on Monday March 03 2008, @01:46PM (#22626232) Homepage
        It was widely reported (and by that I mean, Steve Jobs stood up on stage and announced it) that Google were storing all new videos as H.264 (and steadily converting old ones) for both the iPhone/iPod touch and Apple TV.

        I would imagine this initiative is related to that.

      • Nope (Score:4, Interesting)

        by SuperKendall (25149) on Monday March 03 2008, @02:59PM (#22627108)
        I carefully compared screen and iPhone versions side by side with the same video, some northern lights over the north pole. Some stars in the sky and other details were clearly visible on the iPhone that were not apparent in the web version. The resolution in terms of number of pixels, I think is actually about the same. A lot of that could just come down to compression artifacts but I thought it was interesting there was a noticeable difference.

    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      by anotherone (132088)
      iPhone loads the higher quality .MP4 video because it can't play .flv - Apple TV probably does the same thing for the same reason.

    • Re:iPhone quality? (Score:5, Informative)

      by dtfinch (661405) * on Monday March 03 2008, @01:54PM (#22626322) Journal
      &fmt=18 gives you the h264 iphone video, also playable in the latest Flash 9.0 r115.
      &fmt=6 gives you the comparable quality but higher bitrate Flash video which works on older Flash players.

      And &fmt=17 gives you a crappy low bitrate very low resolution mpeg4 video for older/cheaper phones, but it isn't playable in Flash.

  • Lawyers will love this (Score:5, Interesting)

    by gilesjuk (604902) <giles.jones@nOspAm.zen.co.uk> on Monday March 03 2008, @01:19PM (#22625804)
    At the moment the quality is ropey at times, you can say that it's no substitute for a real DVD (When there's a copyrighted file on the site, not that that's allowed).

    Once it approaches DVD quality the lawyers will argue it's like DVD on demand.

  • H.264 on iPhone already (Score:5, Informative)

    by MouseR (3264) on Monday March 03 2008, @01:20PM (#22625838) Homepage
    iPhone users have been enjoying H.264-encoded YouTube for many months already.

    To be frank, I've not been on YouTube.com ever since I've gotten the iPhone. The video quality is SO much better on H.264 than crap^H^H^H^H flash players that it's worth wasting time with it. Plus, you can actually pause, fast-forward, rewind and skip to any point without it failing like flash players always do.

    • Technically.. (Score:3, Informative)

      by Junta (36770)
      Flash 9 supports h264 video codec.
      • Knowing Flash, it may or may not be worth it.

        Apparently, recently, they've added the ability for video decoding to be hardware-accelerated, but only when the video is fullscreen. I'm still amazed that the vector graphics aren't accelerated, even if it's when Flash is a plugin -- at this rate, we'll have hardware-accelerated SVG in Firefox before we'll have properly hardware-accelerated Flash.

        Now, when YouTube has the option to also serve the video in a straight mp4 container (or similar)...

    • Re:H.264 on iPhone already (Score:5, Informative)

      by MostAwesomeDude (980382) on Monday March 03 2008, @01:30PM (#22625986) Homepage
      Youtube is free, and it's not worth $400 just for a little piece of black plastic that plays the same H.264 video that VLC and mplayer have had for years.

      Also Apple's Quicktime MPEG4 library has some significant deficiencies; they don't implement the entire standard.

  • And Google video? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by zebslash (1107957) on Monday March 03 2008, @01:24PM (#22625904)
    What about Google Video? Would that work too?

  • High Quality? I think Not. (Score:4, Insightful)

    by PC and Sony Fanboy (1248258) on Monday March 03 2008, @01:35PM (#22626062) Journal
    When Youtube upgrades the quality of their VIDEOS and not the quality of the video FILES ... then I'll be interested. For now, as so many others have said ... Youtube is adequate for watching 15 year olds set themselves on fire ;)

    • Re:High Quality? I think Not. (Score:4, Informative)

      by owlnation (858981) on Monday March 03 2008, @02:06PM (#22626460)
      ... actually there is high quality content Youtube -- the copyrighted stuff.

    • Re:High Quality? I think Not. (Score:5, Insightful)

      by JustinOpinion (1246824) on Monday March 03 2008, @02:37PM (#22626816)
      Actually I would argue that there is plenty of worthwhile content on YouTube (and I'm not talking about unauthorized uploads of TV shows). The thing is that YouTube is like the Internet at large: there is lots of crap so if you just randomly poke around you will of course see a predominance of crap.

      If you browse YouTube a bit, and subscribe to the channels that are actually worthwhile, you will quickly build up a feed of interesting stuff with new videos every day. You can use featured videos to get some ideas of new channels to consider. On the other hand, using "most viewed" and "currently watching" to find good stuff is a waste of time. As a random example of something "worthwhile" (in my opinion), consider Wallstrip [youtube.com]--a show that does profiles on companies and stock trends, and is infused with sarcasm and wit. There are also channels that discuss science, that do decent original comedy, there is a national geographic channel, etc.

      Frankly I think YouTube is dropping the ball a bit by not providing a more useful method of finding the best content. An Amazon-like "people who subscribe/rate like you also like..." would help alot. Just as Slashdot uses various tricks (moderation, friends/foes, etc.) to bring attention to the quality material, YouTube should work harder to bring the good material to the top. The current star-ratings, comment-ratings, and ranking-by-viewing are not working very well. Frankly I don't care about the ratings of YouTube at large; I care about the ratings of a finite subset of like-minded users.

  • Same great pixels, more bits please (Score:5, Interesting)

    by SuperBanana (662181) on Monday March 03 2008, @01:38PM (#22626102)

    YouTube has never really been known for streaming videos at a high resolution,

    The problem isn't necessarily resolution- it's the unbelievably low bitrates, and the fact that they insist on re-encoding everything that's uploaded to them. It's apparently possible to upload FLV in a very precise way such that they don't re-encode, but they could make it a lot easier (and it's to their advantage- every video given to them ready-to-go is a video they don't have to waste incoming bandwidth, temporary disk storage, and bandwidth on.)

    What youtube *should* be doing is offering paid accounts which allow for higher bitrate videos; say, a low-end for the camwhores who want better pixels for their whining, a mid-level for guys like Will It Blend, and a top-end account for big companies that want to push their ads out on Youtube. Will It Blend, for example, would probably plunk down $20/month to get better videos.

    Sadly, though- companies like blip.tv have already filled the niche of high-quality videos, and they're getting attacked left and right by other sites like metafilter which already does revenue sharing...and there are a billion and one embedded FLV hosting sites...

  • Conversion (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Tavor (845700) on Monday March 03 2008, @01:38PM (#22626104)
    I must say, it looks nice for the most part. Though I would prefer my videos be higher resolution to begin with, not "converted" down then back up -- it would prevent those little slight things you see in the video.

  • CPU Loading (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Detritus (11846) on Monday March 03 2008, @02:02PM (#22626414) Homepage
    High-resolution is great and wonderful, but what about the unwashed masses with older systems? I'd rather see a video play smoothly in medium resolution, rather than see it stutter in high resolution. The newer codecs seem to choke on older systems. My Mac can handle MPEG-2 without problems, but it has difficulty with some of the newer videos.

  • I already mourn the loss of stage6 (Score:5, Interesting)

    by hairykrishna (740240) on Monday March 03 2008, @02:11PM (#22626520)
    Now stage6 has gone, there's no site that provides decent quality streaming content. Youtube should get rid of the 10 min length cap and up their quality to fill the gap in the market.

    Obviously, when I say market, I mean enormous money hole...

    • I think YouPorn.com has this enormous gap / money hole thing you talk about filled already...

    • Re:I already mourn the loss of stage6 (Score:5, Funny)

      by pavon (30274) on Monday March 03 2008, @03:22PM (#22627382)

      Obviously, when I say market, I mean enormous money hole...
      At Google's next shareholder conference call:

      Google: Good news! By increasing video quality and duration we've managed to double YouTube's profits over the last quarter.
      Investor: Wait, didn't YouTube have negative profits last quarter?
      Google: Ah yes, that would be the bad news.

  • Already Done Via Clever Users? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by bmajik (96670) <matt@mattevans.org> on Monday March 03 2008, @03:15PM (#22627270) Homepage Journal
    I was checking out anime OP/ED videos a while back for a series I had started watching and came across someone that has somehow tricked youtube into letting ultra-high resolution videos on the site.

    Here's an example: http://youtube.com/watch?v=2Vtrmpol390 [youtube.com]

    Notice that the "clock" on the player says its 9:59 long. Note that the streaming hiccups and stutters because the actual video is only 1:30 long -- just like any other anime OP. The time-code computation appears to be totally off for this video, but the quality is fantastic. Listen with good headphones -- the audio and video quality are both fantastic in this video.

    Now compare to a "normal" youtube version: http://youtube.com/watch?v=B5PoF34qM0o [youtube.com]

    This person's other movies are all other anime OP/ED sections that all say they are around 10 minutes long, but in reality are all 1:30 or so.

    So it seems this person has figured out how to exploit something in youtubes video analysis/recoder to get ultra-high quality audio/video, at the expense of breaking the media-length calculations.

  • Oh great... (Score:5, Funny)

    by coolhaus (186994) <(coolhaus) (at) (gmail.com)> on Monday March 03 2008, @03:53PM (#22627730)
    Now I can get rickrolled with more pixels than before.

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