Higher-Resolution YouTube Videos Currently In Testing

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."

How will they handle the higher bandwidth needs???

[Joe The Dragon]

How will they handle the higher bandwidth needs???

iPhone quality?

[SuperKendall]

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:How will they handle the higher bandwidth needs

[Lord Haw Haw]

The cable to Japan [slashdot.org] could help!

Lawyers will love this

[gilesjuk]

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.

And Google video?

[zebslash]

What about Google Video? Would that work too?

Re:iPhone quality?

[moderatorrater]

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.

Same great pixels, more bits please

[SuperBanana]

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...

Re:To state the obvious

[TubeSteak]

According to some reports, yes, they have kept the originals.

Which leads to the next question:
If I delete a video from YouTube, do they delete the source file?

I already mourn the loss of stage6

[hairykrishna]

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...

Nope

[SuperKendall]

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:iPhone quality?

[webrunner]

Something is weird... whenever I look at a fmt=18 video it's noticeably blurrier with heavier artifacting then the regular video. And usually fmt=6 doesn't work for those same videos. Some individual frames seem a little sharper, but generally the video is worse on fmt=18 then no fmt at all.

Already Done Via Clever Users?

[bmajik]

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.

Re:How will they handle the higher bandwidth needs

[ischorr]

I'm not THAT interested in this quirk, just a little bit. =)

But I tried a few different things, viewing the video WITHOUT the &fmt=6 first:

- FF3 on XP - Same with/without the &fmt=6
- FF2 on XP - Same with/without the &fmt=6
- IE6 on XP - Same
- FF3 on Mac 10.4 - Same with/without
- Safari 3 on Mac - DIFFERENT with/without the &fmt=6
- Opera on Mac 10.4 - DIFFERENT with/without
- Opera on XP - DIFFERENT with/without ...So it looks to me like Firefox and IE users get the high-quality video by default, whereas Safari and Opera (and maybe other browsers) get the low-quality one? That's weird.

Re:And Google video?

[The Queen]

The project I'm involved with [thehousebetween.com] uploads to Google Video and Veoh simultaneously; we had to quit using YouTube because we're doing half-hour episodes and they have size limitations. (Where do they get off putting limits on their free service? Bah!) The director was having to chop things up into 10-minute chunks. Hence, Veoh, which is good quality but apparently not as popular.

Google Video is a markedly lower quality than what we get on Veoh; but for folks who don't want to be forced to sign up (or who have older machines that can't load their player) we have the Google option.

It would make me very happy if this positively affected Google Video.