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YouTube Offers Experimental Opt-In HTML5 Video

Posted by CmdrTaco on from the step-in-the-right-direction dept.

bonch writes "YouTube is now offering the experimental option to view all YouTube videos using HTML5 in H.264 format. Supported browsers are Chrome, Safari, and the ChromeFrame plug-in for Internet Explorer. Captions, ads, and annotations aren't yet supported but are coming soon."

2 of 265 comments (clear)

  1. Re:What about firefox (ogg video)? by Yvan256 · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I didn't say that Theora needs triple storage capacity. I said that Google would need to triple their storage capacity, the first 100% being taken by H.264 files (obviously).

    As for that page you linked to, look at the screenshots. There's nothing subjective about them, H.264 is the clear winner. If you can't see that then you need to calibrate your monitor. Same bandwidth = lower quality results using Theora.

  2. Re:Works great in my side by side comparison by gazbo · · Score: 3, Interesting
    I've tried in in Chrome/WinXP, and the HTML5 version is absolute crap. No significant difference in CPU usage (but as both never get above about 5% it's hard to tell), but the HTML5 version looks awful. The video is completely blocky - small blocks, mind, but so sharply defined that it looks like the video has been painted on canvas.

    I suspect the actual amount of detail in the pictures is the same, but the way it's smoothed in the Flash version looks a hell of a lot better than how Chrome handles it. It's even worse in motion, because the size and type of artifact changes depending on whether areas are moving, unlike the Flash version which is consistent.

    Presumably it's just different options being passed to the 264 codec, but without any obvious way for me to change them it's verging on painful to watch.