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YouTube Introduces 60fps Video Support

Posted by timothy on from the aw-that's-nothin' dept.

jones_supa (887896) writes Google's YouTube announced that it's adding two new features that will especially benefit people who enjoy watching gameplays and those who stream games live. Most excitingly, the site is rolling out 60 frames per second video playback. The company has a handful of videos from Battlefield Hardline and Titanfall (embedded in the article) that show what 60fps playback at high definition on YouTube looks like. As the another new feature, YouTube is also offering direct funding support for content creators — name-checking sites like Kickstarter and Patreon — and is allowing fans to 'contribute money to support your channel at any time, for any reason.' Adding the icing on the cake, the website has also a number of other random little features planned, including viewer-contributed subtitles, a library of sound effects and new interactive info cards.

2 of 157 comments (clear)

  1. Youtube is mostly crap by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    People could explain something with 3 lines of text, but instead they'll make a 20 minute video about it.

  2. Firefox + 60fps = No Go by rsmith-mac · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Unfortunately YouTube's 60fps support pokes a pretty big hole in the current state of Firefox.

    To play back 60fps videos you need to be using the HTML5 player and stream the 1080p version. The Flash player will not work here.

    The problem? Firefox doesn't support Media Source Extensions, which is what YouTube uses for DASH adaptive streaming. Mozilla's developers are working on the matter, but only for WebM for now. H.264/MP4 MSE support will have to wait.

    The end result is that 1080p60 playback works great on Chrome, Safari, and even IE11, but is all but useless on Firefox.

    I don't want to slag the Firefox devs too badly (hey, it's a free browser), but once again FOSS orthodoxy is getting in the way of practical feature development. H.264 support took an embarrassingly long time to come, and now Firefox is the only browser that that can't play back 1080p60 on YouTube.

    Between this and their constant attempts to turn Firefox into a Chrome-alike, it's getting harder and harder to justify using Firefox.