YouTube Video Quality Soon Will Not Suck
Apparently YouTube is on the verge of making a big announcement since there seems to have been an announcement about the announcement (nice way to get double the press). And search engine Mahalo has already created a page dedicated to news on “YouTube High Quality” with a video (embedded below) showing an example of how it would work. All I can say is finally! Here’s hoping that’s the big announcement. I love YouTube, but man, can you think of a place online to watch lower quality video?
*Update* Here’s a screenshot of the YouTube video with the high quality option. (Look right under the video for the new link that says “Watch this video in higher quality.”)
*Update 2* YouTube made its big announcement here, and it has to do more with developers.
Paul Ellis said:
Mar 11, 08 at 8:53 pmFor those who don’t want to write down the HQ video link at the end of the video here it is.
And to answer your question, no, I can’t think of a place to watch lower quality video on the web.
Paul Ellis said:
Mar 11, 08 at 9:08 pmAnother note on this. I analyzed the video stream and the codec is still “Flash Video” (aka Sorensen Spark) not a higher quality one like h264.
Here is the breakdown on the differences in quality for the video in the link:
Video Resolution: 448×336 (about twice as many pixels)
Video Bitrate: 628kbps
Audio Codec and Bitrate: mono MP3 96kbps (way higher quality)
Audio Sample Rate: 44khz
Video Resolution: 320×240
Video Bitrate: 315kbps
Audio Codec and Bitrate: mono MP3 8kbps
Audio Sample Rate: 22khz
Paul Ellis said:
Mar 11, 08 at 9:24 pmOk, my last comment for a while. This isn’t the only “HQ” video out there on Youtube. Here are some more “HQ” videos.
Paul Ellis said:
Mar 12, 08 at 12:01 amOne more tidbit I found. If you add &fmt=6 to the end of the video’s link (often even ones that don’t show the option to switch HQ) it will load the HQ version. If you do &fmt=18 it will load an MP4/h264 version. There isn’t always a HQ or MP4 version however. The example below only has standard and MP4, no HQ FLV.
Example:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cpMu6yyH6pY
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cpMu6yyH6pY&fmt=18
Joseph said:
May 02, 08 at 2:40 amI can barely see a difference. Maybe the sound is a bit better, but the quality still sucks. I dont know how youtube got so popular. Some body could have created a site just like youtube, and had perfect video quality. Infact that can be done now, and youtube wont be so dominant anymore.
But still, I think youtube should have high definition video quality.