Youtube offering 720p videos

Aetheri

For a long time, "youtube quality" has been used as a pejorative. Not any more- youtube is now offering videos in 720p. To try it out, find a suitable video and add &fmt=22 to the end of the url. Note that this doesn't work on all videos, probably since you need a 720p source for this to work and few people have bothered with uploading such videos before. Don't forget to use full screen mode.

Here's a couple examples; the second one might have spoilers for MGS4 in it (I'm not sure since I've never played MGS4):

http://jp.youtube.com/watch?v=nxy9anViK2w&fmt=22

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=boiHw-cicQo&fmt=22

http://jp.youtube.com/watch?v=hReNT3Le2Mw&fmt=22

There have been high-quality streaming video sites in the past (stage6, dailymotion, etc.), but none with the user base of youtube (that I know of). Although this is apparently "a very old experiment", I think that it deserves some discussion- is this the start of widespread streaming hd video? Or will it remain a neat trick that only a few people know about? And even if youtube chooses not to publicize this or gets rid of it altogether, what will happen when (if?) such things become widespread?

Rook

It may be 720p but that's pretty meaningless when the bitrate is horrendous.

PeregrineFalcon

Rook wrote: »

It may be 720p but that's pretty meaningless when the bitrate is horrendous.

But now that it's in 720p, you can make out the crisp, distinct edge of each of the thousands of macroblocks!

darkenedwing

yea, those video's played horribly for me in full screen
It would be nice if they officially implemented it and optimized it so it didn't suck :P

DigDug2000

They play fine for me (at least the MSG one did, its the only one I clicked on). Some of the television networks have offered HD-streaming options for awhile that seem to work fine too. I've never understood all the backlash against it.

PeregrineFalcon

DigDug2000 wrote: »

They play fine for me (at least the MSG one did, its the only one I clicked on). Some of the television networks have offered HD-streaming options for awhile that seem to work fine too. I've never understood all the backlash against it.

Usually because the bitrate for "streamed HD" - not the dedicated TV company's networks - is garbage, and reduces everything to a mess of blockyness that conjures up memories of PSX FMVs.

RandomEngy

It suffers from horribly awful fullscreen flash performance, where CPU use scales to the size of the video window. Fullscreen-ing to 1280x1024 brings the base CPU use up to around 80 for my Core 2, and the fluctuations cause it to drop a lot of frames. This is on top of the already stutter-prone flash video it's using. And their insistence of the seek bar appearing at all times in full-screen, with white bars on the top and bottom for the wide aspect ratio.

Man, do I miss Stage6.

Gibb

RandomEngy wrote: »

Man, do I miss Stage6.

Quote for the most truthful thing I've heard all year.

Idoliside

Gibb wrote: »

RandomEngy wrote: »

Man, do I miss Stage6.

Quote for the most truthful thing I've heard all year.

very much agreed. why havnt they sold on their streaming technology

contraband

PeregrineFalcon wrote: »

Rook wrote: »

It may be 720p but that's pretty meaningless when the bitrate is horrendous.

But now that it's in 720p, you can make out the crisp, distinct edge of each of the thousands of macroblocks!

I don't know what you guys are talking about, the MGS4 video was outstanding compared to normal internet-streamed videos. Not quite as good as, like, GameTrailers HD, but pretty close I'd say.

RandomEngy

contraband wrote: »

PeregrineFalcon wrote: »

Rook wrote: »

It may be 720p but that's pretty meaningless when the bitrate is horrendous.

But now that it's in 720p, you can make out the crisp, distinct edge of each of the thousands of macroblocks!

I don't know what you guys are talking about, the MGS4 video was outstanding compared to normal internet-streamed videos. Not quite as good as, like, GameTrailers HD, but pretty close I'd say.

This is because all streaming video except GameTrailers HD is utter garbage, which is decent. It's just you have different levels of garbage-ness. For the most part, poorly performing Flash video with awkward interfaces, quicktime movies and horribly low bitrate WMVs rule the day. Every time I click the small "fullscreen" button on a flash control that looks different on every site and takes a few seconds to get situated, then gobbles up CPU while I watch its clumsily drop frames all over its unhidable seek bar, a part of me dies inside.

I swear to you in 10 years you will all look back in horror at what we were doing with internet video.

DigDug2000

RandomEngy wrote: »

contraband wrote: »

PeregrineFalcon wrote: »

Rook wrote: »

It may be 720p but that's pretty meaningless when the bitrate is horrendous.

But now that it's in 720p, you can make out the crisp, distinct edge of each of the thousands of macroblocks!

I don't know what you guys are talking about, the MGS4 video was outstanding compared to normal internet-streamed videos. Not quite as good as, like, GameTrailers HD, but pretty close I'd say.

This is because all streaming video except GameTrailers HD is utter garbage, which is decent. It's just you have different levels of garbage-ness. For the most part, poorly performing Flash video with awkward interfaces, quicktime movies and horribly low bitrate WMVs rule the day. Every time I click the small "fullscreen" button on a flash control that looks different on every site and takes a few seconds to get situated, then gobbles up CPU while I watch its clumsily drop frames all over its unhidable seek bar, a part of me dies inside.

I swear to you in 10 years you will all look back in horror at what we were doing with internet video.

Meh. I still don't get it. Then again, I lived with a PS2 that would randomly freeze up every now and then too. And the governments forced digital video out of my cable company, which seems to mean that I get to watch artifacting and out-of-sync sound constantly there too. A few little blips, tearing, or dropped frames just doesn't bother me any more. From the way people talk, you'd think that the entire thing just freezes, but maybe we have different opinions of what "garbage" is.

RandomEngy

If you simply cannot appreciate seamless video playback and intuitive, clean, responsive user interfaces then I suppose flash video is going to be fine with you.

But dear lord, this is 2008. You have throngs of people slobbering over FLAC in the audio sphere, scrambling over differences they can't even hear, but no one seems to care about the quality of video playback on the web. It's like we took a solved problem, beat it up and dragged it into the abyss.

FyreWulff

Video playback is very far from a solved problem.

And that video seemed fine to me, but then again I never attempt to watch any internet video fullscreen.

ZackSchilling

Flash just needs to use OpenGL if available for video scaling. Using the CPU is ludicrous.

OremLK

Video played fine for me fullscreen @ 1680x1050. And yes, it looked better than ordinary YouTube videos by an order of magnitude. Of course, the low bitrate does mean it doesn't look like "true" HD, but at least you can actually watch the video fullscreen at this quality.

LoneIgadzra

OremLK wrote: »

Video played fine for me fullscreen @ 1680x1050. And yes, it looked better than ordinary YouTube videos by an order of magnitude. Of course, the low bitrate does mean it doesn't look like "true" HD, but at least you can actually watch the video fullscreen at this quality.

Same here. Core 2 duo though.

McCly

Idoliside wrote: »

Gibb wrote: »

RandomEngy wrote: »

Man, do I miss Stage6.

Quote for the most truthful thing I've heard all year.

very much agreed. why havnt they sold on their streaming technology

I forgot about how much I loved Stage6.

contraband

I'm not familiar with Stage6. My level of standard (aside from GameTrailers HD) is Vimeo. Was it above or beyond that level?

FyreWulff

Vimeo's policies are stupid, so anything is better than Vimeo.

Organichu

Netflix streaming video (when you have a good connection) is pretty danged good, IMO.

RandomEngy

FyreWulff wrote: »

Video playback is very far from a solved problem.

And that video seemed fine to me, but then again I never attempt to watch any internet video fullscreen.

In terms of video playback quality, yes it is solved. Media Player back in 2001 on a machine from that day would play back local video files far better than flash on a modern PC.

contraband wrote: »

I'm not familiar with Stage6. My level of standard (aside from GameTrailers HD) is Vimeo. Was it above or beyond that level?

Stage6 had its own browser plugin for playing DivX files, so it bypassed all the flash nonsense. Plus you could upload HD videos (and I mean real HD videos, like 720p, not HD by flash standards, which is simply passable). Plus it had a built in feature to save any video on the site to your hard drive.

mcdermott

Organichu wrote: »

Netflix streaming video (when you have a good connection) is pretty danged good, IMO.

Remember, though, that Netflix is (to my knowledge) topping out at 480p and requires (IIRC) 3MB or so for full quality at that resolution.

But yeah, if you've got the bandwidth it looks perfectly fine.

Organichu

mcdermott wrote: »

Organichu wrote: »

Netflix streaming video (when you have a good connection) is pretty danged good, IMO.

Remember, though, that Netflix is (to my knowledge) topping out at 480p and requires (IIRC) 3MB or so for full quality at that resolution.

But yeah, if you've got the bandwidth it looks perfectly fine.

Yeah, I was just saying that in response to someone who said that streaming video is typically poopy.

mcdermott

Organichu wrote: »

mcdermott wrote: »

Organichu wrote: »

Netflix streaming video (when you have a good connection) is pretty danged good, IMO.

Remember, though, that Netflix is (to my knowledge) topping out at 480p and requires (IIRC) 3MB or so for full quality at that resolution.

But yeah, if you've got the bandwidth it looks perfectly fine.

Yeah, I was just saying that in response to someone who said that streaming video is typically poopy.

Fair enough. Though a membership service should be expected to be better.

What's more impressive to me at least is how decent hulu.com looks most of the time. Being free and all. At least for 480p content, though Doctor Horrible looked just fine at 720p as well. Generally it's a matter of bitrate more than anything.

OremLK

Yeah, Hulu is about (almost?) as good as Netflix. They have a surprisingly good selection of movies, as well. I watched 28 Days Later for the first time on the service the other day, and was pleased with the quality and overall experience.

iTunesIsEvil

Was Stage 6 that foray of DivX into the streaming stuff?

Didn't you get asked to install their handy-dandy (read: horribly obtrusive, random folder-creating bullshit) software when you tried to watch a video?

contraband

YouTube made their player bigger. The MGS4 makes a lot more sense now, a higher resolution for a bigger screen.

Recoil42

iTunesIsEvil wrote: »

Was Stage 6 that foray of DivX into the streaming stuff?

Didn't you get asked to install their handy-dandy (read: horribly obtrusive, random folder-creating bullshit) software when you tried to watch a video?

DivX player was pretty good, for a 3rd party player, actually.

And really, what else did you want them to do? How else are they supposed to squeeze a codec over the tubes? You need a plugin, any way you look at it.

iTunesIsEvil

Recoil42 wrote: »

DivX player was pretty good, for a 3rd party player, actually.

And really, what else did you want them to do? How else are they supposed to squeeze a codec over the tubes? You need a plugin, any way you look at it.

I don't have a problem with installing a codec. What I don't want to see is random folders added to my My Documents folder. If all I'm installing is a piece of software to play video via a browser why do I need a Start Menu item and folders added to places that I didn't specify? On top of that I have a special dislike for installers that default to installing a "Inturwebztube Best Search Toolbar" in addition to the software that I actually expressed interest in installing.

I guess my problem is not with Stage6 as a codec. It's with the marketing department telling the developers where to add folders and shortcuts and special offers so that the user can maximize their web-based video viewing experience with Stage6 by DivX. :P

Is Hulu based on Flash? I either haven't had to install a codec to watch videos there, or it's based on Flash and I've already had it installed on each machine before I've visited the site.

RandomEngy

I think if you just installed the bare web streaming component it didn't do a lot of that. And the software bundling in the installer is annoying, yes, but really it just means you have to uncheck a few boxes while installing.

Raslin

RIP stage6