After teasing us for a year with the option to watch “higher quality” videos that weren’t quite high-def, it appears that YouTube is making the switch to HD, at least for some videos that have been uploaded in that quality. Earlier this month, there were reports of YouTube testing this feature, but this morning it seems to be more widespread. (This comes after YouTube adopted a widescreen format for all of its videos last week).
There is nothing on the YouTube Blog yet, but people are starting to notice the new feature on Twitter this morning. You can find a bunch of HD videos on YouTube by searching for “HD.” For videos uploaded in HD, in the lower right hand corner there is no a link that says “watch in HD” instead of “watch in higher quality,” which is what it used to say. The screenshot above is from a video uploaded eight months ago making fun of the fact that the higher quality link wasn’t really HD, but it is funnier now because that link has been changed to “watch in HD.” The HD option only appears on videos on YouTube itself, not in embedded videos.
I have not tested to see whether it is true HD, but the difference is noticeable. Below are two screenshots of the same video from Nicolas Charbonnier, a reader who tipped us off to the change. The top is the regular low-res YouTube video we’ve all grumblingly accepted as the norm on the Web. The bottom screenshot is of the same frame in HD.
I would not recommend watching the HD version if you don’t have a high-bandwidth connection. The HD video is taxing even the regular broadband in my office. If that’s not reason enough to get fiber-optic broadband, I don’t know what is.
ok I’ll be the dumb one and ask – Do I need an HD monitor to watch HD vids on You Tube?
noo of course not, any monitor is able to display that resolution.
Thanks. Damn, now I need to come up with a different excuse to buy one.
Isn’t “It’s almost Christmas!” a valid excuse?
Yup all monitors or at least most computer monitors can display 720p video if you set your screen resolution at 1280×1024 or at least 1280×720.
Thing is this Youtube HD might be h264 which might require smooth and fast decoding thus Google might have upped the hardware requirements for smooth playback with this..
Mine plays 720p…just very badly. This HD should stay an option, at least for another year or two until Moore’s Law comes around again….
My ‘dinosaur’ G4, which not too long ago was top of the line, can’t handle it in a graceful manner
Good one
…
Youtube is doing toomany changes without any anouncement! users may feel they were browsing different site!
Chandra
http://www.myjil.com
I love HD, hope it’s real this time on YouTube
take time so long when loaded from Thailand.
Yeah, the only effect this will have for me will be to quadruple the time I have to wait with the video on pause while it buffers up so I can watch it without it freezing every nine seconds.
“take time so long when loaded”? That’s what SHE said!
No Shit she said she’s from thailand dip shit.
So this isn’t YT auto-encoding uploaded videos in the H.264 format but displaying videos shot in HD as HD?
If so, definitely where YT needs to go (along with a lot of other moves done in the past few months), but technology is only as good as the ability to use it. What good is YT in HD if your connection makes it slow?
The big win will be when the data is compressed to reduce load on the network, use less bandwidth, and deliver the same HD quality to the end user.
Thoughts?
- Jaafer Haidar
So this means no upscaling of existing videos? Guess blurry cell phone videos would look awful at high resolutions.
Hopefully this runs better on my old laptop than other “HD” streaming options I’ve seen. YouTube is really keeping themselves viable.
Google seems to be pushing very aggressively into the richer content aspect of the web, they’ve been pushing out all kinds of updates lately.
YouTube is very aggressively adding ad supported professional producers to its partner’s network, offering competitive rates. Maybe YouTube is a viable business after all.
There is in built ads as well (or has that always been there) =/
rather new (cough*annoying*cough), I believe
Check out this HD youtube clip – WOW
http://bit.ly/sGH6
Hilary Duff looks amazing! There are other clips just affix &fmt=22 to vids that say HD
Awesome – thanks YouTube! No more URL trickery needed, and we know exactly what videos support it
wow, they also have stereo sound now
It’d be nice if they added Sort By: Type: HD.
I wonder what resolution, bitrate and framerate Google is using here. to me it looks like something that is around 1mbit/s, some resolution between 360p and 720p and a framerate that looks like lower then full framerate, perhaps 15fps. Or perhaps it is cause my laptop’s ATI graphics card DVI clone output can’t smoothly output full framerates. I also seem to get some bugs skipping forward in the video, it just keeps starting from the beginning of the video.
I wonder if Google provides that h264 HD feed in the Youtube API somewhere, so people building HD video set-top-boxes can pull in to grab those high quality versions of all the videos, at least for the videos that are available in HD.
So it looks like Youtube has always kept a backup of the originally uploaded files, since they can go back and re-encode higher quality outputs for files at later points in time. I wonder if content providers could have a way to replace a low quality upload with a higher quality upload at a later point, without having to remove the video and re-publish a new one and loosing all the view counts, ratings, search positions and comments..
Yeah its me – weemundo on that image
, i did notice it already and man i just love them , HD option will make Youtube even better ! Goodbye to stupid greasemonkey scripts for ever w00ts !
Time to change the layout again , Youtube ( thats the only thing that sucks , atm . )
Yea I saw that yesterday morning, it’s awesome! Now they need to be able to let you embed the HD video in a website!
Yeah I was looking up on Twitter this morning about YouTube keyword via tweetgrid and notice many people reported HD stuff coming out. Writing blog post as we speak.
I noticed that last night after uploading this video… http://www.yout...h?v=UfYcNK70zRI
Was surprised because I was using Vimeo.com for higher quality and longer videos.
This is long overdue but well worth the wait
I guess Google finally felt like enough people had broadband connections and could handle HD because I imagine it’s painful if you’re on a slow connection.
Or they visited pretty much any website over the past six months and saw all the Vimeo embeds. YouTube is quickly getting into MySpace territory, its role in the Internet being taken for granted and their users not pushing them to improve at all, after which they lose more and more relevance until they are down to the level of Friendster.
Bugger. Now I’ll definitely have to upgrade my broadband and video card! This explains why I’ve been seeing poor playback performance on my old machine and video card at fullscreen; the card doesn’t support hardware HD acceleration.
No, that’s just normal YouTube decrepitude. Seriously, YT’s performance as a video site is abysmal, down around EBaum. A new video card or faster connection isn’t going to help.
It’s not HD because you slap a sticker on it an call it so.
It’s higher quality for sure. But HD. Nah, YouTube has some ways to go.
It’s 720p HD you moron.
Ur dum. Don’t u know it’s not HD unless it’s on a big TV? Duih.
The biggest problem is Flash is not completely optimized to run HD, yet alone videos in general. I’ve noticed this more than ever since CPU usage is much higher than used to be, and this was a brand new computer with some very good specs. I’m surprised Google has not pushed Adobe to do better on this front.
Has HD become a relative term?
Eric check this out
http://tweetgri...q1=youtube%20hd
Also just posted more about it on LC…
TTYL.
Yesterday night youtube asking for flash update! looks like lot of things are changing.
Any special instructions when we shoot HD videos???
chandra
http://www.myjil.com
“HD” quality is already available on YouTube since 15 days… (http://www.nowh...-hd-720p-13015/)
Guess this is local to the certain areas, or the states at least.Nothing ‘hd’ in canada yet.Still ‘high quality’ tag under the vids.Or am i missing something?
Great! Now I can watch kitties playing with string in HD. Wow!
So how do they make money or does Google just underwrite this waste of time site forever?
You Tube is headed towards premium content. Think Hulu. You’ll be watching (and paying for) full length movies at some point.
Even at 720 lines of resolution, is it HD? Well, at bit rates of under 1MB per second, it is not true HD. Sure, if the only parameter by which we measure HD is the lines, then yes, 720 is HD. But bitrates cannot be discounted since the video quality we see is absolutely a function of the bitrate. The simple truth is this: A low resolution video with a high bitrate will always look better than a high resolution video at a low bitrate.
To view HD on the web, an HD monitor is required. Then again, so is a processor that can handle 720 or 1080 lines of resolution. Core Duo machines work well with HD. Because most machines viewing video on the web do not have Core Duo, as a practical matter, it is best to encode video at 640×360. Go to iPlayerHD.com to see samples of this.
“To view HD on the web, an HD monitor is required. Then again, so is a processor that can handle 720 or 1080 lines of resolution.”
…which is pretty much anything made in the past 10 years.
10 years huh? Show me a computer from 9 or 10 years ago that can play 1080p let alone 720p, they were barely playing 480i dvd’s. The fastest processors available to consumers were around 400-500mhz Pentium 2/3’s which could probably play a 5fps 720p video, not a 24fps 720p video.
The minimum processor that can play (medium to high bitrate) 720p and 1080i are about a Athlon XP 2400+ or a Pentium 4 2.4ghz and for 1080p a dual-core is pretty much required.
“Athlon XP 2400+”
Huh? What? My PC uses the same processor and stutters on YouTube HD.
And I forgot about the bottlenecks: Memory has to run in 200 MHz due to clock problems.
“If that’s not reason enough to get fiber-optic broadband, I don’t know what is.”
Wish I could…. I’m stuck with DSL or cable… Can’t even get crappy U-Verse where I’m at.
Wow. nice. This has been a long time in coming…
and I’m loving the Facebook Connect support
Seems like a dumb move. All it will do is increase bandwidth costs and slow down crappy PCs. Youtube was never about production quality but rather the content.
This feature would be best left for featured videos, trailer and such.
Oh, just another thing, if you want to embed it just ad this code at the end of the two URL from the embeded code : &ap=%2526fmt%3D18
You can see the résult on my blog :
http://www.nowh...-hd-720p-13015/
Hope that’ll help
sorry, the right code is : &ap=%2526fmt%3D22
Anyone watching youtube videos on their HDTVs? Sounds like YouTube is ready to cross over from the desktop to the livingroom. All the pieces are in place.
This is funny– their overlay ads are NOT HD. Whoops!
CG
Woohoo! I got my nephews Flip Mino HD cameras for Xmas… perfect timing! I think I’m gonna get one for myself too.
I don’t particularly care for the new upgrade youtube did, because it…ugh i dunno I just don’t like it
You know, I think I’m going to start making spam posts on the sites of people who post useless bullshit just so they can get their link up.
Great, videos of dudes getting hit in the nads on HD. If the streaming costs associated with their HD content increases, then they’ll actually need to find a way to actually make money or its bankrupts-ville for these guys.
youtube looks weird now
The bandwidth costs to upgrade YT to HD must be insane.
Hehehe, I guess it’s good that I live in Sweden where I pay 20 USD per month for 100/100 mbit connection. That is extreme though, most people in Sweden can only get 50 mbit for 50 USD/month.
It is also legal to fuck 15 year old girls in Sweden.
Take care all of you nerds in the outside world.
You are welcome to wish for a Swedish citizenship under your tree this X-mas.
So will these videos take even longer to load on YouTube like the normal ones already do?
Sweet.
Of course, the screenshot is of a DivX 720p video uploaded to YouTube. Brings back good memories of the high-quality video we used to pump through Stage6. Glad Google’s footing the bill this time around!
The youtube HD thing is cool. I would like to stream it to my living room television. I watch more youtube videos than TV.. Time for a media extender.
Steve
http://www.stevevox.com/blog
It´s a great improvement with the HD videos. I like the Facebook Connect extension. Yet another step towards complete tranparency.
Best HD Youtube clip I’ve seen so far:
http://nl.youtu...ij2o&fmt=22
YouTube is becoming more demanding in videos and soon movies since they sign a contract with MGM. I have YouTube search on my website make it easier for anyone to search a video. Work well for me. Just click on my name to see how it works.
Is it too late for youtube? Nope – I beginning to switch back to youtube when they allow more than 10 minutes videos to be uploaded. The change to high resolution is definitely a welcome change.
HD? Maybe it is not necessary yet but will a useful feature.
I’m glad Youtube went this route. When the hacks came out a few weeks ago, I went ahead and started uploading all my vids in full 720p (from my Canon Powershot TX1) Now I’ve gotten quite a few HD videos up on Youtube and I’ve consolidated them on hd.bwana.tv. Like many others here have stated, the higher quality comes with a price. Slower download speeds. If you do upload 720p vids to Youtube, make sure you enable the web streaming (RTSP) option in your favorite encoder. VisualHub for OS X has this option.
Happy HD’ng!
Hmmm. While, for the most part, low quality video and audio on YT have been accepted by copyright holders as a great way to promote commercial content and encourage consumers to sample then purchase DVDs, etc., pervasive high-quality (HD) on YT might result in a huge increase in take-down requests and more potential legal battles for YT. Let’s hope not. In such event, let’s also hope that YT includes a plan/mechanism where copyright holder’s can flag videos for “render in low-quality only” rather than complete take-down. Low-quality is better than no-quality.
Yay! Charlestrippy!!
I really <3 vimeo, but vimeo may now be heading to the deadpool because of this.
-Jeff
Those comments SUCKS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Watch YouTube on your HDTV: PCTVCables.com
You can enable HD in your embed code by adding “&ap=%2526fmt%3D22″ at the end of your embed urls:
http://www.bits...ideo-play-back/
Thats brillant. We use Youtube to host our tech talks. Thanks.
http://www.kimb....com/techtalks/
omg (: