Why are YouTube videos not encoded in h264

[ps49556n]

Not sure whether there has been a discussion about this issue yet but it has gotten to the point that I need to vent the frustration associated with this issue...

Why are new youtube videos encoded in flash and not h264??? Everytime I am reading something especially tech things from sites like engadget, they have a video to accompany the article... So I scroll down and what a shocker...the video is in FLASH!!


Does any one else find it odd that after a month people still aren't releasing any h264 content that is worthwhile??

[iPaul]

I really think that the h264 encoding thing is just a stopgap until full flash support. They are obviously only encoding a small portion of videos, enough to filll the "featured" and "top ten" lists on the widget, but very few new uploaded vids seem to be encoded that way initially at this point. I would bet they will not implemnent full re-encoding of all youtube vids.


Not sure whether there has been a discussion about this issue yet but it has gotten to the point that I need to vent the frustration associated with this issue...

Why are new youtube videos encoded in flash and not h264??? Everytime I am reading something especially tech things from sites like engadget, they have a video to accompany the article... So I scroll down and what a shocker...the video is in FLASH!!


Does any one else find it odd that after a month people still aren't releasing any h264 content that is worthwhile??

[ps49556n]

Personally I believe that iPhone will not support Flash until the physical hardware gets a drastic improvement... Flash is totally inefficient in the way it uses resources...when I type a moderately long message on these forums on my iPhone the keyboard can really lag at times...I don't even want to imagine flash running at the same time...


I am baffled by how youtube and google have not yet created some type of algorithim that automatically converts flash videos...

For my interests, about 98% of the youtube content I am interested in is not available in h264....who wants to watch a stupid dog skateboard???

[Alexander]

....who wants to watch a stupid dog skateboard???

Me...:frown:

[iPhobos]

Hopefully apple and and youtube will stick to their word and have the videos on youtube completly converted to h264. For how long the video type has been out I an surprised youtube didn't start doing this before the release of the iPhone. Other then the larger file size I dot see any reasons for their lagging behind technology.

[cmoney]

So I scroll down and what a shocker...the video is in FLASH!!

Does any one else find it odd that after a month people still aren't releasing any h264 content that is worthwhile??

I don't think you'll ever see h264 content linked to directly from a web site. Flash serves as a lowest common denominator: every computer either has it or can install it very easily. Plus it serves as a way for youtube to link back to youtube.com, show related videos, etc. So I think you'll always see Flash video when linked directly from web sites even when they have h264 versions available.

[KPSK]

ever notice even with a video fully downloaded that youtube looks better with wi-fi than edge?

[Martlet]

I don't think you'll ever see h264 content linked to directly from a web site. Flash serves as a lowest common denominator: every computer either has it or can install it very easily. Plus it serves as a way for youtube to link back to youtube.com, show related videos, etc. So I think you'll always see Flash video when linked directly from web sites even when they have h264 versions available.

Just replace "Flash" with "Quicktime" and you can use the exact same quote.

So there's really no reason to not use H.264 in a .mov container in place of Flash. Everyone reading this probably already has Quicktime since it comes with iTunes, and can play .mov files containing H.264 codec video.

[cmoney]

Actually I was thinking more of the web in general, not for sites targeting the iPhone. Sure for the iPhone they could make an iPhone specific site that replaced Flash video with quicktime/h264 video.

But for the web in general, I'd say Flash penetration is much higher than Quicktime. (In fact I've seen it mentioned that Flash penetration is as high as 95%.) So it makes more sense to do flash video since it's almost guaranteed people will be able to play it.