YouTube Now Transcoding All New Uploads To WebM 267
theweatherelectric writes "According to the YouTube blog, YouTube is now transcoding all new uploads to WebM, whereas previously the focus was on 720p and 1080p video. Google's James Zern writes, 'Transcoding all new video uploads into WebM is an important first step, and we're also working to transcode our entire video catalog to WebM. Given the massive size of our catalog — nearly 6 years of video is uploaded to YouTube every day — this is quite the undertaking. So far we've already transcoded videos that make up 99% of views on the site or nearly 30% of all videos into WebM. We're focusing first on the most viewed videos on the site, and we've made great progress here through our cloud-based video processing infrastructure that maximizes the efficiency of processing and transcoding without stopping. It works like this: at busy upload times, our processing power is dedicated to new uploads, and at less busy times, our cloud will automatically switch some of our processing to encode older videos into WebM. As we continue to transcode the remaining inventory, we'll keep you posted on our progress.'"
Re:Now what about 3d? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Now what about 3d? (Score:5, Informative)
When are we going to get YouTube in 3d?
Youtube is already in 3D, and has been for some time. You can find 3D videos with this search:
http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=yt3d%3Aenable%3Dtrue&search=tag [youtube.com]
3D videos have an additional '3D' menu at the bottom, to select the type of 3D output preferred.
Re:Waste of energy... (Score:3, Informative)
Seriously, why does this meme just keep going round and round?
computers/phones already have hardware capable of decoding WebM - it's the same hardware used to decode h.264! In most cases all that is/will be needed is a firmware update.
Android phones will obviously be there first - it's already available in Gingerbread. Apple will follow suit eventually, they might resist for a while but with Android's rising market share and Google controlling Youtube, they're caught between a rock and a hard place and I'm sure they know it.
Re:Open Standards Fanboy (Score:4, Informative)
Utter rubbish.
http://www.osnews.com/permalink?470666 [osnews.com]
tl;dr "Google hereby grants to You a perpetual, worldwide, non-exclusive, no-charge, royalty-free, irrevocable (except as stated in this section) patent license to make, have made, use, offer to sell, sell, import, and otherwise transfer implementations of this specification"
IOW: Anyone may use, anyone may implement, full permission is granted irrevocably and in perpetuity (as long as you don't sue Google).
Specification is documented and submitted to the ITEF.
An independent implementation is here:
http://x264dev.multimedia.cx/archives/499 [multimedia.cx]
Your claim "H.264 is far more open than WebM" couldn't be more wrong if you tried for millennia to make it more incorrect.
Re:WebM is too "geeky"; too "open/free" (Score:5, Informative)
Some brands that include the OGG playback feature in their products: SanDisk, Cowon, Trekstor, HTC, Archos, Grundig, iRiver, Philips, Samsung... Pretty neat for a "zero penetration" format ;) BTW, many of them also support FLAC.
Re:I'm curious about codec efficiency (Score:3, Informative)
Of the tests that are floating around the internet, WebM is comparable to H264 base or main, but not high (the different profiles are almost like different codecs, requiring more features as you get higher). Considering pretty much no phones can play high, or maybe even main, the quality comparison is kind of moot, unless you roll multiple versions of the video for different devices.
But no, the one of the advantages of WebM is that it is patent free (there is always a chance of submarine patents though, same with theora, although since VP8 was originally made by a company it is hoped that the patent pool is complete). The other advantage is that it doesn't cost money to use it. Currently it costs a few million dollars per year to buy the rights to distribute a program with the h264 codec, if you look at mozilla for example, this is a significant fraction of the money they raise each year. Currently anybody is free to distribute h264 video, but MPEG-LA could change this at anytime (although, it would be a very bad move if they did). So you have a codec is irrevocably free, or something that requries money to distribute codecs of and could cost money to distribute videos in.
Comment removed (Score:4, Informative)