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Youtube Chrome Google Media Upgrades Technology IT

YouTube Opens Up 60fps To Everyone 152

Posted by timothy from the bottlenecks-shift dept.
jones_supa writes Four months ago YouTube promised support for 60 frames per second videos. Back then, the feature was limited to some selected demonstration clips. Now the capability to upload 60fps videos has been opened to everyone. By searching YouTube, a lot of interesting high-FPS material can already be found. For now, some caveats apply though. To watch the clips at 60fps you currently need to use Chrome (further browser support is on the way) and be sure to select 720p60 or 1080p60 from the settings menu of the video player. A fair amount of decoding power is also required, so you will need good hardware. In addition, YouTube says that the content format will be only available on "motion-intense" videos, and the average cat video may not be detected as such. Of course gaming will be the most obvious genre that can take advantage of the higher frame rate.
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YouTube Opens Up 60fps To Everyone More

YouTube Opens Up 60fps To Everyone

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  • Firefox better get their act together (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    These kind of features ("new thing, works on Chrome, doesn't work on Firefox") are quick way to get rid of excess marketshare.

    Anyone know if Firefox is going to get support?

    • Re:Firefox better get their act together (Score:5, Insightful)

      by rodrigoandrade ( 713371 ) on Monday November 03, 2014 @06:28AM (#48299687)
      This is Google favoring their own browser. There's nothing Mozilla can do about it.

      If you don't like this attitude, don't use Chrome.

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by Anonymous Coward

        Until they don't support all browsers I don't care about 60fps.

      • Re:Firefox better get their act together (Score:5, Informative)

        by phizi0n ( 1237812 ) on Monday November 03, 2014 @07:31AM (#48299835)

        No this is Google favoring new standards before some browsers are quite ready for it. Firefox supports 60fps if the video is encoded in WebM (VP9) which only happens on Youtube if it has enough views to warrant encoding it in additional formats. Mozilla is still working on Media Source Extensions and MPEG-DASH support which is needed to play back h.264@60fps but afaik it should be in FF36 although it's not ready yet in nightly 36 builds.

        Google could have added support in the Flash player but why would they put in the effort for a fairly novel feature when they are trying to replace flash with HTML5? In a few months every browser will support the HTML5 features and nobody will remember this story.

        • Re:Firefox better get their act together (Score:4, Informative)

          by rsmith-mac ( 639075 ) on Monday November 03, 2014 @08:12AM (#48299941)

          No this is Google favoring new standards before some browsers are quite ready for it.

          Just to add to this, 60fps works fine in Internet Explorer 11 and in Safari as well. In fact both have supported it for some time. Of the major browsers, at this point Firefox is the odd man out.

          • Re: Firefox better get their act together (Score:4, Insightful)

            by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 03, 2014 @08:44AM (#48300071)

            I think Mozilla may privately be in panic mode, or should be if they aren't already.

            Firefox is quickly sliding into irrelevance. It's down to around 10% or 11% of the market, with no sign of a reversal happening.

            All of Mozilla's recent initiatives have failed. Australis was a disaster. Firefox OS has gotten tons of bad reviews, it's crippled compared to pretty much every other modern mobile OS, and it's unwanted by the general public. Persona was rejected, when not outright ignored. Rust has missed the boat by staying in development mode for so long (C++14, Swift and Go beat it to market). Firefox on Android is unremarkable, and they have no iOS presence. Nothing else they're working on sounds particularly appealing.

            Mozilla needs to get back to making good products that people actually want to use. These pointless ventures involving stuff that users vocally despise clearly aren't working. I don't see Mozilla surviving as an organization if it has no users.

            • Re: (Score:2)

              by Khyber ( 864651 )

              Exactly this. Everything Mozilla has done recently has made their brand very unappealing to me.

              I'm about to remove FireFox from my system and stick with Chrome.

            • Re: (Score:2)

              by labnet ( 457441 )

              Yet it still the only browser that does side tabs properly with treetab plugin, which is why it still my primary browser.

            • But what to use instead? I am sure not using a google browser to let them track me even easier and IE is still bloated. All the others are too hipster lvl adoption rates. The fall of firefox has been very sad to me. Even stuff like the customizable UI has gotten worse overtime not better. Of course windows 8 had a little to do with that.

            • Mozilla is not making products from the point of view of people. They appear to be making products from the point of a view of a company that has had some success. HUGE mistake. They are irrelevant without people using their products. People use stuff that respects their own wishes.

          • Re:Firefox better get their act together (Score:5, Informative)

            by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 03, 2014 @12:32PM (#48301663)

            Firefox is the odd man out because they chose not to support a patent encumbered file format. Out of Microsoft, Apple, Google and Mozilla, they are the only ones to care about user freedom.

            • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

              by Anonymous Coward

              Firefox is the odd man out because they chose not to support a patent encumbered file format. Out of Microsoft, Apple, Google and Mozilla, they are the only ones to care about user freedom.

              Indeed, and the irony is that Firefox *is* supporting 60fps in Google's own videoformat, WebM/VP9, but Google themselves don't support this format on most of Youtube.

        • Re:Firefox better get their act together (Score:5, Interesting)

          by MobyDisk ( 75490 ) on Monday November 03, 2014 @10:20AM (#48300597) Homepage

          Can someone explain why a video decoder cannot decode at any arbitrary frame rate? The algorithm doesn't change.

        • Re:Firefox better get their act together (Score:4, Interesting)

          by Rob Y. ( 110975 ) on Monday November 03, 2014 @12:27PM (#48301611)

          ...before some browsers are quite ready for it? Who says the Internet is ready for it? Seriously, why on earth should we even be thinking about routinely streaming stuff at 60fps over the internet. If net neutrality has any downside at all, this is it. It's bad enough that Netflix is eating up 30% (or whatever) of the available bandwidth. I'm not saying that ISP's should be instituting fast lanes, etc. But this is just asking for it...

          And seriously, it reminds me of the push to put 4K displays on 5 inch cellphones. Really, why? Someday, the infrastructure (or battery tech on phones) will support this kind of thing without a hiccup, but that day is not today. You might say we need things that push the envelope in order to bring that someday into being - but Netflix is doing a pretty good job of that as it is.

          • 60fps doesn't need 2x the bandwidth (Score:4, Informative)

            by Sycraft-fu ( 314770 ) on Monday November 03, 2014 @02:12PM (#48302759)

            Frames are similar to each other (this is a big way that H.264 gets compression) and the more FPS you have, the more similar the frames are since each is a smaller time slice away from the last one. So you may not need a whole lot more bandwidth.

            A good example is AVCHD, that's the H.264 camera format that is popular with consumer and pro cameras. The 2.0 spec supports 30fps and 60fps. At 30fps you store data at 24mbps, at 60fps you store it at 28mbps. Same visual quality, only 4mbps more to get the extra 30fps.

            Same idea scales down to lower bitrates. You do need more bits to maintain the same quality, but not a ton.

        • Re: (Score:1)

          by magnusk ( 569300 )

          Firefox supports 60fps if the video is encoded in WebM (VP9) which only happens on Youtube if it has enough views

          Google could have added support in the Flash player

          I get 60fps on test videos with single-digit views, using RHEL 6.4, Firefox 17.0.7 ESR and Flash 11,2,202,327.

          Although the video options only present e.g. 720p rather than 720p60, selecting 720p gives 60fps. Selecting 480p gives 30fps. The same video encoded at 30fps before upload and viewed in 720p shows the difference very clearly. I suspect it's something to do with the old version of Flash.

          For reference, I also tested with Windows 7, Firefox 33.0.2, Flash 15.0.0.152, and 720p and only get 30fps.

      • Everyone should just be glad that it doesn't require Google+ integration. Seems like just about everything they do now is getting tied to that millstone in one way or another.

      • I also steer people away from it. Fuck poison. We don't need Google to be the new Microsoft.

        • Theyre not. As I recall Mozilla doesnt have its act together on the codec front currently.

          • Re: (Score:1)

            by Anonymous Coward

            Why do they need to have the codec run by the browser instead of embedding some mplayer and letting it handle the video?

    • Re: Firefox better get their act together (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward

      This video crap should be the least of Mozilla's concerns for Firefox. Firefox's UI has been terribly broken since Firefox 4, and it has been getting worse with each new release. The slow performance and excessive memory usage problems that have been there for a decade now still aren't properly fixed, even if the Firefox devs will babble on about their microbenchmarks that suggest otherwise. These are the real problems that are driving users away from Firefox. They need to be fixed first.

      • oh shh, you will get a bunch of the naysayers saying "Firefox memory issues have been fine since verison x"
        Even though no matter what system I am on fresh install or not, windows or mac, pretty much within 1-2 weeks the computer becomes unusable because firefox is open(and the only addon I have enables is adblock).. Kill task it and my computer is back to normal.
        On this computer chrome has been open for about 2 months now with a normal amount of memory usage.

    • I'm kinda curious why everybody is assuming that it won't work in firefox. Because it works just fine for me. I don't see it in the resolution choices though. Maybe it's the Youtube HD extension that manages to select it.

  • What a shock (Score:5, Funny)

    by msobkow ( 48369 ) on Monday November 03, 2014 @06:29AM (#48299697) Homepage Journal

    A Google website only working with Chrome.

    I'm shocked, I tell you. Just absolutely shocked. *LOL*

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by OzPeter ( 195038 )

      A Google website only working with Chrome.

      I'm shocked, I tell you. Just absolutely shocked. *LOL*

      Normally 'd say "Pics, or it didn't happen", but I don't have Chrome installed.

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by Anonymous Coward

        Normally 'd say "Pics, or it didn't happen"[...].

        Shouldn't that be, "Sixty pics per second, or it didn't happen."?

    • A Google website only working with Chrome.

      I'm shocked, I tell you. Just absolutely shocked. *LOL*

      I know you are trying to be funny, but to be serious, it's not as if this is a common thing for google as far as I'm aware. Google generally is one of the best at making things work cross browser. Usually when it's not, it's because the feature has no equivalent in other browser. Ex: google's desktop notifications or cloud print features...I'm not aware of any other browsers having something equivalent. If someone has a list of things that COULD be don'e across multiple browsers (preferably in a standardize

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by msobkow ( 48369 )

        The only reason I have Chrome installed at all is that for about a month, Google+ stopped working under Firefox/Iceweasel, forcing me to use Chrome to access it.

        So, yes, Google has done this before.

    • I like a quick dig at Google as much as anyone, but what other instances are you referring to?

    • Those fuckers can barely keep up with the existing standards. There's no way in hell the neighborhood loop can support this.

    • It works flawlessly in Safari too. (Safari 8.0 on OS X 10.10 Yosemite).

  • Could you give some links to interesting material in 60FPS? I found just games.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by mwvdlee ( 775178 )

      In particular links that compare the same resolution.
      The two videos in TFA went from 480p30 to 720p60 and quite frankly... I didn't see much difference apart from the resolution.

    • Could you give some links to interesting material in 60FPS? I found just games.

      "Of course gaming will be the most obvious genre that can take advantage of the higher frame rate."

      No, you may not.

      According to TFS, our entire GoPro world has been reduced to filming HDTV "action" shots from the dangers of your average living room.

      And just in time too. I don't know how the hell I would have ever survived the latest COD release without the thumb jockeys filming every second of it in 60FPS glory. Who the hell needs Shark Week...

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by dj245 ( 732906 )

      Could you give some links to interesting material in 60FPS? I found just games.

      I had a couple time-lapse videos which I made from an in-car video camera. Obviously they were sped up from the source speed, because watching a 6 hour car ride in 3 minutes is a lot more entertaining than watching in real-time. They looked great at 60fps but were dreadful at 30 fps. So dreadful, in fact, that I removed them from Youtube long ago.

  • Bug in HW decoding == unwatchable (Score:3, Informative)

    by kav2k ( 1545689 ) on Monday November 03, 2014 @06:46AM (#48299739)

    There are some problems with this.

    1. This is not optional for videos that support it. If it was processed as 60fps video, then 1080p and 720p streams will only be served as 60fps.
    2. Chrome has an outstanding crippling bug for months now in H/W decoding: https://code.google.com/p/chro... [google.com] with the only viable workaround "disable HW decoding"

    Those two combined together mean that 1080p60 is unwatchable on decent but not sparkling-new laptops under Windows, dropping frames / freezing constantly.

    • I do not have that HW decoding problem.
      But I'm running Chrome version 39.0.2171.42 beta-m

    • Re:Bug in HW decoding == unwatchable (Score:4, Insightful)

      by fuzzyfuzzyfungus ( 1223518 ) on Monday November 03, 2014 @08:20AM (#48299971) Journal
      That bug report seemed to be somewhat inconclusive about where the trouble was (aside from the fact that it became visible in Chrome). At this point 'HW decoding' can mean Nvidia (probably several flavors/feature sets between GPU generations; but all under the same driver team), AMD (ditto), and at least two for Intel (the one that does decode assist in the GPU 'Pure Video' and the one that does it in an on-CPU fixed function block as the decode step of 'Quick Sync'), and probably a few of the Broadcomm decoders floating around. And that's just x86.

      Is this a browser level bug that breaks across all drivers? A nasty interaction with certain drivers but not others? Hardware assisted video decode hasn't exactly been nailed down into the core x86 ISA yet.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward

      Chrome has an outstanding crippling bug for months now in H/W decoding

      In fact if you read that bug report yourself you'll see that Chrome has a minor bug regarding H/W rescaling which only occurs on certain GPUs and only affects text and which is almost impossible to actually reproduce. But, sure, pretend that's a "crippling bug" that affects everyone and every video if you like, and let's turn the conversation to your personal pet peeves over minor bugs in freeware that millions of people use with no issu

  • Demo Scene (Score:4, Funny)

    by cheetah_spottycat ( 106624 ) on Monday November 03, 2014 @07:19AM (#48299813)
    I really hope, people are going to re-upload all those C64 and Amiga demos that just stutter like hell in 25/30fps in their original 50/60fps glory!

  • AS the USA is a 3rd world backwater for internet speeds.

    it seems Comcast is now playing the "congestion" bullshit claim that they cant do anything about it. in the evenings. Freaking only getting ISDN speeds after 8pm.

    • Freaking only getting ISDN speeds after 8pm.

      Don't compete with Comcast's primetime video on demand sales, dude.

      If it's only to video sites like YouTube you can use a VPN provider - what's $6/mo on top of an absurd Comcast bill already?

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by tepples ( 727027 )

        Don't compete with Comcast's primetime video on demand sales, dude.

        So how should a video producer go about getting his video onto Comcast VOD?

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by Lumpy ( 12016 )

          That is easy.

          Step 1 - Get about $1,000,000 in cash.
          Step 2- give Comcast that cash along with your content.
          Step 3 - repeat this every 3 months.

          It costs less if you only want a smaller region.

  • Chrome only... (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    I'd use Chrome but honestly Ad Block Plus has worked way better on Firefox then Chrome for me. Still it's kinda neat to see a 60fps video, not sure if it's really necessary since the current crop of stuff looks great when I compare it to the stuff I used to watch on the TV in the 1970's, 80's, and 90's. Better is always good I guess for online video, that being said I'd much rather have locally stored videos for when the internet goes down.

  • Laugh (Score:1)

    by koan ( 80826 )

    "high-FPS material"

    60 FPS is not "high FPS", it's more of a standard, though not even that considering the GoPro 4 toy camera does 120 FPS @ 1080 and 30 FPS @ 4K.

    • "high-FPS material"

      60 FPS is not "high FPS", it's more of a standard, though not even that considering the GoPro 4 toy camera does 120 FPS @ 1080 and 30 FPS @ 4K.

      Considering we have been stuck with 24fps since the dawn of the TV, 60fps for video is "high fps".

      About bloody time if you ask me. I'd rather have 60fps @ 720p than 4k @ 24fps.
      Hopefully 60fps rolls out as the standard across all platforms before the 4k @ 24fps gimmick does.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Khyber ( 864651 )

        "60fps for video is "high fps""

        Not even close. We've got cameras capable of 4,000 FPS and more (my web camera does 120FPS)

        60FPS is DVD-speed.

        • "60fps for video is "high fps""

          Not even close. We've got cameras capable of 4,000 FPS and more (my web camera does 120FPS)

          60FPS is DVD-speed.

          I was comparing 60fps to 24fps (24p). Not a camera that can do 4000fps without a device that can actually play it at 4000fps.

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by Khyber ( 864651 )

            You must be ignorant as hell. I've had 240FPS ability since the Pentium 4 HT 2.6GHz processor with a GeForce 4 MX 440.

            It's the SHIT CODECS NOW that are fucking with your experience.

            >mfw I play 120+ FPS video at 720p+ routinely and have since 2004

            Are you that behind the times? Looks like you and everyone else are that behind the times.

            You're only spending that extra horsepower on DRM.

            Go back to school.

            Oh, BTW, Youtube's "1808p" is 540p double-interlaced with de-interlacing. That's why it's got the Chrome

            • You must be ignorant as hell. I've had 240FPS ability since the Pentium 4 HT 2.6GHz processor with a GeForce 4 MX 440.

              Your issues aside. You were still watching all video sources at 24/30 fps.

              • Re: (Score:2)

                by Khyber ( 864651 )

                No, I was not. I downloaded RAW rips, thank you very much. 4+GB per 24-minute episode.

                The fact a web browser (which shouldn't use SHIT for resources) needs that much extra horsepower is a testament to the shit coding skill and practices in use on the web today.

                • No, I was not. I downloaded RAW rips, thank you very much. 4+GB per 24-minute episode.

                  You clearly dont understand the difference between a codec and framerate.

                  Your "raw" video files were probably "uncompressed" yes? I guarantee you the FPS would be 24/30.

                  • Re: (Score:2)

                    by Khyber ( 864651 )

                    The video files were uncompressed and ripped at original framerate. Y'know, something AnyDVD has had the ability to do for oh, a DECADE+ now.

                    60FPS. You can even use VLC's little frame counter as a timer, displaying in M:S:FPS

      • Um, TV has been at least 30 FPS (with frame drop 29.97 for color) since the NTSC standard was put into place. ATSC also supports up to 60.

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by koan ( 80826 )

        I don't have a TV, haven't since the 90's, everything I do is on a computer screen and therefore to me 60 fps is more of a standard (read minimum).
        I'm not going to measure things by dinosaur standards, and while we are at it, this country (USA) needs to move entirely to the metric system, but don't get me started on that idiocy.

        • I don't have a TV, haven't since the 90's, everything I do is on a computer screen and therefore to me 60 fps is more of a standard (read minimum).

          Your monitor refresh rate (60hz) does not mean all videos you play are 60fps.
          All those DVD's/blurays and internet streams were either 24fps or 30fps. You would only see 24/30 fps.

          Unless your using predictive interpolation between frames to essentially double up on the source framerate.

  • I don't get it. Why do the programmers working on browsers even write video support at all? No, I'm not saying browsers shouldn't support embedded video. But why does every browser have to reinvent that wheel? Isn't HTML, CSS and Javascript enough to have to support? I would think they would just link in libraries from a project which IS a video player like mplayer of xine or vlc or something. Then they should support whatever formats and framerates that player supports for free!

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by tepples ( 727027 )

      Why do the programmers working on browsers even write video support at all? [...] I would think they would just link in libraries from a project which IS a video player like mplayer of xine or vlc or something.

      Browser developers need to write code that transforms the output of VLC or whatever to the input of the browser's compositor so that the video doesn't get corrupted when the page scrolls or reflows.

    • For some reason video players on the web are often slow and/or crashy. The default Youtube one is passable (flash)
      Whatever is on wikipedia sucks balls. (and is designed to rape my ears)
      I've seen the "media player"'s skin change after a music was launched, like it was following some bizarre rules to choose html5 vs flash (switch from one to another after the show has started? or it was skin change for the sake of it. Thanks for the slow and interrupting refresh)

      Worst is some html5 (I assume?) video boxes wit

      • If you're including a proprietary codec, why not have the old ones from flash video (FLV)?, or H263 proper.

        Because patent pools charge separate royalties for each codec. If you include an H.263 class codec (H.263 proper, Sorenson Spark, or MPEG-4 ASP), you have to pay the royalties for that on top of the royalties for more widely used codecs like H.264.

    • I don't get it. Why do the programmers working on browsers even write video support at all? No, I'm not saying browsers shouldn't support embedded video. But why does every browser have to reinvent that wheel? Isn't HTML, CSS and Javascript enough to have to support? I would think they would just link in libraries from a project which IS a video player like mplayer of xine or vlc or something. Then they should support whatever formats and framerates that player supports for free!

      People tried that, 15-10 years ago. It did not work.
      The reason it did not work is because it required every computer user to make sure their install is working, and the website could not fix setup problems. The user got the feeling that the website did not work and unusable. Sometimes this is justified, when you do not have install rights on the computer (e.g. labs). Websites started to offer plugin/viewer downloads, which caused a lot of malware problems.
      Implementing it in the browser solves this problem.

  • Oh, Yeah... (Score:3)

    by Greyfox ( 87712 ) on Monday November 03, 2014 @10:36AM (#48300741) Homepage Journal
    I see the second skydiving video I uploaded yesterday has the option for 1080p60. The first one I uploaded that same day has 1080 but not 60 fps, though I processed it the same way (kdenlive on ubuntu.) The video does look a lot closer to the original GoPro footage than previous videos I've uploaded to youtube. I'm not sure if they'd enable it for a 15 minute high pull video where I'm just flying around looking at scenery. A friend of mine who's a fellow skydiver was complaining about video quality on youtube and looking around for another site to host his video on. At the time, Dailymotion had much better overall video quality but did seem to lose some frames here and there.

    Of course, the new GoPro can record in 4K, so if you're a professional who gets more than a couple hundred hits on any given video, you're probably still better off hosting and serving your own video. Then you wouldn't need to worry about your service's processing mangling your video, or them crapping ads all over it.

  • ... in 1080p60 FTW!

  • or 360p at 60fps. The feature is interesting by itself, so it shouldn't be tied to HD when you don't always have the CPU or bandwith for it.
    Hell, 240p and 144p with 256 kbps sound track is another thing I want, very often the music or speech is way more important than the piqué of the image. Countless bandwith and megajoules are wasted on the video and the sound still sucks. Can't watch people speaking without MP3-like artifacts. In the days of analog television, the audio had full quality.

  • they seem to have fixed the site. For the last few months, opening the home page or doing a search locked up my browser for a minute or more. Today both stay responsive throughout the loading process. It's finally usable again!

  • Here's a proper test video for anyone who wants one - just a white box moving smoothly around:

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]

    I don't know if it's just my setup (I've got an i7 and an Nvidia card, which ought to be enough) - but it drops in and out of smooth 60fps about 25% of the time.

  • I anticipate many people claiming that the new material just looks smoother and they could never go back to 30fps where they swear they can see the frames change. Even though, placed in blind tests, very few people are likely to be able to tell the difference.

    It'll be just like the audiofool situation, with people spending their money on 96KHz sample rate recordings even though no human ear can benefit from such a thing.

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