YouTube for Apple TV uses H.264, not Flash

[MacRumors]

Earlier this week, Apple announced that YouTube.com videos would become available on the Apple TV after a software update that will be made available in June.

iLounge spoke with Apple's Vice President of Worldwide Mac Hardware Marketing, David Moody, who provided more details about this upgrade.

According to Moody, not all of the Youtube catalog will be available on day one. Instead, "thousands of videos designed for Apple TV" will be available at launch, but that the remainder will become available by the fall. The reason for the delay is that Youtube will be encoding all of their videos into a "H.264 streaming-efficient compression format" specifically for the Apple TV. All of Youtube's videos are currently encoded in Flash Video (FLV) format.

No official reason is given for the mass shift in encoding formats for Youtube's entire catalog, but Macformat.co.uk believes it has to do with the iPhone.

As far as I know even now, Flash content per se might not play on the iPhone from day one. But Apple clearly doesn't – indeed, shouldn't – care, as YouTube is for many people the most critical site that uses Flash.

Indeed, both the iPod and iPhone can play H.264 encoded video, and so it seems the entire Youtube catalog will also become available to those devices as well by the fall.

[iMikeT]

Awesome! This news is convincing me more and more to finally pick up that tv I've been wanting.

[EricNau]

Is YouTube replacing their entire catalog with H.264, or will there be two complete catalogs, one H.264 and the other FLV?

[Freg3000]

Seems like an awful lot of work. Isn't it easier just to make flash playback in QuickTime...like by using Perian?

[arn]

This must have to do with the iPhone/iPod.

Why would Youtube go through the trouble of reencoding all their videos (and they have a LOT), if not for Apple to distribute their videos on iPods/iPhones.

The Apple TV could easily play Flash video content if they wanted it to. Certainly reencoding all of youtube's videos is NOT the quickest solution.

arn

[arn]

Originally Posted by EricNau

Is YouTube replacing their entire catalog with H.264, or will there be two complete catalogs, one H.264 and the other FLV?

my impression is that there will be two complete catalogs. they need to keep flash for easy browsing access.

arn

[NeilD]

Is everyone forgetting that Quicktime can play basic flash files (swf) along with FLV files? If they are just converting the FLV files into h.264 then there would virtually no change in quality, unless they had a better copy than what is public.

[EricNau]

Originally Posted by arn

This must have to do with the iPhone/iPod.

Why would Youtube go through the trouble of reencoding all their videos (and they have a LOT), if not for Apple to distribute their videos on iPods/iPhones.

The Apple TV could easily play Flash video content if they wanted it to. Certainly reencoding all of youtube's videos is NOT the quickest solution.

arn

I was thinking the same thing.

...Unless, of course, this new feature of YouTube is also meant for other companies and products besides Apple.

...Or maybe YouTube realizes that this is where the 'net is headed, so they might as well get a early start on the encoding process.

[MacFly123]

The new iPod will have WIFI YEAH!!!

[NicP]

Originally Posted by arn

my impression is that there will be two complete catalogs. they need to keep flash for easy browsing access.

arn

Can a flash player stream a h.264 video?

[Swift]

Little screens show Flash perfectly well. (I imagine both the iPod and the iPhone could easily be adapted.) But it's the HD screens. Can you imagine how junky FLV looks on a 50" screen? Gotta have H.264 not to die of pixelitis.

[nagromme]

Sounds like a real collaboration between Google/YouTube and Apple.

And anything NEW added to YouTube starting in June will automatically be AppleTV-ready from the get go.

Originally Posted by NeilD

Is everyone forgetting that Quicktime can play basic flash files (swf) along with FLV files? If they are just converting the FLV files into h.264 then there would virtually no change in quality, unless they had a better copy than what is public.

It seems to me that they must have stored originals of all uploads? So better-quality versions can now be generated.

I would assume that FLV will be phased out of the main site, or used as a front-end that switches to H.264 for fullscreen even for browser users, not just AppleTV users. ALL YT users could benefit from less lossy compression.

Along with the better compression, I wonder if we'll see a boost to 640x480 res?

[edesignuk]

The inclusion of YouTube content is actually the biggest reason right now that I could possibly imagine wanting an Apple TV at all.

[ahuman7341]

Does anyone have any knowelge of how many hours of video are on youtube?

[arn]

Originally Posted by NicP

Can a flash player stream a h.264 video?

Originally Posted by nagromme

I would assume that FLV will be phased out of the main site, or used as a front-end that switches to H.264 for fullscreen even for browser users, not just AppleTV users. ALL YT users could benefit from less lossy compression.

I don't think Flash will play h.264. The beauty of youtube was that video would play without installing another codec since Flash is so prevalent in browsers. I don't think they are about to change that dynamic.

arn

[flackery]

Originally Posted by NeilD

Is everyone forgetting that Quicktime can play basic flash files (swf) along with FLV files? If they are just converting the FLV files into h.264 then there would virtually no change in quality, unless they had a better copy than what is public.

Quicktime can only play flash 5 swf files which is 7 years old.. we are at version 9 now. Quicktime can't play flv files. Apple hasn't really updated the interactivity in Quicktime since version 4 or 5.

YouTube could not reasonably switch to H.264 on thier main site because it would require everyone to have Quicktime and would not be able to give the same user experience that Flash currently allows.

The On2 VP6 compression available in flash 8 and later is pretty darn close to the quality of H.264. (not quite but not too far off if using a good source and bitrate)

I really hope the iPhone has full flash support cause that would really open up some opertunities for 3rd party applications to run with in the browser on the iPhone. Also a LOT of sites have Flash content that would really be missed if the iPhone has no Flash support.

[crap freakboy]

Thats all well and good but I hope they keep the flash vids so I can use my Wii. Heres hoping Nintendo update soon for the latest Flash and other formats. AppleTV seems to be looking stronger and stronger with each passing week, shame I can't get one but have mouths to feed. Oh hum.

[aLoC]

Imagine how much CPU time to reencode all those videos!
H.264 encoding = CPU intensive.

[blueflame]

I just had a big picture moment. I love those.
A
Also, off topic, but why cant apple tv access files directly from the airport extreme router without the need for a computer, on the attatched USB hdd?
just curious.

[mcic1984]

Originally Posted by arn

This must have to do with the iPhone/iPod.

Why would Youtube go through the trouble of reencoding all their videos (and they have a LOT), if not for Apple to distribute their videos on iPods/iPhones.

The Apple TV could easily play Flash video content if they wanted it to. Certainly reencoding all of youtube's videos is NOT the quickest solution.

arn

YouTube has already been encoding videos into MPEG4 (probably not AVC/H.264 though -- at least with Vodafone in UK and probably other European phone markets, mobile phones have been able to play a selection of the most popular YouTube videos for free for around 2 months now - and these are in a streaming MPEG4 format, not Flash, as most handset do not (yet) play Flash. (They do, however, play Flash Lite, but that isn't what YouTube is using.)

[bigandy]

Encoding isn't an issue. It's a completely automated process using the software that the YouTube lot use.

They may need another few hard drives though

[mozmac]

That will take some intense processing power to re-encode the entire library. Is Apple really that persuasive? Google has to be getting something good out of this besides making their site available to Apple TV.

[furious]

Why just for Apple? Google must having something of there own that needs H.264 or Apple is the flavour of the month at Mountain View. This is going to cost a pretty penny. Imagine the extra electricity, manpower, server power this is going to need.

[Glassman]

forget the codec, there's more to this - higher resolution, less compressed videos! the codec choice is just a logical consequence of this move and if it's gonna be AppleTV exclusive thing then I'd expect huge boost of sales indeed! Imagine all those YouTube users now given chance to access higher resolution clips..

[mozmac]

Originally Posted by furious

Why just for Apple? Google must having something of there own that needs H.264 or Apple is the flavour of the month at Mountain View. This is going to cost a pretty penny. Imagine the extra electricity, manpower, server power this is going to need.

I agree, there has to be more to it. Apple is powerful, but I don't think they are THAT powerful. Google's got other reasons for doing this, too.