Those are good points. I'd like to add... Google may see it as their moral obligation to save everything. It's history recorded.
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YouTube for Apple TV uses H.264, not Flash
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I think some of the existing content will see good quality improvement with H.264 conversion, some will not. It won't get worse. But I think what's important is that Google/YouTube/Apple are preparing for the future. The quality of future content should be sizeably better.
Did I hear somewhere that Google is considering revenue sharing with individual content providers on YouTube? Might that mean that anyone can sign up an account and get paid when their content is viewed? That seems like good insentive to get a lot of new, higher-quality content uploaded on to the site.
That leads me to think that a pro-publish-to-YouTube feature in Final Cut might be an idea, along with an easy-to-use, publish-to-YouTube feature in iMovie.
Just a thought.
Did I hear somewhere that Google is considering revenue sharing with individual content providers on YouTube? Might that mean that anyone can sign up an account and get paid when their content is viewed? That seems like good insentive to get a lot of new, higher-quality content uploaded on to the site.
That leads me to think that a pro-publish-to-YouTube feature in Final Cut might be an idea, along with an easy-to-use, publish-to-YouTube feature in iMovie.
Just a thought.
Sorry, but if the iPhone won't play Flash content then we are not getting the "real internet" but the "baby internet" as Steve has described. Too many sites use Flash extensively. I am still believing that Flash will play on the iPhone just fine.
Yes, it can access the internet for things such as updates, theatrical trailers and now, YouTube.
Flash is getting old and is not an efficient use for video and should have never went mainstream for video. Switching to H.264 is a smart move and logical one since the files would be smaller play 5x better using less resources and higher quality. I really hope they move away from flash because Adobe doesn't seem to care that many older computers have issues with flash performance but not H.264. Most all my comps including ALL my Macs have problems with flash performance, it's just crap software basically (reminds me of java) but can play H.264 perfectly. I can play HD video better than a youtube or google flash video, now that is revealing.
I agree, and - as a sometime Flash developer - lack of Flash support is probably the one thing that would put me off buying an iPhone.
Well, the AppleTV (or
tv) does have a connection to the Internet. But it does not have a web browser, which is what I assume you are really asking.At present, it can view movie trailers, and stream short clips of the current 'top 10' on the iTunes Store; and soon it will be able to view content from YouTube. But it does not have a web browser, so you can't use its internet connection to view arbitrary web sites; or even listen to streaming internet radio. (Which would be nice, as I actually use the "Radio" source in iTunes fairly regularly.)
But this deal might allow AppleTV to get 640x480 video if the submission was originally in that resolution. YouTube Downscales it to something like 320x240 for their site. One wrinkle is that some third party tutorials are encouraging people to pre-scale the video down to 320x240 so as to give the best quality.
H.264 encoding is a turd even on a quad. A quad can turd through two videos at a time, an octo maybe four at a time, but it's still very slow.
The chips currently available aren't that great. Elgato's encoding stick encodes video a little slower than real time.
I'm sure it's also because of quality reasons. The H.264 should look a lot better than Flash.
I know there's a lot of complainers here, but I personally like YouTube, and I don't need it to be in 1080p. I enjoy content over quality.
I'll be looking at purchasing an
Why would you be buying an HDTV in the first place if video quality doesn't matter? YouTube's current videos are 240p. I hope that this means Apple is getting to the secret stash so they get 480p.
The difference being that nearly all computers in use have Flash installed and the nearest competitor is at 50% of computers in use. Basically, YouTube made the best choice they can make given the circumstances.
YouTube is heavily compressing their videos, and they are using a codec for Flash 7 when there are newer, competing codecs for Flash 8 that do a better job.
Transcoded .flv would be even worse than .flv.
I think all recent uploads are already getting the high-quality treatment. Look at this recent video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sqILtHNAq-U&NR=1
It's much clearer than your average YouTube block-o-rama.
#1 - Google Video is merging into YouTube. Google Video uses h.264 heavily already.
Not just for Apple - or at all for Apple - YouTube is geting a technology upgrade courtesy of Google Video. Apple and Google both 'get' technology, ergo they converge on the same solutions.
Methinkststheyregonnabuyseagate.
They have since October 9th, 2006.
Actually, well encoded FLV is tolerable not only on a 60 inch screen, but even a 120 inch commercial rear projection...given enough distance. Is it Blu-Ray, ah no, but for bootleg concert video that hasn't been commercially released yet, you'd be amazed at what most people would be quite happy with. Commercial releases often edit out the audience noise, which when trying to relive an awesome concert experience, I'll take my bootleg version. YouTube on my 60 inch will be quite welcome.
That's what nearly every post in the last 3 pages is about! What do you mean you hadn't thought of it before?
I just encoded 2 hrs and 45 minutes of DVCProHD into a smaller 16:9 quicktime for a client tonight. 39 minutes.
If you don't know what you're doing, yep, it can be slow. But a standard 5 minute video can be compressed to a h.264 QT in about 60 seconds. I don't really see the problem in that. Flash encoding is just as slow - and nearly as good of quality actually. h.264 just happens to have the turd mode, but so does vp6 flash encoding. Both take forever to encode due to multi-pass and vbr. But you can do without both and encode both very quickly.
YouTube reencodes at a horrible bit rate. But many people don't know that if you keep your flash file under a certain file size, it gets posed AS-IS. No reencoding.
Late post but, I think this is awesome! This Makes the Apple TV a whole lot more attractive for consumers (not to mention myself). Now do the same with Joost and the Apple TV will take off. And damnit get that movie store going in Europe Apple and not just movies but series as well.
As the World Turns...
Apple jumped on the podcasting bandwagon and this helped it become extremely relevant to the online publishing community. It's free content to help it sell its devices. Google and Apple know EXACTLY what each of them hope to get out of this. In the area of "vision", its clearly both companies that are "mainlining" the cultural and technological zeitgeist of the entire planet.
- Will Apple be building H.264 hardware decompression into all its future devices?
Does the Apple TV have a hardware decompressor?
https://www.macrumors.com/2007/03/09/apple-adding-h-264-hardware-decoder-chip-to-macs/
- How many people are interested in buying Turbo.264's from El Gato to convert
their DVD collections to Apple TV lickety split?
I am. Cause they'll also play on your iPods and iPhones.
http://www.elgato.com/index.php?file=products_eyetvturbo
- How many hardware devices support H.264? I've updated the Wiki list to include Apple's latest, and Microsoft's:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_devices_that_support_H.264/MPEG-4_AVC
Amongst them we have:
* Apple iPod (5th Generation and Up)
* Apple Apple tv
* Apple iPhone
* Microsoft Xbox 360
* Microsoft Zune
* Nokia N95
* Playstation 3
* PlayStation Portable
Don't know about you, but I think we're looking at
a list of some of the hottest, buzzworthy devices
on the personal electronics market. Uncoincidentally.
- Flash 7 is what YouTube currently supports, with the H.263 (Sorenson) video codec. Now, they'll also be supporting H.264. Rather than thinking of this as simply FLV versus H.264, I think that comparison makes it more interesting from the strategic perspective. Flash 8 introduced the V6 codec. If YouTube uses this, I suspect it would be in addition to the other two, switching transparently depending on the user. I don't think it is. While MySpace mandated a Flash 8 change for its users for cross-site security concerns, I don't think YouTube ever did. Considering Google Video (as many have pointed out) did that "co-conversion" early on, I think it was a matter of time before YouTube jumped on-board.
- How many people think Youtube converts uploaded videos to FLV/H.263 and then simply deletes the original copy? Yeah, I don't either. I think "storage" was never YouTube's problem. It was BANDWIDTH. I think the only limitation is that YouTube can only convert from what they were given.
- Wouldn't it be silly if the iPhone didn't record video? Wouldn't it be silly if the iPhone DID record video, and didn't allow people to upload its videos to YouTube directly from the handset? It will be interesting to see if iPhone allows the upload of both YouTube and Flickr photos from the handset. Personally, I believe strongly that this will be the case.
- Lastly... I think YouTube needs to be video podcast central. Syndicated content on demand. Everybody sees this. This new initiative isn't simply about Apple. It's about world domination. "It's Larry and the Brin, it's Larry and the Brin. One is a genius, the other is insane."
"What are we going to do tonight, Brin?"
"What we do every night, Larry...
Try to take over the World!"
Apple jumped on the podcasting bandwagon and this helped it become extremely relevant to the online publishing community. It's free content to help it sell its devices. Google and Apple know EXACTLY what each of them hope to get out of this. In the area of "vision", its clearly both companies that are "mainlining" the cultural and technological zeitgeist of the entire planet.