YouTube videos now available in HTML5: Good riddance, Flash

alfa147x

Lifer
Jul 14, 2005
29,307
106
106
Link


I like it! fast as hell!

The HTML5 option is only available for browsers that support HTML5 (obviously) and h.264. Safari (version 4 and above), Google Chrome, and Internet Explorer with Chrome Frame are a few of the qualified browsers.

There are a few caveats to the HTML5 beta. Videos with ads aren't supported (awww...) – they'll play in the standard Flash player instead. There's also no support for full screen; clicking the little expander button on the lower right corner of the video will instead expand the video within the window to about double the normal size. Honestly, YouTube's full screen video has never impressed me much anyway, so this isn't a huge loss. Macworld notes that you also lose support for annotations and closed captioning, though, which might be a deal breaker for some.

Although YouTube is calling the HTML5 beta an "experiment," this is an experiment I'd encourage everyone reading this to take part in. While the pre-release of Flash Player 10.1 reduced Flash's CPU footprint considerably, using HTML5 instead results in a dramatic reduction – YouTube videos played in Safari using HTML5 never used more than 15% of my CPU. Even compared to Flash 10.1, which generally used about 35% of my CPU, that's pretty tremendous.

One other thing I've noted in my brief experimentation with the HTML5 beta: the scrubber bar on videos seems far more responsive, without any lag at all. Flash videos were very jittery when switching between different spots in the video using the scrubber bar, but the response using HTML5 is instantaneous and seamless.

I hope YouTube's HTML5 beta is a smashing success. If the biggest video site on the internet eventually abandons Flash Player, it's only a matter of time before everyone else does, too. Personally, I can't wait.

http://www.tuaw.com/2010/01/21/youtube-videos-now-available-in-html5-good-riddance-flash/
 

Miramonti

Lifer
Aug 26, 2000
28,653
100
106
Right now we support browsers that support both the <video> tag in HTML5 and the h.264 video codec. These include:

* Google Chrome
* Apple Safari (version 4+)
* Microsoft Internet Explorer with Chrome Frame installed (Get Chrome Frame)

Google Chrome or Safari??...I don't think so.
 
Oct 27, 2007
17,009
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Awesome, I've been waiting for one of the major video sites to pick this up.

Edit - oh,
There's also no support for full screen; clicking the little expander button on the lower right corner of the video will instead expand the video within the window to about double the normal size.
that's a deal breaker for me.
 
Oct 27, 2007
17,009
5
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how do we know if we're watching a HTML5 or Flash video?
youtubehtml5.PNG
 

Modelworks

Lifer
Feb 22, 2007
16,240
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The problem is the source quality of most of the stuff on youtube is crap, no codec or software can fix that.
 

Red Squirrel

No Lifer
May 24, 2003
70,180
13,576
126
www.anyf.ca
I never even heard of html 5 so I'm curious to check this out.

So I went to download chrome but when you click the link it just installs! how in the world did they do this and why does firefox allow this? This could be used for malicious purposes quite easily. No prompts no nothing, just clicked the link and it launched the installer! That's with noscript installed too! Anyone know how this works? I would have figured firefox would at least give some kind of warning about something like this.