video

Why H.264 has won (for now)

H.264 is a video codec that is used in a number of different containers, for example, .MP4, .FLV, .MOV.

Courtesy of encoding.com

As of May 2010, the H.264 format has claimed a stake in 66 percent of all videos online, making it the current leader for internet video compression.

One reason is, well, H.264 is an athletic encoder – it looks great and weighs less! Technically, it offers nearly three times greater compression than MPEG-2, at half the file size, and still looks clean and sharp, I like to think of it as the star wrestler of video encoders, the way it squashes data flat.

Another reason for H.264′s dominance, is it’s flexibility. H.264 was created to allow content from your home computer to be delivered to other devices without the time consuming hassle of converting. So, if you happen to have the latest technology in your hands, you can share your H.264 videos from your computer to your iPhone to your iPod to your DVD player, to your TV set-top box with no sweat, no cursing, no mangled, stretched or pixelated video.

And finally, I would guess that YouTube – the Ruling King of Video – has been one of the major forces in pushing H.264 to the top.

In the beginning, YouTube’s favored codec was H.263 Sorenson Spark in an FLV container. And people were astounded at the speed of playback and the ability of H.263 to crunch a fat movie down to an edible size. We were finally watching video in real time, on our home computers, without fits and starts, and the world was forever changed.

Since then, YouTube, whose very existence requires the staff stay on top of evolving video compression standards, started using H.264 in 2007 and three years later, YouTube uses and promotes H.264 FLV. In a recent blog post, YouTube explained that they chose H.264 because they need a format that will work with as many browsers as possible. And for efficiency’s sake, YouTube needs to minimize the number of formats they accept to keep up with their manic upload rate of 24 hours of video every minute (makes me sweat just thinking about it!).

While YouTube gives a nodd to the people-friendly open video format VP8, YouTube says they’re sticking with the Flash Player and H.264 for now, noting Flash’s security features and it’s technical capabilities such as recording from a webcam straight on to YouTube for live chat and broadcasting.

Tags: codec, H.264, video, youtube

YouTube: 24 Hours of Video Uploaded Per Minute

YouTube just announced that 24 hours of video is uploaded to YouTube every minute. Don’t know what’s more astounding, YouTube’s ability to process that much content or people’s ability to generate that much content?

Tags: upload, video, what's cool, youtube

The Social Media Revolution

This video has been floating around for a bit, but, a friend sent it to me again this weekend and I’m reminded what a great presentation it is.  Enjoy!

- Moyra

Tags: revolution, Social Media, video, youtube