40 ms·

YouTube now defaults to HTML5 video

1035 points by derpenxyne 12y ago

nailer 12y ago
Excellent. It's always been weird having a mobile device run YouTube more responsively than an GBP1500 laptop because the latter had to run the Flash plugin.
- xooyoozoo 12y ago
  If your browser supports VP9, that will be forced whenever possible. I'm not sure if switching to CPU-only video decode will be a net gain for most.
  - derf_ 12y ago
    Well, certainly in developing countries where bandwidth is limited, you're going to be watching a small resolution, and any amount of CPU is fine so long as you can cut the bitrate. There are a lot of people in places like that. Also, Allwinner, Intel, Mediatek, and Rockchip all have SoCs announced with hardware VP9 decode: http://wiki.webmproject.org/hardware/socs http://wiki.webmproject.org/hardware/socs (not sure how many of those are already shipping).
  - deleted 12y ago
    [deleted]
  - ZeroGravitas 12y ago
    There's a talk online by a Youtube engineer that covers them rolling out VP9. Apparently the stats on user engagement show improvement. It seems that initially they showed a lot of improvement, but then they realised they were comparing the average video against only the most popular videos in VP9 (since those made the most sense to transcode first) and obviously people are more likely to keep watching something really popular. Once they took that into account they did identify that some older machines would have a degraded performance and therefore lower engagement with VP9, but the heuristic for avoiding them is "Running XP" so it seems that most modern machines have a better experience with CPU decoding of VP9. I believe they were up to 60% of all desktop views in VP9 by the end of last summer, so I'd guess if it was going to melt anyones's computer it would have happened by now.
- erickhill 12y ago
  Now only if Amazon/Netflix would drop Silverlight all would be right with the world.
  - Alphasite_ 12y ago
    Netflix has HTML5 support for Safari and iirc IE.
    - izacus 12y ago
      And Chrome.
    - MBCook 12y ago
      Safari only works on certain 2011 Macs and all 2012 and later Macs. There are a fair number of people who can't skip Flash quite yet for Netflix. Good start though.
    - pornel 12y ago
      The "HTML5" support requires proprietary binary blob that has no standard API (besides an API to launch it with opaque data from a proprietary server) and is licensed only to selected companies. Basically it's as much HTML5 as <object data="swf"> was HTML4. It's supported only by DRM vendors: Google (WideVine), Safari (FairPlay) and Microsoft (PlayReady) and doesn't work in open-source browsers (not even in Chromium or custom WebKit builds).
      - chambo622 12y ago
        Netflix works fine in Chrome on Linux. What do you mean by "licensed only to selected companies?"
        gcp 12y ago
        Chrome isn't an open source browser. Google is "one of the selected companies".
- NeutronBoy 12y ago
  Youtube and Twitch are the only reasons I keep Chrome around - I much rather supporting the work that Mozilla are doing with Firefox (ie a proper open source browser) than Chrome.
  - omaranto 12y ago
    Are you saying that the Flash plugin bundled with Chrome is better than the Flash plugin you can install for Firefox? If so, do you have any idea why?
    - simcop2387 12y ago
      On linux it's because the NPAPI flash plugin hasn't been updated in a few years. It went Chrome/PPAPI a while back and firefox doesn't support it yet. I think it's supposed to get security fixes but performance issues are never going to get fixed in it.
      - giovannibajo1 12y ago
        Also, being on PPAPI means that it's fully sandboxed; add to that that google auto-updates it without nah screens and installer downloads, and you get a far higher level of security
    - freehunter 12y ago
      On Linux, it is. The Flash plugin on Linux for Chrome is v16. The version for Linux Firefox is 11.2. Adobe stopped supporting Flash on Linux, so Google stepped up to the plate and started bundling Flash with Chrome and supporting it themselves. Flash does still work on Firefox, but at least on my install Click to Run was enabled by default for it (that might be a corporate setting though, I'm not sure". Regardless, yeah Flash on Firefox on Linux is several years behind.
  - matthewmacleod 12y ago
    Out of interest, why is Firefox a 'proper' open-source browser while Chrome is not? Isn't Chrome pretty much just Chromium with a little bit of extra Google integration on top?
- deeviant 12y ago
  I've had a pretty poor experience with HTML 5 video. It stutters far more than flash and in particular it does very weird things when I try to skip around in videos. I'll miss flash.
  - JustGotHere 12y ago
    For me it's the other way around, in a 4 years old netbook I still use, the HTML5 video usually performs better than flash.
    - deeviant 12y ago
      I don't think your experience has anything to do with my experience. That fact that on your hardware you felt html 5 video works better has no bearing on whether it work for me, on my hardware. The fact that somebody down-voted me for adding a relevant anecdote, but happens to go against the tide of this threads opinion(ie: FU Flash), it's pretty indicative of the extremely poor voting etiquette around here.
      - ampersandy 12y ago
        I find it ironic that you are berating JustGotHere for sharing his experiences, but feel that it is inappropriate that you were downvoted for sharing yours. Your anecdote isn't relevant, because I don't know what hardware you run, and it's likely that most other readers aren't using the same hardware. Your time would be better spent filing a bug report.
        deeviant 12y ago
        The thread is full of "flash sucks, good riddance, poor performance, etc", so he was not at all adding anything new to the equation and his response was in direct reply to mine, as if any repose other than one which was in lock-step with the thread's general opinion required instant rebuttal.
  - spyder 12y ago
    Yes, one of my friend has an old computer and I had to install a "force flash on Youtube" extension for him to make the videos stutter less.
free2rhyme214 12y ago
Steve Jobs predicted this in 2010 - https://www.apple.com/hotnews/thoughts-on-flash/ https://www.apple.com/hotnews/thoughts-on-flash/
- tosseraccount 12y ago
  Steve may have been a tad unrepresentative that "open video" issue. Remember, this is the guy that controlled QuickTime and never opened it up. That was a bit of problem for open video supporters. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Francisco_Canyon_Company http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Francisco_Canyon_Company
  - micampe 12y ago
    “The International Organization for Standardization approved the QuickTime file format as the basis of the MPEG-4 file format. The MPEG-4 file format specification was created on the basis of the QuickTime format specification published in 2001.” — http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/QuickTime_File_Format http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/QuickTime_File_Format
    - tosseraccount 12y ago
      Not so fast there ... This registration authority for code-points in "MP4 Family" files is Apple Inc. and it is named in Annex D (informative) in MPEG-4 Part 12.[18] (from your link) Apple did in fact control Quicktime AND keep it very proprietary. To insinuate that they were pro open source on video is revisionism.
      - micampe 12y ago
        That just means that Apple manages this list: http://www.mp4ra.org/atoms.html http://www.mp4ra.org/atoms.html The file format is still an ISO standard and pretty much anything reads it. Even Apple itself doesn't use the Quicktime container anymore (and hasn't for years). I didn't insinuate anything regarding open source, which doesn't appear anywhere in the part I quoted. Edit: Oh, I noticed you significantly modified your first comment, that's why you now talk about open source when I never did. When I responded your comment read: “From the guy that tried to force QuickTime on us?”.
addisonj 12y ago
This is really interesting news and I think signals what will be a really large change in digital video in the next few years. Moving from flash to HTML5 adaptive bitrate is not trivial task and if you are familiar with MSE/EME, it shows how powerful the browser has become in delivering rich video content, either pre-recorded or live streaming. With this, it seems to me there is a big gap now for encoding to new adaptive codecs, like MPEG-DASH and tooling to make something like livestreaming easy to do without flash.
- shmerl 12y ago
  EME is really garbage (it's all about DRM), while MSE is actually useful. They shouldn't be mixed together. Do you know by the way, is MPEG-DASH patent encumbered or not?
deleted 12y ago
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tatterdemalion 12y ago
Hooray! I delete all cookies on session end and I don't have flash installed. Having to remember to go to youtube.com/html5 every time I start a new session has been frustrating. Also, the HTML5 player has a nice feature to change the rate at which the video plays, which makes watching long talks a lot easier.
- dmunoz 12y ago
  I much prefer to have the option exposed in the UI, but you can do this with any HTML5 video element by setting the video element's playbackRate. Often, it's as easy as 'document.getElementsByTagName('video')[0].playbackRate = 1.5'. I have a bookmarklet that does exactly this, so I love to see HTML5 video being the default more and more.
- carlob 12y ago
  There are a bunch of extensions that could have forced all video to html5 for you. ClickToPlugin is great IMO and it's kept me from switching away from safari for the longest time.
- dublinben 12y ago
  You should use this add-on, called YouTube All HTML5. It just works. https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-all-html5/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-all-h...
toddsiegel 12y ago
I've kept Flash around for the oddball site here and there that still requires it, but this week I decided to uninstall rather than patch it[1]. [1] - https://helpx.adobe.com/security/products/flash-player/apsa15-01.html https://helpx.adobe.com/security/products/flash-player/apsa1...
- SeanDav 12y ago
  I like to unwind occasionally with browser based flash games so this is not an option for me.
  - deleted 12y ago
    [deleted]
  - rev_bird 12y ago
    Glad I'm not the only one. The most relaxing way I know of to open up strange, frequent security vulnerabilities.
    - gnrlbzik 12y ago
      haha : )
- yuhong 12y ago
  It is funny how this came the same day Adobe patched Flash!
jfb 12y ago
Well, now I can delete Chrome.
- simlevesque 12y ago
  I fail to see the relation between the OP and your message.
  - jfb 12y ago
    The only reason I kept Chrome around is because I occasionally wanted to watch Youtube videos that were Flash only. I wasn't going to install Flash system-wide, so I was grateful for Google's approach of maintaining a private Flash instance. Now, that usecase is become less of a problem, so I can ditch Chrome, which I never used otherwise.
    - simlevesque 12y ago
      You could have watched a video on Youtube on Firefox for the last year at least. It was a setting in your Youtube account.
      - aw3c2 12y ago
        Some people like not having accounts on any random website that will be used for tracking and targetting.
        simlevesque 12y ago
        Do these people use Chrome ?
        jfb 12y ago
        It was the best way to run Flash programs without installing Flash system-wide.
        polshaw 12y ago
Grazester 12y ago
HTML 5 videos on youtube take forever to start for me and would just stay at a buffering screen when I use the seekbar. This is in Chrome. I haven't tried another browser but it has made my youtube experience terrible compared to what is use to be with Flash.
- barbs 12y ago
  Interesting. I must've switched on HTML5 streaming ages ago and forgotten about it because I wasn't able to tell it was using flash until I right-clicked the video. I was pretty surprised at how stable it had been.
- mmcclure 12y ago
  Methinks these issues are specific to your environment. I've seen improved start times and all around better performance, which (for the start time, at least) makes sense considering it's not loading a beefy Flash object. The only thing that seems to occasionally hang for a second or two is loading a pre-roll ad, but that's pretty reasonable given the additional processes around ad serving. On that note, pretty awesome that those are also HTML5...must be nice to be YouTube and control your own ad format. Edit: For clarification, not saying I enjoy ads, but having dealt with the bizarre SWF formats that ad vendors pass along...
- agumonkey 12y ago
  The only regular issue I have with html5 player is buffering with seeking, some times things get stuck. I often resort to youtube-dl `xsel` | dmenu | mpv to help both cpu usage and streaming quality.
  - pdkl95 12y ago
    That seems to be a problem with youtube in general. I see that behavior all the time. Several local friend of mine also have these seeking problems, too, so it may depend on the particular cache servers you end up seeing. I think the problems started when they changed to the "adaptive" rate stuff; the players don't don't download the entire video file anymore, and instead they buffer in segments. Not only does this remove the ability to pre-buffer the entire video, the client seems to get out of sync with the server. The client ends up waiting forever, but the server isn't sending anything. Fortunately, I was able to switch many of my friends over to youtbe-dl, and that fixed everything. Unfortunately, the article mentions the idiotic "encrypted medfia extensions" a one of the reasons for the changes to youtube; I wonder what additional useless hoops youtube-dl will end up having to have to jump through.
Ellipsis753 12y ago
Am I the only one that noticed: "<h2> Moving to <iframe> embeds</h2>" I'm not entirely sure if it's a little joke or genuine mistake? Regardless, this is absolutely great. I haven't had flash for a while now and so it makes me happy to feel that HTML5 really is a valid replacement for most things.
- Igglyboo 12y ago
  I noticed it, I thought it might have been a mistake but all of the other paragraph headers are <a> tags and not <h2> so I think it's a joke.
eliben 12y ago
What I especially like about the HTML5 player is the ability to change the playback speed. It is extremely useful for watching lectures & talks.
- commandar 12y ago
  I use this constantly when I'm watching tutorials and how-tos. It makes picking up the info you need so much faster. I also recently discovered that the Crocodile Hunter at 1/2 speed is freaking hilarious. e.g., https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QLIMgXv89VU&feature=youtu.be&t=39m55s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QLIMgXv89VU&feature=youtu.be...
  - copperx 12y ago
    The Crocodile Hunter at 1/2 speed is amazing. I would love it if there was a listing of all videos that are hilarious at 1/2 speed.
    - robflynn 12y ago
      NDT sounds completely smashed when at half speed - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=danYFxGnFxQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=danYFxGnFxQ
    - midgetjones 12y ago
      DHH's Ruby on Rails demo is pretty hilarious at half speed: http://youtu.be/Gzj723LkRJY http://youtu.be/Gzj723LkRJY
    - dinkumthinkum 12y ago
      I recommend watching Handmade Heroes at 0.5x. Its a good series but if you put it on 0.5x it is quite amusing. :)
  - kkuduk 12y ago
    and when you need something between 1.25 and 1.5 available from UI, you can always do: document.getElementsByTagName('video')[0].playbackRate = 1.35
deanclatworthy 12y ago
> Encrypted Media Extensions and Common Encryption - In the past, the choice of delivery platform (Flash, Silverlight, etc) and content protection technology (Access, PlayReady) were tightly linked, as content protection was deeply integrated into the delivery platform and even the file format. Encrypted Media Extensions separate the work of content protection from delivery, enabling content providers like YouTube to use a single HTML5 video player across a wide range of platforms. Combined with Common Encryption, we can support multiple content protection technologies on different platforms with a single set of assets, making YouTube play faster and smoother. Has any streaming platform actually rolled out an implementation of this? And has anyone found a way to break it?
- icebraining 12y ago
  According to the wiki, Netflix has implemented it.
- mikeryan 12y ago
  Has any streaming platform actually rolled out an implementation of this? And has anyone found a way to break it? Note EME isn't "DRM" per-se. Its an interface to enable custom DRM implementations. There's not "one thing" to break. I'd assume Youtube would use Widevine (another google company) which supports EME.
orbitur 12y ago
Now if they only defaulted to theatre mode. I don't care about the related videos as much as they think I do, and there's still room for a few once they get shifted underneath the larger player.
- heri0n 12y ago
  There's browser extensions to do this
- iamshariq 12y ago
  https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/magic-actions-for-youtube/abjcfabbhafbcdfjoecdgepllmpfceif?hl=en https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/magic-actions-for-...
leonardofed 12y ago
Finally.
jacquesm 12y ago
That's great. Now for HTML5 support in all the streaming platforms for live streams. That's going to be another nail in the flash coffin. And it will do wonders for integrating the delivery to both web and mobile clients from the same sources.
- ThreeAs 12y ago
  As soon as there's an alternative for games, flash will finally be dead.
  - jacquesm 12y ago
    That alternative is already here, javascript. I think that flash is being kept alive now for two reasons only: live video and flash components used for corporate bits & pieces.
  - malnourish 12y ago
    Unity?
  - robmcm 12y ago
    Native apps...
- ThreeAs 12y ago
  As soon as there's an alternative for games, flash will finally be dead.
dzhiurgis 12y ago
Zoom in Safari is still kinda broken: http://imgur.com/8pBmWpm http://imgur.com/8pBmWpm Also Google Maps seriously lags on Safari. Do not like it.
shutupalready 12y ago
What joy it is to finally uninstall Flash. The last time I was this happy to uninstall crappy software was when I realized that I no longer needed RealPlayer. For those that don't know it, RealPlayer was a very popular proprietary media player (with its own proprietary formats) circa 2000. The company's stock was worth $380 a share in 2000; it's now worth $6. The only explanation for RealPlayer's popularity was its DRM I think; lots of commercial users wanted the DRM. But it got more bloated with every release, and I had to go through its countless option settings every time I updated it to disable all the sneaky ways they came up with to violate user privacy. I'm relieved that we no longer need either Flash or RealPlayer.
- koyote 12y ago
  Oh my god I completely forgot about RealPlayer. Luckily there was an alternative, Real Alternative, that enabled you to play the content without having to install that ghastly RealPlayer. It seems like the community always finds a way around crappy software.
  - mhb 12y ago
    What's the community using instead of iTunes?
    - debaserab2 12y ago
      Spotify?
    - maaku 12y ago
      What's crappy about iTunes?
      - username 12y ago
        It's extremely bloated.
        GFK_of_xmaspast 12y ago
yellowapple 12y ago
About damn time.
pantulis 12y ago
Sorry dudes. This is not killing Flash. Last time I checked, porn sites were still using it.
- ethana 12y ago
  As silly as this is, it's completely true ;)
- killertypo 12y ago
  yeah but a lot of them are more mobile friendly which means they're not using flash as heavily anymore. I know this only for research purposes of course...
- shittyanalogy 12y ago
  If youtube is switching, they'll switch. Slowly, but it'll happen. Simply because the ones that do first will get more customers.
- Aldo_MX 12y ago
  Use this UA the next time: Mozilla/5.0 (iPad; CPU OS 8_0 like Mac OS X) AppleWebKit/600.1.3 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/8.0 Mobile/12A4345d Safari/600.1.4
- totony 12y ago
  Pornhub has switched to HTML5
  - pantulis 12y ago
    I stand corrected, then. Should watch more porn it seems :P
    - Houshalter 12y ago
      I tried it and they are still using flash, as is every other site I know of. Perhaps they mean there is an html5 option somewhere, but I don't see it.
pdknsk 12y ago
That's fine and well, but maybe Google can tell now why they very quietly cancelled YouTube Feather. It was the best way to avoid comments. It stopped working some day, and Google was supposedly working on a fix. A few weeks later, it was removed completely. Since then, radio silence. http://productforums.google.com/d/topic/youtube/Eae53c5AI5U http://productforums.google.com/d/topic/youtube/Eae53c5AI5U
SCdF 12y ago
Next up (I hope): Twitch. Then I think I'm done with that extension.
- flavioribeiro 12y ago
  I think that the first step on moving to HTML5-only player is the support for DASH on the live streaming stack. AFAIK, Twitch is using HLS to broadcast their channels which isn't supported on browsers by default[1]. I bet Twitch guys are working on this right now. [1] There's an initiative to play HLS videos without flash at https://github.com/RReverser/mpegts https://github.com/RReverser/mpegts, but its too much heavy since the browser needs to change mpegts container to mp4.
- calebegg 12y ago
  Twitch streams in HTML5 for me on Safari, if Flash isn't installed. No comments, though.
  - SCdF 12y ago
    That's so weird, why would the comments of all things require flash!?
    - calebegg 12y ago
      Probably because it's easier than long polling and more widely supported than web sockets.
  - flavioribeiro 12y ago
    HLS is supported by default on Safari (on MacOS only, AFAIK). HLS is developed by Apple so it make sense to support it natively on their products. There's a bunch of players that has "HTML5-first" support, it tries to use <video> tag and if the browser doesn't support it, it fallbacks to flash.
deleted 12y ago
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- _frog 12y ago
  Are you talking about the thing where going fullscreen places the video in a new virtual desktop? Because if that's the case I vastly prefer that behaviour. It makes it much easier to jump back and forth between watching a fullscreen video and reading content in other browser tabs.
  - dzhiurgis 12y ago
    No. I am talking about thing that you zoom into YouTube video and it shrinks. Virtual desktop feature is nice, although not related. By the way, I was talking about YouTube being broken, not Safari. Haven't seen such behaviour with any other HTML5 player other than YouTube.
jcastro 12y ago
Click to play now doesn't work in Chrome, anyone have a workaround or a known-working extensions for click-to-play for html5 youtube?
- psychometry 12y ago
  There are some really bloated "YouTube enhancer" type add-ons that do it unreliably. This has been a problem for so long that it's pretty clear Google doesn't care and wants YouTube videos to auto-play against the user's wishes. They want to force you into using their UI rather than opening videos in new tabs.
- porsupah 12y ago
  If you're fine with downloading YouTube videos for playing locally, I've found 4K Video Downloader works well, at least under OS X. You'll wind up with plain H.264/AAC MPEG-4 files. https://www.4kdownload.com/download https://www.4kdownload.com/download
  - psychometry 12y ago
    How does that solve the problem of videos autoplaying when you access the page?
- unfortunateface 12y ago
  When i'm on youtube I like to open loads of tabs before going through each one later. With click to play for flash this wasn't a problem, but html5 will autoplay and get very annoying. Is there a way around this? Do you think Youtube would be for or against that (i.e. do they really want me opening more than one tab?)
- lowr33nas 12y ago
  I'm using "YouTube Auto Buffer & Auto HD" with Greasemonkey (there's an alternative to this on Chrome) and I guess it should work, also it's not bloated, just the stuff you need.
- lostsock 12y ago
  https://github.com/YePpHa/YouTubeCenter https://github.com/YePpHa/YouTubeCenter
peterwwillis 12y ago
Now I have to figure out how to fix HTML5 audio. For some reason it always uses the wrong alsa sound device, even though Flash and all my other apps use the right one. This is how I fixed it for all the other media: ~$ cat .asoundrc pcm.!default { type hw card 1 } ctl.!default { type hw card 1 } Also, I just checked the site and it's still using Flash for me in Firefox 35.0 (???) edit Ah, they do it for Beta versions of Firefox.
- M2Ys4U 12y ago
  Almost all YouTube videos work in HTML5 mode on Firefox and have for a while, it just wasn't HTML5 by default.
DigitalSea 12y ago
The HTML5 player is fantastic and I have been using it for as long as I can remember (since it became an option). My favourite feature is the playback speed controls, when trying to learn a song on guitar, I can follow along with the live performance or tutorial to learn how to play, absolutely invaluable. Every day the number of reasons to keep Flash installed gets lower and lower. I still keep it installed on my machine for the occasional site that still uses it, but Flash's days are definitely numbered. When a site as big as Youtube stops using it, that is when you know there isn't long left. Fortunately Adobe realised HTML5 is the future a while ago and have been creating some great tools.
- notdan 12y ago
  Since you are using youtube to learn songs on guitar, you might try this out (I made it): http://tunetranscriber.com http://tunetranscriber.com Let's you do marks and loops as well as using the playback controls.
  - tim333 12y ago
    That's cool. What did you use to slow the music/vid?
    - notdan 12y ago
      The YouTube slowdown is just using the YouTube API. For mp3, it is using the html5 file and audio Apis, and a JavaScript port of the sound touch library. Everything is done in client side javascript, there is currently no application server, just a static site.
      - tim333 12y ago
        Thanks for the info. I was thinking of building something doing somewhat similar stuff but I think it'd have to be sever side in my case.
akrymski 12y ago
Now if only Facebook did the same, I could finally use Safari without switching to iPad mode!
thisjepisje 12y ago
I just hope they don't remove flash support anytime soon.
shmerl 12y ago
By the way, is MPEG-DASH* patent encumbered or not? I didn't find clear answer on that. Youtube is using DASH (on the server side) to implement adaptive streaming. * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dynamic_Adaptive_Streaming_over_HTTP https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dynamic_Adaptive_Streaming_ove...
- deskamess 12y ago
  And does Firefox support the MediaSourceElement fully (used for DASH)? I was under the impression it did not (but was coming soon).
  - shmerl 12y ago
    It's WIP, and you can already enable it in about:config (set media.mediasource.enabled to true). But it's still buggy somewhat. It should be finished in the upcoming release to be enough for Youtube. See: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=881512 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=881512 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=778617 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=778617
- slederer 12y ago
  MPEG-DASH is completely royality free. Find also more info on www.dash-player.com
  - shmerl 12y ago
    Thanks. Do you know if this is documented anywhere?
    - slederer 12y ago
      There was an email at the MPEG-DASH mailing list where the key companies (Qualcomm, Microsoft, etc.) declared that. maybe you ask the question again on this mailing list: https://lists.aau.at/mailman/listinfo/dash https://lists.aau.at/mailman/listinfo/dash
sdfjkl 12y ago
Took you long enough. One less Firefox addon, I guess.
zanny 12y ago
> we can support multiple content protection technologies on different platforms with a single set of assets, making YouTube play faster and smoother. Man this line is hilarious. Your DRM to block users from keeping the videos you are sending them is not making the experience faster or smoother. Don't try to pass off user-hostile proprietary blobs restricting the data on their computer as anything but a terrible blow to a free and open Internet. You can say, "yay drm", but say "yay drm", not "yay drm, bullshit about faster and smoother". At least own up to the fact you are crippling UX for personal gain.
- gilgoomesh 12y ago
  He's not being misleading. It's clear from the context of what Richard Leider was saying that "faster" in this scenario means "faster than the old YouTube + Adobe Flash" approach. His point of comparison isn't a totally DRM free scenario.
gojomo 12y ago
Now if only Twitter would eliminate the Flash dependency to show animated GIFs on Firefox...
deleted 12y ago
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shade23 12y ago
from the same post,what about this I found in the comments? https://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=234779 https://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=234779
codefylabs 12y ago
Good.
critiq 12y ago
I still see its asking for flash if plugin is available, with firefox flash plugin on ask to activate mode.
josteink 12y ago
Make that HTML with DRM and non standard & non-portable extensions. I think I actually prefer a working, portable Flash-based solution to that. In not sure which are worst: Netflix and Google for pushing this bullshit into the browser & standard or uneducated users for swallowing it whole.
jokoon 12y ago
Been using html5 youtube for a while now, it's still pretty damn slow on my french ISP.
mukundmr 12y ago
Uninstalled Flash Player with an evil laugh on my home iMac only to reinstall it when my kid's games needed it. What is the alternative to flash for games that run on PBS Kids, etc. ?
- mojuba 12y ago
  Google Chrome comes packaged with a Flash player (at least on OS X), so here is what I do, very simple: no Flash, use Safari most of the time, use Chrome as a fall back.
shenoyroopesh 12y ago
Wait - so youtube is behind the porn industry by only 4.5 years? http://www.macobserver.com/tmo/article/flash_takes_a_blow_as_porn_industry_backs_html_5 http://www.macobserver.com/tmo/article/flash_takes_a_blow_as...
- agumonkey 12y ago
  I can't recall which article mentioned that this industry was very welcoming to new opportunities and features (one example was having seekable thumbnails).
- marvin 12y ago
  This actually makes sense; the porn industry has much higher earnings per user and hence a much greater loss due to lower conversion for those who don't have Flash installed. So for them, it's a "my hair is on fire" kind of thing. Whereas for Youtube et al., it's a nice-to-have.
  - shenoyroopesh 12y ago
    But won't it be same if you look at percentages? Unless you hypothise that porn users not having flash installed is somehow a larger percentage compared to average web user not having flash installed?!
    - coldpie 12y ago
      Don't forget Flash doesn't work on mobile ;)
      - LLWM 12y ago
        This is by far the largest reason for the delay. If you watch some youtube videos on your work computer, no big deal. But if you need to jack off at work, you had better use your own phone if you care about keeping your job at all.
    - mod 12y ago
ramamark 12y ago
This leaves the BBC as one of the few major sites still dependent on flash for desktop users. Ironic considering you'd expect it to be at the forefront of video delivery technology. I use IE's Developer Tools to request the site as an iPad, a much better experience.
Sealy 12y ago
How does this affect the mobile experience? Is viewing on an iPad / iPhone HTML5 by default? The article only really mentions the main desktop browsers.
Aoyagi 12y ago
Hah, the player is the least of my issues with the service. And I hope this means they won't get rid of the Flash option altogether.
Houshalter 12y ago
I have flash set to "click to play" so flash videos only load when I click on them. I dislike the HTML5 because it means videos always autoplay. I hate autoplaying video.
- lostsock 12y ago
  https://github.com/YePpHa/YouTubeCenter https://github.com/YePpHa/YouTubeCenter
- maxerickson 12y ago
  It might be a step backwards at the moment, but it's pretty much a sure thing that browsers (or at least extensions) will have support for HTML5 click to play. A whitelist + click for sound would be pretty much exactly what I want.
vansteen 12y ago
That's a good news!
p0nce 12y ago
Numerous observers have shown that H.265 is better than VP9 on the quality/efficiency curve. But Google does not like to pay for real research and prefer to found alternative "free" copy-pasta codecs it controls. http://iphome.hhi.de/marpe/download/Performance_HEVC_VP9_X264_PCS_2013_preprint.pdf http://iphome.hhi.de/marpe/download/Performance_HEVC_VP9_X26... http://fr.slideshare.net/touradj_ebrahimi/spie2014-hev-cvsvp9 http://fr.slideshare.net/touradj_ebrahimi/spie2014-hev-cvsvp... edit: facts will get you downvoted on HN. Nice.
- raptormissle 12y ago
  No, the rantings of a lunatic will. If you have issues with VP9 then take it elsewhere. Also, if you don't like the service then go elsewhere. No one is forcing VP9 on you. Go to a H.265 site and be quiet.
fugyk 12y ago
Wow, I almost forgot that I was using HTML5 version of youtube as a preview. I am using HTML5 preview since day 1 and I don't remember any glitches or bugs. I wonder why this switch has taken so long given many upsides and no known downside.
spain 12y ago
Seems like it isn't perfect yet. At least on Firefox I don't get to watch videos in 1080p anymore on Youtube with the HTML5 player.
- Nexxxeh 12y ago
  I watched a 1080p video using HTML5 on Opera yesterday. As a test, I just popped open the first interesting looking video on my signed-in YouTube front page (my account has been set to HTML5 for a while). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jmRI3Ew4BvA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jmRI3Ew4BvA I'm not a fan of the Yeah Yeah Yeahs but the video does have Lily Cole is in 1080p. Opera 27.0.1689.54 on Win 8.1 x64.
  - spain 12y ago
    I think it might be an issue with codecs which is why it works with some browsers and doesn't with others.
- jconnop 12y ago
  http://www.ghacks.net/2014/10/26/the-state-of-media-source-extensions-in-firefox/ http://www.ghacks.net/2014/10/26/the-state-of-media-source-e... TL;DR: For now you need to use beta/aurora/nightly releases of firefox to enable 1080p/4K youtube with the HTML5 player.
axilmar 12y ago
I just went to YouTube but I get the Flash version.
Nux 12y ago
The smoother way for me to watch (at least some) youtube videos is youtube-dl and mplayer; otherwise I get a lot of "buffering".
TheRealDunkirk 12y ago
People are pointing out how every site will now (optionally) need its own DRM module. So how is this not a worse situation for users than Flash? Now there will be several popular modules that will all have their own vulnerabilities, and need patching, with the added disadvantage that they don't all have the same set of eyes watching them, as Flash does now.
shurcooL 12y ago
I've disabled Flash since the beginning of this year, an idea inspired by someone else [1]. So far it's been working out great and I was pleasantly surprised I've had very little need to turn it back on. Some notable issues I've run into: - play.spotify.com, I used to use the web player on my computer, it requires flash sadly. I've started using their OS X app. - twitch.tv if I occasionally watch a stream, also needs flash. I tend to turn it on for the duration. It's pretty great and I'm enjoying better battery life, more efficient use of cpu. [1] https://twitter.com/shurcool/status/550804694793060354 https://twitter.com/shurcool/status/550804694793060354
RunningWild 12y ago
I love the trend of "Let's fix technology. With more technology!" The constant one-up-manship and the preposterous amount of options of all these tech companies makes me yearn for the days of DOS.
- vnchr 12y ago
  You're sure that's not a reflection of growing user diversity and mainstream technology adoption rather than over-engineering?
known 12y ago
HTML 5, Flash or Silverlight? http://www.xul.fr/en/html5/html5-flash-silverlight.php http://www.xul.fr/en/html5/html5-flash-silverlight.php

1035 points by derpenxyne 12y ago

Excellent. It's always been weird having a mobile device run YouTube more responsively than an GBP1500 laptop because the latter had to run the Flash plugin.

xooyoozoo 12y ago
If your browser supports VP9, that will be forced whenever possible. I'm not sure if switching to CPU-only video decode will be a net gain for most.
- derf_ 12y ago
  Well, certainly in developing countries where bandwidth is limited, you're going to be watching a small resolution, and any amount of CPU is fine so long as you can cut the bitrate. There are a lot of people in places like that. Also, Allwinner, Intel, Mediatek, and Rockchip all have SoCs announced with hardware VP9 decode: http://wiki.webmproject.org/hardware/socs http://wiki.webmproject.org/hardware/socs (not sure how many of those are already shipping).
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
- ZeroGravitas 12y ago
  There's a talk online by a Youtube engineer that covers them rolling out VP9. Apparently the stats on user engagement show improvement. It seems that initially they showed a lot of improvement, but then they realised they were comparing the average video against only the most popular videos in VP9 (since those made the most sense to transcode first) and obviously people are more likely to keep watching something really popular. Once they took that into account they did identify that some older machines would have a degraded performance and therefore lower engagement with VP9, but the heuristic for avoiding them is "Running XP" so it seems that most modern machines have a better experience with CPU decoding of VP9. I believe they were up to 60% of all desktop views in VP9 by the end of last summer, so I'd guess if it was going to melt anyones's computer it would have happened by now.
erickhill 12y ago
Now only if Amazon/Netflix would drop Silverlight all would be right with the world.
- Alphasite_ 12y ago
  Netflix has HTML5 support for Safari and iirc IE.
  - izacus 12y ago
    And Chrome.
  - MBCook 12y ago
    Safari only works on certain 2011 Macs and all 2012 and later Macs. There are a fair number of people who can't skip Flash quite yet for Netflix. Good start though.
  - pornel 12y ago
    The "HTML5" support requires proprietary binary blob that has no standard API (besides an API to launch it with opaque data from a proprietary server) and is licensed only to selected companies. Basically it's as much HTML5 as <object data="swf"> was HTML4. It's supported only by DRM vendors: Google (WideVine), Safari (FairPlay) and Microsoft (PlayReady) and doesn't work in open-source browsers (not even in Chromium or custom WebKit builds).
    - chambo622 12y ago
      Netflix works fine in Chrome on Linux. What do you mean by "licensed only to selected companies?"
      - gcp 12y ago
        Chrome isn't an open source browser. Google is "one of the selected companies".
NeutronBoy 12y ago
Youtube and Twitch are the only reasons I keep Chrome around - I much rather supporting the work that Mozilla are doing with Firefox (ie a proper open source browser) than Chrome.
- omaranto 12y ago
  Are you saying that the Flash plugin bundled with Chrome is better than the Flash plugin you can install for Firefox? If so, do you have any idea why?
  - simcop2387 12y ago
    On linux it's because the NPAPI flash plugin hasn't been updated in a few years. It went Chrome/PPAPI a while back and firefox doesn't support it yet. I think it's supposed to get security fixes but performance issues are never going to get fixed in it.
    - giovannibajo1 12y ago
      Also, being on PPAPI means that it's fully sandboxed; add to that that google auto-updates it without nah screens and installer downloads, and you get a far higher level of security
  - freehunter 12y ago
    On Linux, it is. The Flash plugin on Linux for Chrome is v16. The version for Linux Firefox is 11.2. Adobe stopped supporting Flash on Linux, so Google stepped up to the plate and started bundling Flash with Chrome and supporting it themselves. Flash does still work on Firefox, but at least on my install Click to Run was enabled by default for it (that might be a corporate setting though, I'm not sure". Regardless, yeah Flash on Firefox on Linux is several years behind.
- matthewmacleod 12y ago
  Out of interest, why is Firefox a 'proper' open-source browser while Chrome is not? Isn't Chrome pretty much just Chromium with a little bit of extra Google integration on top?
deeviant 12y ago
I've had a pretty poor experience with HTML 5 video. It stutters far more than flash and in particular it does very weird things when I try to skip around in videos. I'll miss flash.
- JustGotHere 12y ago
  For me it's the other way around, in a 4 years old netbook I still use, the HTML5 video usually performs better than flash.
  - deeviant 12y ago
    I don't think your experience has anything to do with my experience. That fact that on your hardware you felt html 5 video works better has no bearing on whether it work for me, on my hardware. The fact that somebody down-voted me for adding a relevant anecdote, but happens to go against the tide of this threads opinion(ie: FU Flash), it's pretty indicative of the extremely poor voting etiquette around here.
    - ampersandy 12y ago
      I find it ironic that you are berating JustGotHere for sharing his experiences, but feel that it is inappropriate that you were downvoted for sharing yours. Your anecdote isn't relevant, because I don't know what hardware you run, and it's likely that most other readers aren't using the same hardware. Your time would be better spent filing a bug report.
      - deeviant 12y ago
        The thread is full of "flash sucks, good riddance, poor performance, etc", so he was not at all adding anything new to the equation and his response was in direct reply to mine, as if any repose other than one which was in lock-step with the thread's general opinion required instant rebuttal.
- spyder 12y ago
  Yes, one of my friend has an old computer and I had to install a "force flash on Youtube" extension for him to make the videos stutter less.

free2rhyme214 12y ago

Steve Jobs predicted this in 2010 - https://www.apple.com/hotnews/thoughts-on-flash/ https://www.apple.com/hotnews/thoughts-on-flash/

tosseraccount 12y ago
Steve may have been a tad unrepresentative that "open video" issue. Remember, this is the guy that controlled QuickTime and never opened it up. That was a bit of problem for open video supporters. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Francisco_Canyon_Company http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Francisco_Canyon_Company
- micampe 12y ago
  “The International Organization for Standardization approved the QuickTime file format as the basis of the MPEG-4 file format. The MPEG-4 file format specification was created on the basis of the QuickTime format specification published in 2001.” — http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/QuickTime_File_Format http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/QuickTime_File_Format
  - tosseraccount 12y ago
    Not so fast there ... This registration authority for code-points in "MP4 Family" files is Apple Inc. and it is named in Annex D (informative) in MPEG-4 Part 12.[18] (from your link) Apple did in fact control Quicktime AND keep it very proprietary. To insinuate that they were pro open source on video is revisionism.
    - micampe 12y ago
      That just means that Apple manages this list: http://www.mp4ra.org/atoms.html http://www.mp4ra.org/atoms.html The file format is still an ISO standard and pretty much anything reads it. Even Apple itself doesn't use the Quicktime container anymore (and hasn't for years). I didn't insinuate anything regarding open source, which doesn't appear anywhere in the part I quoted. Edit: Oh, I noticed you significantly modified your first comment, that's why you now talk about open source when I never did. When I responded your comment read: “From the guy that tried to force QuickTime on us?”.

addisonj 12y ago

This is really interesting news and I think signals what will be a really large change in digital video in the next few years. Moving from flash to HTML5 adaptive bitrate is not trivial task and if you are familiar with MSE/EME, it shows how powerful the browser has become in delivering rich video content, either pre-recorded or live streaming. With this, it seems to me there is a big gap now for encoding to new adaptive codecs, like MPEG-DASH and tooling to make something like livestreaming easy to do without flash.

shmerl 12y ago
EME is really garbage (it's all about DRM), while MSE is actually useful. They shouldn't be mixed together. Do you know by the way, is MPEG-DASH patent encumbered or not?

deleted 12y ago

[deleted]

tatterdemalion 12y ago

Hooray! I delete all cookies on session end and I don't have flash installed. Having to remember to go to youtube.com/html5 every time I start a new session has been frustrating. Also, the HTML5 player has a nice feature to change the rate at which the video plays, which makes watching long talks a lot easier.

dmunoz 12y ago
I much prefer to have the option exposed in the UI, but you can do this with any HTML5 video element by setting the video element's playbackRate. Often, it's as easy as 'document.getElementsByTagName('video')[0].playbackRate = 1.5'. I have a bookmarklet that does exactly this, so I love to see HTML5 video being the default more and more.
carlob 12y ago
There are a bunch of extensions that could have forced all video to html5 for you. ClickToPlugin is great IMO and it's kept me from switching away from safari for the longest time.
dublinben 12y ago
You should use this add-on, called YouTube All HTML5. It just works. https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-all-html5/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-all-h...

toddsiegel 12y ago

I've kept Flash around for the oddball site here and there that still requires it, but this week I decided to uninstall rather than patch it[1]. [1] - https://helpx.adobe.com/security/products/flash-player/apsa15-01.html https://helpx.adobe.com/security/products/flash-player/apsa1...

SeanDav 12y ago
I like to unwind occasionally with browser based flash games so this is not an option for me.
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
- rev_bird 12y ago
  Glad I'm not the only one. The most relaxing way I know of to open up strange, frequent security vulnerabilities.
  - gnrlbzik 12y ago
    haha : )
yuhong 12y ago
It is funny how this came the same day Adobe patched Flash!

jfb 12y ago

Well, now I can delete Chrome.

simlevesque 12y ago
I fail to see the relation between the OP and your message.
- jfb 12y ago
  The only reason I kept Chrome around is because I occasionally wanted to watch Youtube videos that were Flash only. I wasn't going to install Flash system-wide, so I was grateful for Google's approach of maintaining a private Flash instance. Now, that usecase is become less of a problem, so I can ditch Chrome, which I never used otherwise.
  - simlevesque 12y ago
    You could have watched a video on Youtube on Firefox for the last year at least. It was a setting in your Youtube account.
    - aw3c2 12y ago
      Some people like not having accounts on any random website that will be used for tracking and targetting.
      - simlevesque 12y ago
        Do these people use Chrome ?
        jfb 12y ago
        It was the best way to run Flash programs without installing Flash system-wide.
      - polshaw 12y ago

Grazester 12y ago

HTML 5 videos on youtube take forever to start for me and would just stay at a buffering screen when I use the seekbar. This is in Chrome. I haven't tried another browser but it has made my youtube experience terrible compared to what is use to be with Flash.

barbs 12y ago
Interesting. I must've switched on HTML5 streaming ages ago and forgotten about it because I wasn't able to tell it was using flash until I right-clicked the video. I was pretty surprised at how stable it had been.
mmcclure 12y ago
Methinks these issues are specific to your environment. I've seen improved start times and all around better performance, which (for the start time, at least) makes sense considering it's not loading a beefy Flash object. The only thing that seems to occasionally hang for a second or two is loading a pre-roll ad, but that's pretty reasonable given the additional processes around ad serving. On that note, pretty awesome that those are also HTML5...must be nice to be YouTube and control your own ad format. Edit: For clarification, not saying I enjoy ads, but having dealt with the bizarre SWF formats that ad vendors pass along...
agumonkey 12y ago
The only regular issue I have with html5 player is buffering with seeking, some times things get stuck. I often resort to youtube-dl `xsel` | dmenu | mpv to help both cpu usage and streaming quality.
- pdkl95 12y ago
  That seems to be a problem with youtube in general. I see that behavior all the time. Several local friend of mine also have these seeking problems, too, so it may depend on the particular cache servers you end up seeing. I think the problems started when they changed to the "adaptive" rate stuff; the players don't don't download the entire video file anymore, and instead they buffer in segments. Not only does this remove the ability to pre-buffer the entire video, the client seems to get out of sync with the server. The client ends up waiting forever, but the server isn't sending anything. Fortunately, I was able to switch many of my friends over to youtbe-dl, and that fixed everything. Unfortunately, the article mentions the idiotic "encrypted medfia extensions" a one of the reasons for the changes to youtube; I wonder what additional useless hoops youtube-dl will end up having to have to jump through.

Ellipsis753 12y ago

Am I the only one that noticed: "<h2> Moving to <iframe> embeds</h2>" I'm not entirely sure if it's a little joke or genuine mistake? Regardless, this is absolutely great. I haven't had flash for a while now and so it makes me happy to feel that HTML5 really is a valid replacement for most things.

Igglyboo 12y ago
I noticed it, I thought it might have been a mistake but all of the other paragraph headers are <a> tags and not <h2> so I think it's a joke.

eliben 12y ago

What I especially like about the HTML5 player is the ability to change the playback speed. It is extremely useful for watching lectures & talks.

commandar 12y ago
I use this constantly when I'm watching tutorials and how-tos. It makes picking up the info you need so much faster. I also recently discovered that the Crocodile Hunter at 1/2 speed is freaking hilarious. e.g., https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QLIMgXv89VU&feature=youtu.be&t=39m55s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QLIMgXv89VU&feature=youtu.be...
- copperx 12y ago
  The Crocodile Hunter at 1/2 speed is amazing. I would love it if there was a listing of all videos that are hilarious at 1/2 speed.
  - robflynn 12y ago
    NDT sounds completely smashed when at half speed - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=danYFxGnFxQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=danYFxGnFxQ
  - midgetjones 12y ago
    DHH's Ruby on Rails demo is pretty hilarious at half speed: http://youtu.be/Gzj723LkRJY http://youtu.be/Gzj723LkRJY
  - dinkumthinkum 12y ago
    I recommend watching Handmade Heroes at 0.5x. Its a good series but if you put it on 0.5x it is quite amusing. :)
- kkuduk 12y ago
  and when you need something between 1.25 and 1.5 available from UI, you can always do: document.getElementsByTagName('video')[0].playbackRate = 1.35

deanclatworthy 12y ago

> Encrypted Media Extensions and Common Encryption - In the past, the choice of delivery platform (Flash, Silverlight, etc) and content protection technology (Access, PlayReady) were tightly linked, as content protection was deeply integrated into the delivery platform and even the file format. Encrypted Media Extensions separate the work of content protection from delivery, enabling content providers like YouTube to use a single HTML5 video player across a wide range of platforms. Combined with Common Encryption, we can support multiple content protection technologies on different platforms with a single set of assets, making YouTube play faster and smoother. Has any streaming platform actually rolled out an implementation of this? And has anyone found a way to break it?

icebraining 12y ago
According to the wiki, Netflix has implemented it.
mikeryan 12y ago
Has any streaming platform actually rolled out an implementation of this? And has anyone found a way to break it? Note EME isn't "DRM" per-se. Its an interface to enable custom DRM implementations. There's not "one thing" to break. I'd assume Youtube would use Widevine (another google company) which supports EME.

orbitur 12y ago

Now if they only defaulted to theatre mode. I don't care about the related videos as much as they think I do, and there's still room for a few once they get shifted underneath the larger player.

heri0n 12y ago
There's browser extensions to do this
iamshariq 12y ago
https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/magic-actions-for-youtube/abjcfabbhafbcdfjoecdgepllmpfceif?hl=en https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/magic-actions-for-...

leonardofed 12y ago

Finally.

jacquesm 12y ago

That's great. Now for HTML5 support in all the streaming platforms for live streams. That's going to be another nail in the flash coffin. And it will do wonders for integrating the delivery to both web and mobile clients from the same sources.

ThreeAs 12y ago
As soon as there's an alternative for games, flash will finally be dead.
- jacquesm 12y ago
  That alternative is already here, javascript. I think that flash is being kept alive now for two reasons only: live video and flash components used for corporate bits & pieces.
- malnourish 12y ago
  Unity?
- robmcm 12y ago
  Native apps...
ThreeAs 12y ago
As soon as there's an alternative for games, flash will finally be dead.

dzhiurgis 12y ago

Zoom in Safari is still kinda broken: http://imgur.com/8pBmWpm http://imgur.com/8pBmWpm Also Google Maps seriously lags on Safari. Do not like it.

shutupalready 12y ago

What joy it is to finally uninstall Flash. The last time I was this happy to uninstall crappy software was when I realized that I no longer needed RealPlayer. For those that don't know it, RealPlayer was a very popular proprietary media player (with its own proprietary formats) circa 2000. The company's stock was worth $380 a share in 2000; it's now worth $6. The only explanation for RealPlayer's popularity was its DRM I think; lots of commercial users wanted the DRM. But it got more bloated with every release, and I had to go through its countless option settings every time I updated it to disable all the sneaky ways they came up with to violate user privacy. I'm relieved that we no longer need either Flash or RealPlayer.

koyote 12y ago
Oh my god I completely forgot about RealPlayer. Luckily there was an alternative, Real Alternative, that enabled you to play the content without having to install that ghastly RealPlayer. It seems like the community always finds a way around crappy software.
- mhb 12y ago
  What's the community using instead of iTunes?
  - debaserab2 12y ago
    Spotify?
  - maaku 12y ago
    What's crappy about iTunes?
    - username 12y ago
      It's extremely bloated.
      - GFK_of_xmaspast 12y ago

yellowapple 12y ago

About damn time.

pantulis 12y ago

Sorry dudes. This is not killing Flash. Last time I checked, porn sites were still using it.

ethana 12y ago
As silly as this is, it's completely true ;)
killertypo 12y ago
yeah but a lot of them are more mobile friendly which means they're not using flash as heavily anymore. I know this only for research purposes of course...
shittyanalogy 12y ago
If youtube is switching, they'll switch. Slowly, but it'll happen. Simply because the ones that do first will get more customers.
Aldo_MX 12y ago
Use this UA the next time: Mozilla/5.0 (iPad; CPU OS 8_0 like Mac OS X) AppleWebKit/600.1.3 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/8.0 Mobile/12A4345d Safari/600.1.4
totony 12y ago
Pornhub has switched to HTML5
- pantulis 12y ago
  I stand corrected, then. Should watch more porn it seems :P
  - Houshalter 12y ago
    I tried it and they are still using flash, as is every other site I know of. Perhaps they mean there is an html5 option somewhere, but I don't see it.

pdknsk 12y ago

That's fine and well, but maybe Google can tell now why they very quietly cancelled YouTube Feather. It was the best way to avoid comments. It stopped working some day, and Google was supposedly working on a fix. A few weeks later, it was removed completely. Since then, radio silence. http://productforums.google.com/d/topic/youtube/Eae53c5AI5U http://productforums.google.com/d/topic/youtube/Eae53c5AI5U

SCdF 12y ago

Next up (I hope): Twitch. Then I think I'm done with that extension.

flavioribeiro 12y ago
I think that the first step on moving to HTML5-only player is the support for DASH on the live streaming stack. AFAIK, Twitch is using HLS to broadcast their channels which isn't supported on browsers by default[1]. I bet Twitch guys are working on this right now. [1] There's an initiative to play HLS videos without flash at https://github.com/RReverser/mpegts https://github.com/RReverser/mpegts, but its too much heavy since the browser needs to change mpegts container to mp4.
calebegg 12y ago
Twitch streams in HTML5 for me on Safari, if Flash isn't installed. No comments, though.
- SCdF 12y ago
  That's so weird, why would the comments of all things require flash!?
  - calebegg 12y ago
    Probably because it's easier than long polling and more widely supported than web sockets.
- flavioribeiro 12y ago
  HLS is supported by default on Safari (on MacOS only, AFAIK). HLS is developed by Apple so it make sense to support it natively on their products. There's a bunch of players that has "HTML5-first" support, it tries to use <video> tag and if the browser doesn't support it, it fallbacks to flash.

deleted 12y ago

[deleted]

_frog 12y ago
Are you talking about the thing where going fullscreen places the video in a new virtual desktop? Because if that's the case I vastly prefer that behaviour. It makes it much easier to jump back and forth between watching a fullscreen video and reading content in other browser tabs.
- dzhiurgis 12y ago
  No. I am talking about thing that you zoom into YouTube video and it shrinks. Virtual desktop feature is nice, although not related. By the way, I was talking about YouTube being broken, not Safari. Haven't seen such behaviour with any other HTML5 player other than YouTube.

jcastro 12y ago

Click to play now doesn't work in Chrome, anyone have a workaround or a known-working extensions for click-to-play for html5 youtube?

psychometry 12y ago
There are some really bloated "YouTube enhancer" type add-ons that do it unreliably. This has been a problem for so long that it's pretty clear Google doesn't care and wants YouTube videos to auto-play against the user's wishes. They want to force you into using their UI rather than opening videos in new tabs.
porsupah 12y ago
If you're fine with downloading YouTube videos for playing locally, I've found 4K Video Downloader works well, at least under OS X. You'll wind up with plain H.264/AAC MPEG-4 files. https://www.4kdownload.com/download https://www.4kdownload.com/download
- psychometry 12y ago
  How does that solve the problem of videos autoplaying when you access the page?
unfortunateface 12y ago
When i'm on youtube I like to open loads of tabs before going through each one later. With click to play for flash this wasn't a problem, but html5 will autoplay and get very annoying. Is there a way around this? Do you think Youtube would be for or against that (i.e. do they really want me opening more than one tab?)
lowr33nas 12y ago
I'm using "YouTube Auto Buffer & Auto HD" with Greasemonkey (there's an alternative to this on Chrome) and I guess it should work, also it's not bloated, just the stuff you need.
lostsock 12y ago
https://github.com/YePpHa/YouTubeCenter https://github.com/YePpHa/YouTubeCenter

peterwwillis 12y ago

Now I have to figure out how to fix HTML5 audio. For some reason it always uses the wrong alsa sound device, even though Flash and all my other apps use the right one. This is how I fixed it for all the other media: ~$ cat .asoundrc pcm.!default { type hw card 1 } ctl.!default { type hw card 1 } Also, I just checked the site and it's still using Flash for me in Firefox 35.0 (???) edit Ah, they do it for Beta versions of Firefox.

M2Ys4U 12y ago
Almost all YouTube videos work in HTML5 mode on Firefox and have for a while, it just wasn't HTML5 by default.

DigitalSea 12y ago

The HTML5 player is fantastic and I have been using it for as long as I can remember (since it became an option). My favourite feature is the playback speed controls, when trying to learn a song on guitar, I can follow along with the live performance or tutorial to learn how to play, absolutely invaluable. Every day the number of reasons to keep Flash installed gets lower and lower. I still keep it installed on my machine for the occasional site that still uses it, but Flash's days are definitely numbered. When a site as big as Youtube stops using it, that is when you know there isn't long left. Fortunately Adobe realised HTML5 is the future a while ago and have been creating some great tools.

notdan 12y ago
Since you are using youtube to learn songs on guitar, you might try this out (I made it): http://tunetranscriber.com http://tunetranscriber.com Let's you do marks and loops as well as using the playback controls.
- tim333 12y ago
  That's cool. What did you use to slow the music/vid?
  - notdan 12y ago
    The YouTube slowdown is just using the YouTube API. For mp3, it is using the html5 file and audio Apis, and a JavaScript port of the sound touch library. Everything is done in client side javascript, there is currently no application server, just a static site.
    - tim333 12y ago
      Thanks for the info. I was thinking of building something doing somewhat similar stuff but I think it'd have to be sever side in my case.

akrymski 12y ago

Now if only Facebook did the same, I could finally use Safari without switching to iPad mode!

thisjepisje 12y ago

I just hope they don't remove flash support anytime soon.

shmerl 12y ago

By the way, is MPEG-DASH* patent encumbered or not? I didn't find clear answer on that. Youtube is using DASH (on the server side) to implement adaptive streaming. * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dynamic_Adaptive_Streaming_over_HTTP https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dynamic_Adaptive_Streaming_ove...

deskamess 12y ago
And does Firefox support the MediaSourceElement fully (used for DASH)? I was under the impression it did not (but was coming soon).
- shmerl 12y ago
  It's WIP, and you can already enable it in about:config (set media.mediasource.enabled to true). But it's still buggy somewhat. It should be finished in the upcoming release to be enough for Youtube. See: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=881512 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=881512 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=778617 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=778617
slederer 12y ago
MPEG-DASH is completely royality free. Find also more info on www.dash-player.com
- shmerl 12y ago
  Thanks. Do you know if this is documented anywhere?
  - slederer 12y ago
    There was an email at the MPEG-DASH mailing list where the key companies (Qualcomm, Microsoft, etc.) declared that. maybe you ask the question again on this mailing list: https://lists.aau.at/mailman/listinfo/dash https://lists.aau.at/mailman/listinfo/dash

sdfjkl 12y ago

Took you long enough. One less Firefox addon, I guess.

zanny 12y ago

> we can support multiple content protection technologies on different platforms with a single set of assets, making YouTube play faster and smoother. Man this line is hilarious. Your DRM to block users from keeping the videos you are sending them is not making the experience faster or smoother. Don't try to pass off user-hostile proprietary blobs restricting the data on their computer as anything but a terrible blow to a free and open Internet. You can say, "yay drm", but say "yay drm", not "yay drm, bullshit about faster and smoother". At least own up to the fact you are crippling UX for personal gain.

gilgoomesh 12y ago
He's not being misleading. It's clear from the context of what Richard Leider was saying that "faster" in this scenario means "faster than the old YouTube + Adobe Flash" approach. His point of comparison isn't a totally DRM free scenario.

gojomo 12y ago

Now if only Twitter would eliminate the Flash dependency to show animated GIFs on Firefox...

deleted 12y ago

[deleted]

shade23 12y ago

from the same post,what about this I found in the comments? https://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=234779 https://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=234779

codefylabs 12y ago

Good.

critiq 12y ago

I still see its asking for flash if plugin is available, with firefox flash plugin on ask to activate mode.

josteink 12y ago

Make that HTML with DRM and non standard & non-portable extensions. I think I actually prefer a working, portable Flash-based solution to that. In not sure which are worst: Netflix and Google for pushing this bullshit into the browser & standard or uneducated users for swallowing it whole.

jokoon 12y ago

Been using html5 youtube for a while now, it's still pretty damn slow on my french ISP.

mukundmr 12y ago

Uninstalled Flash Player with an evil laugh on my home iMac only to reinstall it when my kid's games needed it. What is the alternative to flash for games that run on PBS Kids, etc. ?

mojuba 12y ago
Google Chrome comes packaged with a Flash player (at least on OS X), so here is what I do, very simple: no Flash, use Safari most of the time, use Chrome as a fall back.

shenoyroopesh 12y ago

Wait - so youtube is behind the porn industry by only 4.5 years? http://www.macobserver.com/tmo/article/flash_takes_a_blow_as_porn_industry_backs_html_5 http://www.macobserver.com/tmo/article/flash_takes_a_blow_as...

agumonkey 12y ago
I can't recall which article mentioned that this industry was very welcoming to new opportunities and features (one example was having seekable thumbnails).
marvin 12y ago
This actually makes sense; the porn industry has much higher earnings per user and hence a much greater loss due to lower conversion for those who don't have Flash installed. So for them, it's a "my hair is on fire" kind of thing. Whereas for Youtube et al., it's a nice-to-have.
- shenoyroopesh 12y ago
  But won't it be same if you look at percentages? Unless you hypothise that porn users not having flash installed is somehow a larger percentage compared to average web user not having flash installed?!
  - coldpie 12y ago
    Don't forget Flash doesn't work on mobile ;)
    - LLWM 12y ago
      This is by far the largest reason for the delay. If you watch some youtube videos on your work computer, no big deal. But if you need to jack off at work, you had better use your own phone if you care about keeping your job at all.
  - mod 12y ago

ramamark 12y ago

This leaves the BBC as one of the few major sites still dependent on flash for desktop users. Ironic considering you'd expect it to be at the forefront of video delivery technology. I use IE's Developer Tools to request the site as an iPad, a much better experience.

Sealy 12y ago

How does this affect the mobile experience? Is viewing on an iPad / iPhone HTML5 by default? The article only really mentions the main desktop browsers.

Aoyagi 12y ago

Hah, the player is the least of my issues with the service. And I hope this means they won't get rid of the Flash option altogether.

Houshalter 12y ago

I have flash set to "click to play" so flash videos only load when I click on them. I dislike the HTML5 because it means videos always autoplay. I hate autoplaying video.

lostsock 12y ago
https://github.com/YePpHa/YouTubeCenter https://github.com/YePpHa/YouTubeCenter
maxerickson 12y ago
It might be a step backwards at the moment, but it's pretty much a sure thing that browsers (or at least extensions) will have support for HTML5 click to play. A whitelist + click for sound would be pretty much exactly what I want.

vansteen 12y ago

That's a good news!

p0nce 12y ago

Numerous observers have shown that H.265 is better than VP9 on the quality/efficiency curve. But Google does not like to pay for real research and prefer to found alternative "free" copy-pasta codecs it controls. http://iphome.hhi.de/marpe/download/Performance_HEVC_VP9_X264_PCS_2013_preprint.pdf http://iphome.hhi.de/marpe/download/Performance_HEVC_VP9_X26... http://fr.slideshare.net/touradj_ebrahimi/spie2014-hev-cvsvp9 http://fr.slideshare.net/touradj_ebrahimi/spie2014-hev-cvsvp... edit: facts will get you downvoted on HN. Nice.

raptormissle 12y ago
No, the rantings of a lunatic will. If you have issues with VP9 then take it elsewhere. Also, if you don't like the service then go elsewhere. No one is forcing VP9 on you. Go to a H.265 site and be quiet.

fugyk 12y ago

Wow, I almost forgot that I was using HTML5 version of youtube as a preview. I am using HTML5 preview since day 1 and I don't remember any glitches or bugs. I wonder why this switch has taken so long given many upsides and no known downside.

spain 12y ago

Seems like it isn't perfect yet. At least on Firefox I don't get to watch videos in 1080p anymore on Youtube with the HTML5 player.

Nexxxeh 12y ago
I watched a 1080p video using HTML5 on Opera yesterday. As a test, I just popped open the first interesting looking video on my signed-in YouTube front page (my account has been set to HTML5 for a while). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jmRI3Ew4BvA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jmRI3Ew4BvA I'm not a fan of the Yeah Yeah Yeahs but the video does have Lily Cole is in 1080p. Opera 27.0.1689.54 on Win 8.1 x64.
- spain 12y ago
  I think it might be an issue with codecs which is why it works with some browsers and doesn't with others.
jconnop 12y ago
http://www.ghacks.net/2014/10/26/the-state-of-media-source-extensions-in-firefox/ http://www.ghacks.net/2014/10/26/the-state-of-media-source-e... TL;DR: For now you need to use beta/aurora/nightly releases of firefox to enable 1080p/4K youtube with the HTML5 player.

axilmar 12y ago

I just went to YouTube but I get the Flash version.

Nux 12y ago

The smoother way for me to watch (at least some) youtube videos is youtube-dl and mplayer; otherwise I get a lot of "buffering".

TheRealDunkirk 12y ago

People are pointing out how every site will now (optionally) need its own DRM module. So how is this not a worse situation for users than Flash? Now there will be several popular modules that will all have their own vulnerabilities, and need patching, with the added disadvantage that they don't all have the same set of eyes watching them, as Flash does now.

shurcooL 12y ago

I've disabled Flash since the beginning of this year, an idea inspired by someone else [1]. So far it's been working out great and I was pleasantly surprised I've had very little need to turn it back on. Some notable issues I've run into: - play.spotify.com, I used to use the web player on my computer, it requires flash sadly. I've started using their OS X app. - twitch.tv if I occasionally watch a stream, also needs flash. I tend to turn it on for the duration. It's pretty great and I'm enjoying better battery life, more efficient use of cpu. [1] https://twitter.com/shurcool/status/550804694793060354 https://twitter.com/shurcool/status/550804694793060354

RunningWild 12y ago

I love the trend of "Let's fix technology. With more technology!" The constant one-up-manship and the preposterous amount of options of all these tech companies makes me yearn for the days of DOS.

vnchr 12y ago
You're sure that's not a reflection of growing user diversity and mainstream technology adoption rather than over-engineering?

known 12y ago

HTML 5, Flash or Silverlight? http://www.xul.fr/en/html5/html5-flash-silverlight.php http://www.xul.fr/en/html5/html5-flash-silverlight.php