YouTube ‘ready for 4k’
November 20, 2013
Google’s YouTube is to migrate all the videos on YouTube to its V9 compression standard as it prepares for 4K, according to Matt Frost, head of strategy and partnerships for Google Chrome.
Frost told OTTtv World Summit, “4K is the new 3D,” but device makers don’t want to repeat mistakes with a lack of content. “For us at YouTube, trying to satisfy the consumer demand for 4K content, we know that actually the answer isn’t VP9 or HEVC, it’s the next generation of the technology… Youtube is going to be migrated to VP9. It is currently supporting VP9 streams. The best path to 4K video for YouTube right now is VP9.”
VP9 builds on the earlier compression standards and is designed to deliver the same quality video as VP8 but with 50 per cent of the bit-rate. It was developed by On2 Technologies – the company Frost previously worked at and was bought by Google in 2010.
Frost added that YouTube had also made a “very significant move towards HTML5,” though admitted there were still flaws to the markup standard when it came to video……We’re still seeing some inconsistency from site to site with HTML5. The goal when you put forward a standard is to have people implement it in a standardised way. Unfortunately that’s not always the case.”