YouTube going WebM

Out of context: Reply #6

  • Started
  • Last post
  • 6 Responses
  • ukit0

    Of course its an increase in cost to encode every single video into an additional format, as well as reencode all existing video (of which YouTube has completed about 1/3 according to their blog post on the topic).

    I don't think Google will be dropping h.264 support on YouTube. That would be a bad idea considering how widespread h.264 is and how poorly supported Web M is by comparison. IE doesn't support it, iOS doesn't support, and even earlier Android devices don't.

    Instead I think Web M is an insurance policy for them, to prevent the chances that MPEG-LA ever charges high licensing fees for h.264. And recently MPEG-LA did announce that h.264 will always be free for any video served free to the user, which is a good start.

View thread