A number of my friends and colleagues use YouTube as their primary means of distributing/sharing videos online with their friends & family (and several who also share videos with clients and prospective clients -- these are friends who provide professional videography services for weddings, corporate communications, etc.).
In recent years YouTube was widely known as a great site to find almost any kind of short video from clay-animation to goofy stunts and music videos but amongst video professionals it was also widely panned because of poor video quality. Since Google purchased YouTube and invested a lot of resources YouTube has become an online video host with a high degree of quality as well as outreach. I was amazed to learn that YouTube receives some 20 hours of video uploaded to their website every minute - yes, that's every minute!
For video aficionados, YouTube begins another technological feather in their cap with the support for viewing 1080p High Definition videos on their channel in full resolution.YouTube made the announcement that "YouTube's HD mode will
add support for viewing videos in 720p or 1080p, depending on the
resolution of the original source, up from our previous maximum output of 720p .
As resolution of consumer cameras increases, we want to
make sure YouTube is the best home on the web to showcase your content.
For viewers with big monitors and a fast computer, try switching to
1080p to get the most out of the full-screen experience.
And for my friends who have uploaded high-resolution videos previously to their YouTube channel - the team at YouTube is thinking of you as well -- "And those of you who have already uploaded in 1080p, don't worry. We're in the process of re-encoding your videos so we can show them the way you intended."
To gather the full sense of this new development - you can view sample screen shots from a video in four different resolutions: 360p, 480p, 720p and 1080p on the YouTube official blog
NOTE: For my readers who are new to High-Definition video, the 'p' stands for Progressive.
The TV we grew up on was 'i' or Interlace TV. Each frame of video was composed of two fields (or 1/2 frames) that split up the full screen into a series of odd and even lines. This helped prevent flicker in early TV. With improved technology many of the newer camcorders allow the operator to shoot in progressive mode and the newer HD TVs allow us to view programming in progressive mode.
For more information on the Interlace and Progressive technology (and the debate between the benefits of each) I recommend the following web pages: InsideGeek Canada: Interlaced vs. Progressive (Streaming 7-minute video that provides a good base of knowledge on the topic). TechDigs.net - Pro: Progressive vs. Interlaced. What's the difference? A blog entry with some good information o the subject. |
Good illustration Rob of the reach and power of YouTube in this vast online universe. I know one of my colleagues uses YouTube very effectively with his wedding customers, posting their highlight video. They share it with their friends and he has received a number of referrals and customers from his wise use of this sharing/marketing tool
Posted by: Chet Davis | 11/16/2009 at 01:08 PM
When I was editing wedding videos, I experimented with an option for posting the "recap" segment on Youtube so they could share a small chunk of the wedding video with family members and friends who weren't getting copies.
I ended up just giving it away for free to people and they really liked it. One of my videos even became a featured video of the day and got thousands of hits.
Posted by: Rob H | 11/16/2009 at 11:49 AM