They have wankered my video.

Ah Youtube...

I've been posting stuff to Vimeo and it's been great. They get the whole 16 by 9 HD thing and even their recompression is fairly merciful.

Yeah, Vimeo is the way to go. They are light-years beyond YouTube.

I guess I don't have a discerning enough eye yet for Video. I didn't see any distortion at all in that video. What exactly is YouTube doing wrong?

I believe they're talking about all the black surrounding the actual video....

OK, great! YouTube now supports 16:9. This new development isn't even a blip on my "bad day" meter.

If they're going to use a 16:9 window, then all 4:3 video should now play pillar-boxed in the window. This is OK and as it should be, at least they aren't stretching the 4:3 content to fill the 16:9 windows like CNN. Any 16:9 content that has been uploaded previously as letterboxed 16:9 in a 4:3 frame is also playing as it technically should and, in fact, isn't being displayed any smaller than it ever was, it just looks "odd" because of the new 16:9 window. I guess I'll create a 16:9 video at 640x360 (instead of a 4:3 video at 480x360), upload it and see what happens.

Here is the same video clip, same file, uploaded to both YT and Vimeo. Make sure you click watch in high quality for YT.

Vimeo
can't get the YT link to work, so copy and paste link


With Vimeo you can turn scaling on and have it fill your entire screen, with YT full screen mode I get black bars above and white bars on the side.

It was rendered to Sony AVC MP4 Audio:128 Kbps, 48,000 Hz, Stereo, AAC.Video: 5,000,000 bps, 29.970 fps, 1280x720, Best, progressive

i don't understand... they've always supported 16:9 video. why put ugly black bars up now?

Thanks Jeff, interesting comparison. Vimeo has a much nicer look, it seems sharper but also a bit warmer.

Why don't they play 4:3 in 4:3 windows and 16:9 in 16:9 windows? It is not a TV screen! I do not understand their thinking here.

they did before I think.

I and my son just set up accounts on Vimeo. This is much, much better than YouTube.

Yes, Vimeo provides a whole lot better quality than YouTube, however it doesn't provide one important thing; a VERY large potential audience.

I wouldn't say that.... most videos on youtube don't get more then a thousand hits total. only the super popular ones get a lot.

Notice that I said, "potential."

I noticed the new 16:9 player today and at first my HD videos that I uploaded were letter boxed and pillared. Now they are fine and the HD ones actually look pretty good. Youtube must have been saving the original files. I'm guessing they are running a script behind the scenes and converting older vids in the background.

Watch this one in High Quality:

Ya Jeff no comparison at all. Vimeo looks so sharp and crisp. The colours are vibrant. Youtube looks flat and grey on HQ, the regular setting looks horrible.

FYI, most YouTube videos can be viewed in higher than normal quality by adding "&fmt=18" to the URL. Now you can also use "&fmt=22" to get 720p or something. Probably not available on many videos yet..

I thought that &fmt=18 was doing the same thing as clicking HQ, that has been around for a while and before you had the option to click HQ. I can not tell a difference on my clip when clicking HQ or adding &fmt=18.

But &fmt=22 automatically plays it in 720p and it looks better than HQ alone. My clip is 720p.

Thanks for the tip Spot.

Jeff