At this writing, YouTube gives users playback options for the quality of the videos we view. I've chosen to always watch videos at their highest quality. However, even with this setting in place, for HD playback we need to click "Play in HD" at the bottom of the video. The problem with this is that whereas a high-quality standard DV video will play in high quality the first time, at first viewing a HD video will play at the lowest quality, which is lousy. Since most videos are only watched once, the option should be given to always view HD videos at their highest quality without having to click on a separate (and somewhat obscured) button. So right now I would rather upload to YT a high quality standard DV video than one in HD, for the majority of viewers would most likely see a better product with the former. If that makes sense.

@ Mustafa

You can enable automatic HD playback in your youtube account settings [provided your ISP gives you the broadband speed to do so]. Once that is done whenever you go to view a video and if it's been uploaded under the HD template [1280x720] or under the HQ template [I can't recall the aspect ratio] you'll get the HD or HQ playback right away - no need to click a link.

I've been uploading HD stuff to YouTube this past week and inserting an "annotation' at the very begining of the video saying "View in HD - click on button in lower right corner"

BUT, for the past week or two the HD just will not play without completely downloading/buffering the whole video in advance. Otherwise, it just stops and starts every other second. Its extremely frustrating. Since most of my stuff has water moving SD is absolutely unwatchable, but the HD can look quite good. I'm having this same problem on a couple of computers. Today, even with the video totally buffered it is playing like a bunch of still photos instead of a smooth video...

I called my ISP and asked them to check my DSL speed to see if that was the problem (a lot of websites have been slow to open lately). He ran their tests and said I'm getting good speeds. I then asked him to play one of my YouTube videos in HD and as we talked he had the same experience...it was taking several minutes to buffer a 4 min video.
So, we both are thinking that YouTube is just not up to delivering that much data and is getting bogged down at their end. My example is this video:



Somewhere Spot mentioned appending "&fmt=18" or "&fmt=22" to the end of the weblink for a video to get straight to the HD version. I'm not sure which version does what, but it does open my video in HD, although with the bigger screen size the stuttering playback seems even worse today.

I'm really looking forward to smooth HD viewing in the larger screen size. That would really be a treat as long as the resolution is decent. and it can playback at full speed. It could be awful though for cell phone video uploads which are awful to begin with.

One question: I rendered my HD stuff to 1280x720 1.0PAR @ 5Mb .WMV and am getting the bad playback. Would a higher Bit Rate make any difference in image quality and playback performance considering it gets re-encoded by YouTube ?

Eileen


Anyone else having this HD playback problem?

Thats one clean otter.
It played for me in HD with only a very few pauses.

I really like the new Youtube changes... I don't have many videos that it would really make sense to upload, but for the few that I do (stuff I've done for fun, essentially) it's been a real improvement. In particular, a fan/music video of WALL-E set to Requiem for a Tower that I did a couple weeks ago.

Hi, eVoke. YT is always making little changes, so this might not be factual in a short while. But right now, even with the Video Playback Settings at "I have a fast connection. Always play higher-quality video when it's available" an HD video will not automatically play back at HD (except if you go to the specific HD category list and click on a video). I have a pretty fast broadband connection so videos always play back in high quality; I do notice however that most of the HD videos uploaded seem rather choppy. I'm not sure if this is a result of improper encoding on the user side, or a glitch on the YT side. Regardless, like I said YT has an ongoing program to raise the quality of their site.

Seems as if the tube ditched their mid-range between origional quality & the HD quality setting. The videos I've uploaded in HD all are choppy for me now. Don't really want to wait 10 minutes for a video to buffer when it could be sent ~ 3/4 the res & no buffer, like it used to. :/

@ Mustafa

You're right. You'll get the "watch in High Quality" automatically if you change your playback option in your account settings not the "watch in HD" option. My mistake : )

To the others -
I haven't really experienced the choppiness some have mentioned but I do get some of the extended buffering times on videos longer than 7 minutes. That's mainly because I'm currently maxed out at a 1.5Mbps DSL download speed until next year.

TheHappyFriar :
Sounds like we are having the same choppy/sloppy symptoms with our HD footage. What are your rendering settings prior to upload?
I'm wondering if I can up or down rez to get a better mix with quality and playback speed considering it gets re-encoded by YouTube...

I've been asking around and it seems hit and miss with whether folks are getting reasonable playback or are getting bogged down with extremely slow buffering and playback even though we all have DSL speeds.

I've set the "always play high quality" setting a few times but it does not stick. Though I have no problems watching the HD stuff without stuttttttering... I have a fiber connection with Verizon.

Sounds like we are having the same choppy/sloppy symptoms with our HD footage. What are your rendering settings prior to upload?

I uploaded in a HD WMV template. Back when I uploaded them, it was higher then the normal crappy quality but not so bandwidth intense. I could stream the whole thing. Now I can't.

See's now the tube said "you only get high quality 3mbs download streaming or uber-crappy 256k download streaming. No inbetween!". :/ Before it seems to be ~1/1.5mbs streaming for high quality.

I just uploaded a 6mb bit rate 1280x740 wmv file and it looks great if I let it buffer completely before playback ... on my fast machine.
On an old slow machine it plays choppy even with complete buffering.....
I'm wondering if the playback machine (video card? processor speed?) also affects the streaming qualityat my end?