YouTube has some bad news for those of you hoping the site would soon ditch Flash in favor of HTML5 video tags: It isn’t going to happen any time soon.
That’s message from the YouTube developer blog which cites half-a-dozen areas where Flash trumps HTML5 and explains why “the <video> tag does not currently meet all the needs of a site like YouTube.”
The emerging HTML5 standard, which is quickly being adopted by browser manufacturers and developers, offers native video-playback and animation tools that don’t require Adobe’s Flash plug-in. However, while HTML5 handles the basics of video, it lacks many of the extra features that sites like YouTube, Vimeo and Hulu currently offer through Flash-based video players.
To switch to pure HTML5 video would mean YouTube would have to give up features like live streaming, dynamic video quality control and the ability to allow users to jump to specific points in a video.
While YouTube claims to be “excited about the HTML5 effort and <video> tag,” the post makes it pretty clear that HTML5 isn’t going to take over the site any time soon. The video-streaming site Hulu has previously said the same thing: HTML5 lacks the extra features Flash enables.
YouTube has been running an experimental HTML5 version of the site for more than a year, and it remains an opt-in choice for those who want to avoid Flash. The site also continues to serve raw H.264 videos to mobile devices like the iPad, but don’t expect the main browser version of YouTube to make the same changes.
The YouTube developer blog lists several things Flash can do that HTML5 video tags cannot:
YouTube has launched a new video-editing tool that lets you edit your uploaded videos inside your web browser.
The new video editor will definitely not replace desktop software like iMovie or Windows Live Movie Maker anytime soon. That said, YouTube’s editor does cover the basics like combining uploaded clips, trimming, editing and adding audio to your uploaded videos.
This isn’t the first time YouTube has experimented with in-browser editing. You may remember YouTube’s Remixer tool, which was released in 2007 as an experiment, had limited capability and was buggy to boot. It was based on Flash and other Adobe technologies.
The new editor is definitely a big step up, and it’s powered mostly by JavaScript. The interface is simple and quite easy to use. To start editing, just drag the thumbnails of your uploaded videos into the filmstrip at the bottom. Once you have your clips in the editor, you’ll notice the cursor turns to scissors. Click one of the thumbnails, and you can start trimming and editing your footage.
There’s also an option to add music to your clips, though the selection is limited and, as Google Operating System notes, some tracks will cause YouTube to display ads in your final video.
Once you’ve got your clips edited and arranged the way you want, you can watch a low-res preview and then save your changes back to your videos. The interface is quite snappy when it comes to editing, and even saving, though it takes some time for YouTube to actually process your video and make it available on the site.
While YouTube’s new editor is clearly a limited, work-in-progress effort, it’s not hard to see how Google can build on this foundation to create something that will serve the needs of most casual video editors, eliminating the need for yet another piece of desktop software.
Google is now offering up YouTube videos using HTML5′s next-generation video tag. But this advancement is only available to those surfing with Chrome or Safari — Firefox and Opera users need not apply.
YouTube’s HTML5 video support effectively eliminates the need for Adobe’s Flash plug-in for viewing videos on the site. The move comes in response to a survey where users voted “support HTML5 open web video with open formats” to the top of the YouTube’s feature request list.
Unfortunately for fans of the open web, Google seems to have stopped reading at “support HTML5″ because “open web video with open formats” is entirely missing from the new features.
To test YouTube’s new HTML5 support for yourself, head to the TestTube page and enable the new features for your account. Just make sure you’re using either Google Chrome browser or Safari because those are the only two browsers that support the new features.
The video quality of HTML5 playback (shown below in a screenshot taken with Google Chrome on a Mac) is a little chunkier than the Flash version, but it works. The frame rate is just as smooth and the player controls, which are JavaScript and CSS, operate as you’d expect.
Eliminating the need for Flash means YouTube videos will be less likely to crash your browser and should stop your PC’s cooling fan from turning into a jet turbine, but it doesn’t really advance open video on the web — it just moves from one proprietary solution (the Flash plugin) to another, the H.264 video codec.
While Google’s early support for the new HTML5 <video> tag is a win for HTML5′s vision of a web without plug-ins, unfortunately Google’s HTML5 support also highlights what will be a thorn in the side of open web video for some time: codec compatibility issues.
At the moment, YouTube’s HTML5 video support is limited to web browsers that support the H.264 video codec — namely Google’s Chrome and Apple’s Safari. Because the W3C declined to specify a standard video codec to go along with new video element, the choice of codecs to support lies with each web browser.
Browser manufacturers are split into two camps, those that support the free, open Ogg Theora codec (Chrome, Firefox, Opera and others) and those that support the proprietary H.264 codec (Chrome and Safari). Internet Explorer is entirely removed from this debate, as it does not support the video playback capability of HTML5 — in fact, IE support for HTML5 in general is almost entirely nonexistent, even though all the other browsers are racing to build in support.
Google’s decision to start with the H.264 codec is disappointing since Mozilla and Opera have declined to pay the expensive licensing fees for H.264 and instead support Ogg Theora for open video on the web.
What makes Google’s choice of video codec even more regrettable is that the Ogg Theora codec (a free, open video codec) works in Google Chrome, Firefox and Opera. Had Google opted to support Ogg Theora, only Apple would have been left out of the fun.
Furthermore, the latest version of Firefox — version 3.6, which was ironically released within hours of Google’s YouTube announcement — expands the browser’s ability to play videos using proposed HTML5 standards, including support for fullscreen playback. But Firefox’s video capability is limited to Ogg Theora.
However, there may be a simple practical reason YouTube chose to start with H.264 — it most likely already has most of its videos in H.264. Thanks to the YouTube application for the iPhone and Flash 10′s H.264 support, behind the scenes much of YouTube’s video is likely already in H.264.
Hopefully Google will add support for Ogg Theora in the near future, after all the number-one request in YouTube’s survey wasn’t more HTML5 support, it was “support HTML5 open web video with open formats.”
We welcome this baby step away from web video plug-ins, but keep in mind that we’re still some ways away from truly open, free video on the web.
Click on the image above (or here) to see the video Google just posted to YouTube to promote its new theme library for the Google Chrome browser. The themes, which are designed to give your browser’s skin a splash of color and personality, were developed by famous artists and designers.
The video in the link shows some of them off, but be sure to watch until the end, when the browser skin literally explodes out of the video frame and takes over the page. Once the video is over, there’s more cool page-skinning trickery to be had — the video player window turns into a theme browser you can click through, altering the design of the YouTube page itself.
Chrome is only available now in stable form for Windows users. Mac and Linux versions are still in development and will be finalized later this year.
Google first began developing themes for Chrome in August, as we noted in a previous report. Firefox has a similar theming architecture for its browser called Personas, which you can explore at Mozilla’s dedicated Personas site.
The technology grabbing the videos is YouTube’s new geotag searchable API. With a latitude/longitude pair and a keyword, the service spits back a list of videos.
So, where do those coordinates come from? YouTube’s example uses Google Gears’ new geolocation feature. There are a few different implementations, and a developing standard for accessing location. My JavaScript geolocation tutorial covers the bases, including the similar Geode plugin baked into the next version of Firefox.
The best part about the example application is that the source code is available. I wish everyone did this. It sure makes picking up new technologies easier.
YouTube has some bad news for those of you hoping the site would soon ditch Flash in favor of HTML5 video tags: It isn’t going to happen any time soon. 
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