This week, Steve Chen, one of the founders of Youtube.com announced to Engadget, that over the next three months resolution at the site will be upgraded. There are a number of new video sites coming online and many of them boast significantly higher resolution than videos at Youtube – some like Vimeo.com in HD.
The good news for video uploaders is that Google stores a copy of your video in the same resolution you upload it.
For now, when your video is uploaded to Youtube, video quality is downgraded in resolution when shown on the site ( 320 by 240 pixels), even if uploaded in HD format with video resolutions much higher!
Of course higher video resolution = higher file size = longer upload and download times . . . so there are costs to streaming higher quality for Google.
Google old maximimum file size of 100 Megabytes often forced producers to downgrade video quality to get smaller file sizes. This week, Google upped the maximum file size 10 X, setting the new maximum file size to 1 GB!
Video length is still limited to 10 minutes, so in effect, Google is encouraging uploaders to take advantage of a 10 fold increase in video quality.
Advice from this blog: Upload your Video in the highest resolution possible to Youtube.com. That way, whenever the site upgrades the quality of video shown, your video will be upgraded to the higher reslolution.
In a few years, the lower quality videos on the site will likely fade into obscurity, while higher res. versions will be finding their way into people’s homes onto their HD televisions!
