When YouTube added the ability to upload and share videos in HD, I was initially excited. I had been shooting in high definition for nearly two years at the time and looked forward to finally being able to easily share HD video without worrying about whether or not those watching them had the proper software to play them back. Unfortunately, it hasn’t been that simple, as there are plenty of…

YouTube HD Difficulties and Caveats

To “Watch in HD” option available for a video on YouTube, it must be uploaded at a resolution of 1280x720, or 720p. Once such a video is uploaded, it generally takes an hour or two before the HD version is available for viewing on the site. At that point, the movie is displayed in what is more like a 540p resolution, which is still large enough to be good enough.

Unfortunately, the video is displayed using a Flash-based player, as all YouTube videos are. This proves to be a problem for computers that are older than a year or two. While my iMac G5 is able to play back captured HDV-encoded videos in full resolution without a problem, it practically stalls when trying to play anything on YouTube in HD due to the extra layer of Flash encoding/decoding. This presents a dilemma for anyone wanting to show off HD content on YouTube. While videos in this format do look great, they’re unwatchable for many.

For those with computers that can’t handle YouTube HD playback, the only other option is to watch these videos in low quality mode. YouTube does have a “high quality” setting for videos that are originally lower than HD resolution but still good quality (say, 640x360 for a widescreen 16:9 video). Unfortunately, they don’t offer a three-tiered viewing option for HD videos. Rather than making such videos available in low, high, and HD quality, they are limited to low and HD only.

So the choice for video producers is to either upload content to be available in low and high quality and be enjoyed by all, or make their videos available in low and HD quality, which allows some to enjoy the full HD viewing but leaves most stuck with something that so blurry and overly-compressed that it looks like it was shot on a cell phone.

To make it even more confusing, embedding an HD video at a smaller size does not appropriately decrease the quality of the stream. Here are two examples:

The top video of Carrie Underwood and David Cook performing at the American Idol Experience premiere at Walt Disney World was uploaded at 640x360 and is being shown here in YouTube’s “high quality” option. It looks great at this size.

The bottom video of the opening of Disney’s Design a Tee store at Downtown Disney was uploaded at 1280x720 and is embedded here using YouTube’s HD option. Even though the two videos are displayed in the same size on your screen, they are being streamed at two very different quality levels. As such, many computers, including mine, have great difficulty playing this bottom video. But unless I told you that the bottom video was embedded using an HD source, you wouldn’t know the difference simply by looking at the two next to each other.

I’d love to upload all of my videos to YouTube in HD but choose not to as I know that would shut out thousands of viewers from seeing them in any high quality setting. YouTube, if you’re out there reading this, please add a three-tiered option to your HD videos, allowing viewers to choose between low, high, and HD quality!