Woo, it finally happened–YouTube now supports HD! Here’s a sample link, and it looks amazing:
More info on YouTube’s blog:
Very cool. Now if only they could do something about that 10 minute time limit…
It’s certainly a welcome change, and I’m looking forward to taking advantage of it.
I do wish there was a way to re-upload existing videos without losing views/comments to take advantage of the new player. All my previous shorts were matted to maintain proper aspect ratio in the old 4:3 player. They’re now all pillarboxed, which looks pretty crappy. I wish there was a way to just overwrite them with videos re-encoded for the newer player, but I don’t think there is without creating a while new page, losing everything.
I’ve read that YouTube still has the original copy of every video uploaded to its service, so presumably, they should be able to (and I imagine will) re-encode them all at the higher bitrate.
Right, but that’s not my issue. I matted my widescreen shorts so they would play with the proper widescreen aspect ratio in YouTube’s old 4:3 player. In essence, I turned them into (matted) 4:3 films, so they are never going to take advantage of the new sized player, as is.
I could re-encode them properly to take full advantage of the new size; I’d have no problem doing that at all. They would just be “new” uploads, without all the existing comments and views, which I’d rather not lose.
This isn’t a complaint at all… I’m REALLY happy that YouTube has finally gone widescreen. This is great news! I just wish there were a way to replace my old shorts with new ones, but I don’t think there is, currently.
I hope they can get the lip sync right.
The lip sync problems all seem to be associated with the encoder. Every test video I’ve uploaded with Apple’s terrible, awful, dreadful “QuickTime” encoder has had sync issues. But when I’ve used pure MPEG2 or MPEG4, or even AVI, it’s worked great. Sorry, but Quicktime sucks.
Doesn’t that not apply if you have a Director account?
Have you tried H.264? That’s what I’ve been using, and I’ve never had a sync issue.
No, I believe they took that perk away from the Director’s account. Now I believe you need to be a Partner to exceed the 10 minute mark. That said, I think there is some wiggle room. I’m now a partner, but just before I became one, I managed to upload something that was a bit longer than 10 minutes. Not MUCH longer; like a minute or two, but it’s worth giving it a try.
I just wanted to say thanks for this thread. I was watching videos when it went to widescreen, and it made me wonder what the heck was going on.
No worries! Just wanted to spread the news 
They changed that too. Unless you are some superduper nobby important person with a very significant video to display, the ten minute limit applies to everybody.