14 DAY TRIAL // YouTube engineers sure move fast, just last week they asked people what features and changes they'd like to see on the site and, after an overwhelming response, the most requested feature is already live on the video site. YouTube has announced that it has begun to roll out support for HTML5-based videos ditching the regular Flash Player for an open and standard implementation. The HTML5 version of player doesn't show up on all videos and there are still some bugs and kicks to work out, but its a clear step towards wider support for the proposed standard.
"[W]e're introducing an experimental version of an HTML5-supported player," Kevin Carle, a software engineer at YouTube wrote. "HTML5 is a new web standard that is gaining popularity rapidly and adds many new features to your web experience. Most notably for YouTube users, HTML5 includes support for video and audio playback. This means that users with an HTML5 compatible browser, and support for the proper audio and video codecs can watch a video without needing to download a browser plugin."
For now, only videos which aren't monetized get to be played using the <video> support in HTML5. There are further limitations as the videos can't have any captions or annotations either. And even if you do find one of those videos, you'll have to be running a very specific set of browsers to get the HTML5 features.
At the moment, the feature works only in Chrome, Safari and in Chrome Frame for IE. It won't work in Firefox, even though it supports the HTML5 <video> feature as the open-source browser doesn't support the h.264 video codec YouTube uses in its implementation due to licensing and other reasons. Even in the browsers that do support it, the HTML5 player is a pale copy of the Flash-based one. A lot of features are missing and some things aren't as smooth as you'd expect.
Still, if you want to try out the new HTML5 player, you have to visit the TestTube page, or go directly here, and enable the HTML5 video experiment. You can also enable the Feather experiment to get the 'lightest' experience possible on YouTube. And if you're having trouble finding a video in which the new player kicks in, here's one of Google explaining HTML5 which is guaranteed to work. YouTube says this is just the first step and the player will get a wider roll-out in the coming months.
