The availability of a common, simple video playback format across all browsers and platforms has ushered in a new era of video sharing on the web. But it does what it does well: playing back simple video streams with some meta information. It offers neither the high fidelity or the flexibility of file formats like QuickTime or Windows Media. FLV file format uses the KISS (keep it simple stupid) approach. It's the same reason Google Video switched to Flash in September 2005, long before Google purchased YouTube.
Even if Flash isn't present on your computer, it's an easy in-place browser download, unlike, say, a QuickTime install. In this hostile environment, it's no wonder that YouTube elected to cut the gordian knot of video codecs: they chose Flash Video, which "just works" on most computers. It makes the current format war between Blu-Ray and HD-DVD look like a walk in the park. Imagine a poor user trying to view a RealVideo clip in this day and age. What version of QuickTime? What version of Windows Media? Which MPEG-4 implementation? And this is only a partial list of the popular codecs. It doesn't seem like such a large list, until you consider that there are dozens of variants for each codec.
Here are a few of the more popular video codecs you're likely to encounter out in the wild: Just take a look at all the choices in Yahoo's web-based Media Helper:Īs the old saying goes, we love standards: that's why we have so many of them. It's even more of a problem on the web, where users can run any combination of operating system and browser. You'll have to find, download, and install the proper codec first. You must have the correct video codec installed, the same video codec that the clip was encoded with. Playing video on a computer has always been a crapshoot. Did YouTube Cut the Gordian Knot of Video Codecs?
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