Just how long does it take for a YouTube video to become available on the YouTube iPhone app?
Seriously, if YouTube accepts .wmv, .avi, .mkv, .mov, .mpeg, .mp4, .flv, .ogg, 3gp and outputs to multiple .flv, mp4, 3gp… OMG, why then is the link I just tapped not available?
I understand that once uploaded, videos take time to convert for display. Having uploaded some from my own iMovie library, waiting for YouTube to do its magic without a progress bar is torture. But once it’s done and properly playing on the website, the video still has to become available for HD (if available), mobile, etc.
As we become more connected on more networks on new devices, our content experience should become more homogeneous. Websites should get closer to looking the same on our desktop computers as they do our mobile devices. Instead, because of mobile phones and netbooks (more specifically, their wireless connectivity) web designers, who once enjoyed building for higher display resolutions and bigger bandwidth, find themselves thrown back into building sites that are “dial-up” friendly. It’s a whole new browser war sans Netscape Navigator.
Which brings me back to YouTube on the iPhone. Video codec H.264, briefly put, is designed for both high-def and small bandwidth playback. Since YouTube offers multiple versions of the same video, it has to take the original video upload and convert it several times. And since the only way to view YouTube on Apple TV or the iPhone is with h.264, YouTube needs to make additional conversions/transcodings.
In the end, content for the web isn’t just for the browser. It includes phones, game consoles, dvr (TiVo), and any future devices we don’t yet know we need. And all of them need the same content in their own specific formats.
All of this means that the next time I see something along the lines of “@amboy00: too funny! http://tinyurl.com/pqhugm,” I’ll probably have to wait until I get back to my desk to see the funny.