Steve Chen: High-quality YouTube videos coming soon

YouTube co-founder Steve Chen said at a conference that high-quality video streams are coming to YouTube soon. The high-quality videos will be available for everyone within the next three months.

The one complaint with YouTube compared to other video sites like Revver and BrightCove is quality -- videos on YouTube are not of good quality. You can’t blame YouTube for it completely, as it depends on the quality of video that is uploaded by users. YouTube, however, does provide good quality videos for sponsored videos from National Geographic and others. But it will soon provide high-quality YouTube video streams, such as high-definition content, for everyone within three months according to YouTube co-founder, Steve Chen. Chen said the reason they didn’t release it earlier was because they wanted their vast library of content available to everyone, and that required a fairly low bitrate stream so users could watch video without any problems. High-quality videos will require a higher bitrate video stream, and so not everyone would have been able to see it. YouTube, in the next few months, will provide high-quality videos and check the speed of the viewer’s Internet connection, so if a user has a faster connection they will get the better-quality videos. Others will see regular videos automatically. Chen said all the videos they receive are kept in their natural resolution, but some are poor at a resolution of only 320 x 240. Streaming those in higher qualities won’t make a difference. This problem could be avoided if YouTube instilled a minimum quality requirement for uploaded videos. I think this is great news, as the quality of content on YouTube will be on par with other video sites. If they could do the same for mobile videos, that would be another edge to set them apart.