How YouTube Changed the World
February 10, 2015 6:43 AM Subscribe
Every time I remember, it completely blows my mind that just ten years ago, if I wanted watch video on the internet, on the extremely rare off-chance that I actually found what I was looking for, it usually meant downloading a supremely crappy Quicktime file.
posted by Sys Rq at 7:35 AM on February 10, 2015 [16 favorites]
posted by Sys Rq at 7:35 AM on February 10, 2015 [16 favorites]
At some point everyone will notice that email, voice calls, texting and regular web access is just noise under the video that's the primary volume of the web. Any plain text like email is probably below any rounding error already.
Are you talking about event-views (not everything is a "page" anymore) or bandwidth?
... if I wanted watch video on the internet, on the extremely rare off-chance that I actually found what I was looking for, it usually meant downloading a supremely crappy Quicktime file.
Well, Quicktime was better than those other formats, like Vivo (Google books preview).
And MeFites were so over YouTube before it got big. So, is anyone else sick of all the crappy video links? (MeTa, March 1, 2006)
posted by filthy light thief at 7:41 AM on February 10, 2015 [1 favorite]
Are you talking about event-views (not everything is a "page" anymore) or bandwidth?
... if I wanted watch video on the internet, on the extremely rare off-chance that I actually found what I was looking for, it usually meant downloading a supremely crappy Quicktime file.
Well, Quicktime was better than those other formats, like Vivo (Google books preview).
And MeFites were so over YouTube before it got big. So, is anyone else sick of all the crappy video links? (MeTa, March 1, 2006)
posted by filthy light thief at 7:41 AM on February 10, 2015 [1 favorite]
For some reason, I thought YT was started to share videos that were too big to email, not the high-and-low-brow mentioned in this article. The first YouTube video sort of backs up my vague recollection (it's called "Me at the zoo," and it's just 19 seconds of crappy quality home video, but something that wouldn't have been transferable via email, most likely). But maybe I'm just striving to make my recollection more real.
posted by filthy light thief at 7:45 AM on February 10, 2015
posted by filthy light thief at 7:45 AM on February 10, 2015
At some point everyone will notice that email, voice calls, texting and regular web access is just noise under the video that's the primary volume of the web.
Oh, believe me, I've noticed. Woo, TV 2.0. :P
posted by Steely-eyed Missile Man at 7:53 AM on February 10, 2015 [1 favorite]
Oh, believe me, I've noticed. Woo, TV 2.0. :P
posted by Steely-eyed Missile Man at 7:53 AM on February 10, 2015 [1 favorite]
At some point everyone will notice that email, voice calls, texting and regular web access is just noise under the video that's the primary volume of the web. Any plain text like email is probably below any rounding error already.
I really hate this. Especially on news sites. So many seem to think I want to watch a clip of TV news (that autostarts) instead of scanning headlines or articles. It's also particularly irritating when you google for instructions for something easy, and all you get is a page of video links and no just text site you can go and scan and read the single piece of information you want at that moment. It's such an inefficient way to digest information. Yeah yeah, I know that makes me an old fuddy-duddy.
Maybe this is what I need to get myself off the internet and back into reading books and doing stuff in real life.
posted by Hal Mumkin at 7:53 AM on February 10, 2015 [36 favorites]
I really hate this. Especially on news sites. So many seem to think I want to watch a clip of TV news (that autostarts) instead of scanning headlines or articles. It's also particularly irritating when you google for instructions for something easy, and all you get is a page of video links and no just text site you can go and scan and read the single piece of information you want at that moment. It's such an inefficient way to digest information. Yeah yeah, I know that makes me an old fuddy-duddy.
Maybe this is what I need to get myself off the internet and back into reading books and doing stuff in real life.
posted by Hal Mumkin at 7:53 AM on February 10, 2015 [36 favorites]
Interesting to look at the thread when Google bought YouTube.
posted by octothorpe at 7:54 AM on February 10, 2015 [5 favorites]
posted by octothorpe at 7:54 AM on February 10, 2015 [5 favorites]
So many seem to think I want to watch a clip of TV news (that autostarts) instead of scanning headlines or articles.
I know this feeling so well. For instance this video on LotR mythology got posted to Reddit yesterday. I would have read a short post about that. I would have read a long post about that. I will not sit there and "watch" a video that is basically just an audio track of someone reading that same blog post with some more or less related but totally unnecessary images overlaid. I have trouble concentrating on people's voices, and I have always learned vastly, vastly better from books than from classroom instruction or any other verbal method. Khan Academy would be neat...if it was text. The fact that it is all videos makes it completely unappealing and nearly useless to me.
However, you and I are in the minority. It seems that most people really do want to just listen to people talk and hate having to read. Goodbye, web that was for me. The web that's for other people is here to stay, and I hate it.
posted by Steely-eyed Missile Man at 8:17 AM on February 10, 2015 [13 favorites]
I know this feeling so well. For instance this video on LotR mythology got posted to Reddit yesterday. I would have read a short post about that. I would have read a long post about that. I will not sit there and "watch" a video that is basically just an audio track of someone reading that same blog post with some more or less related but totally unnecessary images overlaid. I have trouble concentrating on people's voices, and I have always learned vastly, vastly better from books than from classroom instruction or any other verbal method. Khan Academy would be neat...if it was text. The fact that it is all videos makes it completely unappealing and nearly useless to me.
However, you and I are in the minority. It seems that most people really do want to just listen to people talk and hate having to read. Goodbye, web that was for me. The web that's for other people is here to stay, and I hate it.
posted by Steely-eyed Missile Man at 8:17 AM on February 10, 2015 [13 favorites]
And we laughed and laughed when a company paid only $1.5 billion for a website.
posted by RobotVoodooPower at 8:22 AM on February 10, 2015 [4 favorites]
posted by RobotVoodooPower at 8:22 AM on February 10, 2015 [4 favorites]
Steely-eyed Missile Man, for the record, CGP Grey posts the scripts to his videos on his web site, typically some time after they come out:
http://www.cgpgrey.com/
posted by scolbath at 8:28 AM on February 10, 2015
http://www.cgpgrey.com/
posted by scolbath at 8:28 AM on February 10, 2015
"It seems that most people really do want to just listen to people talk and hate having to read".
I think that this is slightly simplistic and possibly patronising. The success of videos may not simply be about people "hating having to read".
In terms of learning, people learn in all sorts of different ways. Some need visual clues, others audio, others purely text-based.
I have dyslexia, and find it much easier to digest video material than having to read through pages of text.
I have found Youtube to be an invaluable learning aid for my kids. Both my children have different types of disorders (both mild) but I can sit with them and show them a video on almost any topic, then discuss the video afterwards. They will both pay attention to videos in a way that is not nearly as effective as if I had read an article to them. (And yes, they are read books etc).
I actually really like the LOTR video you mentioned. When I showed it to my kids, both of whom are just getting into these books, the visuals were really helpful. Even though some of them were silly, they provided visual context for the topic that was very clear and easy to understand.
I do a lot of face to face teaching with adults - teaching technical topics. If I force participants to read slides, this method is not nearly as powerful as explaining concepts with diagrams on a whiteboard or demonstrating actual code samples live. Visual demonstrations are fare more effective.
So, reading is great... but it is not the only way to communicate and in many instances is not the most powerful or effective way to communicate. Youtube and online videos in general have provided us with endless crappy videos of cats and pranks, but they have also provided us with rich learning tools on any topic that we can imagine.
Sorry for the rant!
posted by greenhornet at 8:41 AM on February 10, 2015 [4 favorites]
I think that this is slightly simplistic and possibly patronising. The success of videos may not simply be about people "hating having to read".
In terms of learning, people learn in all sorts of different ways. Some need visual clues, others audio, others purely text-based.
I have dyslexia, and find it much easier to digest video material than having to read through pages of text.
I have found Youtube to be an invaluable learning aid for my kids. Both my children have different types of disorders (both mild) but I can sit with them and show them a video on almost any topic, then discuss the video afterwards. They will both pay attention to videos in a way that is not nearly as effective as if I had read an article to them. (And yes, they are read books etc).
I actually really like the LOTR video you mentioned. When I showed it to my kids, both of whom are just getting into these books, the visuals were really helpful. Even though some of them were silly, they provided visual context for the topic that was very clear and easy to understand.
I do a lot of face to face teaching with adults - teaching technical topics. If I force participants to read slides, this method is not nearly as powerful as explaining concepts with diagrams on a whiteboard or demonstrating actual code samples live. Visual demonstrations are fare more effective.
So, reading is great... but it is not the only way to communicate and in many instances is not the most powerful or effective way to communicate. Youtube and online videos in general have provided us with endless crappy videos of cats and pranks, but they have also provided us with rich learning tools on any topic that we can imagine.
Sorry for the rant!
posted by greenhornet at 8:41 AM on February 10, 2015 [4 favorites]
supremely crappy Quicktime file.
What, as opposed to those supremely good RealMedia and Flash Video files?
Whenever I hear people whining about QuickTime, I immediately know they don't know what the hell they're talking about. All of the current computer video products are descended from QuickTime, it was Apple's crown jewel and it still is. It is likely to be the single most valuable computer technology ever invented in the modern PC era. And Apple got there way ahead of everyone. If you had a crappy QT experience, that was solely the fault of Bill Gates. Look at the history of QT. It was released in 1991, Microsoft didn't see it coming. They didn't even care until Apple ported QT to Windows in 1992, that was the first cross-platform video system ever, making the QT format universal. When it looked like QT would become the cross-platform standard, little Billy Gates had a fit. He demanded that Apple knife the baby, and discontinue QT players in favor of Microsoft's player. And then Microsoft would graciously allow Apple to continue development of multimedia authoring software, as long as MSFT could have a monopoly on playback.
Well Apple refused, and Gates took revenge. He deliberately made online video playback as difficult as possible for everyone, even for users of his own OS platform, and deliberately made their formats incompatible with the Mac. Remember all those websites that presented you with a choice of format, QT or WMV? And then the other attempts to bridge the platforms with RM and FLV? That was all because of Bill Gates' illegal monopoly tactics. He would deliberately screw up online video for everyone, if he couldn't get his way. But this is a battle that Bill Gates lost. And you should be damn glad he lost. Without Apple and QuickTime, we wouldn't have YouTube, or digital satellite TV, or TiVo, or any of the modern video conveniences.
posted by charlie don't surf at 8:44 AM on February 10, 2015 [21 favorites]
What, as opposed to those supremely good RealMedia and Flash Video files?
Whenever I hear people whining about QuickTime, I immediately know they don't know what the hell they're talking about. All of the current computer video products are descended from QuickTime, it was Apple's crown jewel and it still is. It is likely to be the single most valuable computer technology ever invented in the modern PC era. And Apple got there way ahead of everyone. If you had a crappy QT experience, that was solely the fault of Bill Gates. Look at the history of QT. It was released in 1991, Microsoft didn't see it coming. They didn't even care until Apple ported QT to Windows in 1992, that was the first cross-platform video system ever, making the QT format universal. When it looked like QT would become the cross-platform standard, little Billy Gates had a fit. He demanded that Apple knife the baby, and discontinue QT players in favor of Microsoft's player. And then Microsoft would graciously allow Apple to continue development of multimedia authoring software, as long as MSFT could have a monopoly on playback.
Well Apple refused, and Gates took revenge. He deliberately made online video playback as difficult as possible for everyone, even for users of his own OS platform, and deliberately made their formats incompatible with the Mac. Remember all those websites that presented you with a choice of format, QT or WMV? And then the other attempts to bridge the platforms with RM and FLV? That was all because of Bill Gates' illegal monopoly tactics. He would deliberately screw up online video for everyone, if he couldn't get his way. But this is a battle that Bill Gates lost. And you should be damn glad he lost. Without Apple and QuickTime, we wouldn't have YouTube, or digital satellite TV, or TiVo, or any of the modern video conveniences.
posted by charlie don't surf at 8:44 AM on February 10, 2015 [21 favorites]
YouTube has definitely changed how I do DIY stuff. Sure, there have always been instructional programs like The New Yankee Workshop or This Old House, but on YT, you can do a quick search and find like 15 videos of random people using your particular brand and model of table saw, if you want. And probably half a dozen detailed videos of any particular operation or technique, even fairly obscure ones.
I'm not a huge fan of video as a replacement for text—having a couple of talking heads read me news vs. reading it myself has less than zero value—but watching a video of someone remove the fuel pressure regulator from a 2007 Nissan Versa sedan is a hell of a lot more useful than a Chilton manual, that's for sure. I'm not really even sure that I'll bother to buy Chiltons for my new cars as a result.
I've been watching music videos again, too, which is not something I ever thought I'd say.
Still, I wish Google had bought Flickr instead of YouTube. I think they could have accomplished the same thing and they would have been working from a position of high quality content and community and not the cyber equivalent of a bunch of crazy people shouting at cars from a highway overpass.
posted by Kadin2048 at 8:51 AM on February 10, 2015 [3 favorites]
I'm not a huge fan of video as a replacement for text—having a couple of talking heads read me news vs. reading it myself has less than zero value—but watching a video of someone remove the fuel pressure regulator from a 2007 Nissan Versa sedan is a hell of a lot more useful than a Chilton manual, that's for sure. I'm not really even sure that I'll bother to buy Chiltons for my new cars as a result.
I've been watching music videos again, too, which is not something I ever thought I'd say.
Still, I wish Google had bought Flickr instead of YouTube. I think they could have accomplished the same thing and they would have been working from a position of high quality content and community and not the cyber equivalent of a bunch of crazy people shouting at cars from a highway overpass.
posted by Kadin2048 at 8:51 AM on February 10, 2015 [3 favorites]
Every time I remember, it completely blows my mind that just ten years ago, if I wanted watch video on the internet, on the extremely rare off-chance that I actually found what I was looking for, it usually meant downloading a supremely crappy Quicktime file.
I remember that, 20 years ago, it took literally all day just to download a lousy MPG (I think) file of the infamous exploding whale. Worth it, but still.
posted by Mothlight at 9:00 AM on February 10, 2015 [1 favorite]
I remember that, 20 years ago, it took literally all day just to download a lousy MPG (I think) file of the infamous exploding whale. Worth it, but still.
posted by Mothlight at 9:00 AM on February 10, 2015 [1 favorite]
Whenever I hear people whining about QuickTime, I immediately know they don't know what the hell they're talking about.
My experience was a series of barely compatible renditions of MPEG-4 and a series of players that were as buggy as they were bloated.
Just because it was a positive influence in the copyright wars, doesn't mean we should look back on it with anything resembling nostalgia.
posted by pan at 9:09 AM on February 10, 2015
My experience was a series of barely compatible renditions of MPEG-4 and a series of players that were as buggy as they were bloated.
Just because it was a positive influence in the copyright wars, doesn't mean we should look back on it with anything resembling nostalgia.
posted by pan at 9:09 AM on February 10, 2015
Every time I remember, it completely blows my mind that just ten years ago, if I wanted watch video on the internet, on the extremely rare off-chance that I actually found what I was looking for, it usually meant downloading a supremely crappy Quicktime file.
And every single person who had a pc at the multinational insurance corporation I was working at emailed it to everyone else as an attachment and crashed our email server for three days. I decided then and there that we haven't changed all that much from the ape in the video who scratched his butt, sniffed his fingers and then fell over.
posted by srboisvert at 9:33 AM on February 10, 2015 [1 favorite]
And every single person who had a pc at the multinational insurance corporation I was working at emailed it to everyone else as an attachment and crashed our email server for three days. I decided then and there that we haven't changed all that much from the ape in the video who scratched his butt, sniffed his fingers and then fell over.
posted by srboisvert at 9:33 AM on February 10, 2015 [1 favorite]
Quicktime was better than those other formats
True perhaps. Cholera isn't as bad as a hemorrhagic fever, either.
Point is until Youtube came along, no one really had it right. Least wrong, I'll give you.
posted by bonehead at 9:38 AM on February 10, 2015 [2 favorites]
True perhaps. Cholera isn't as bad as a hemorrhagic fever, either.
Point is until Youtube came along, no one really had it right. Least wrong, I'll give you.
posted by bonehead at 9:38 AM on February 10, 2015 [2 favorites]
I still get a QuickTime error when I foolishly try to view a trailer from Apple's site. Fortunately it usually takes about five minutes before someone uploads a copy to YouTube.
posted by octothorpe at 9:44 AM on February 10, 2015 [1 favorite]
posted by octothorpe at 9:44 AM on February 10, 2015 [1 favorite]
Just because it was a positive influence in the copyright wars, doesn't mean we should look back on it with anything resembling nostalgia.
I would suggest looking back on it with something between awe and worshipful reverence. QuickTime was not just a "positive influence." It was the origin of all digital video, it is the Alpha and the Omega. If it wasn't for Apple, you'd still be using ASF instead of MP4. If it wasn't for Microsoft pushing incompatible, proprietary MPEG-4 standards, there wouldn't have been any problems with interoperability. If it wasn't for the iPhone supporting QuickTime formats only, YouTube would still be using proprietary FLV instead of open standard HTML5.
posted by charlie don't surf at 9:47 AM on February 10, 2015 [1 favorite]
I would suggest looking back on it with something between awe and worshipful reverence. QuickTime was not just a "positive influence." It was the origin of all digital video, it is the Alpha and the Omega. If it wasn't for Apple, you'd still be using ASF instead of MP4. If it wasn't for Microsoft pushing incompatible, proprietary MPEG-4 standards, there wouldn't have been any problems with interoperability. If it wasn't for the iPhone supporting QuickTime formats only, YouTube would still be using proprietary FLV instead of open standard HTML5.
posted by charlie don't surf at 9:47 AM on February 10, 2015 [1 favorite]
What I find most frustrating about the ubiquitousness of video is how the abundance of ads and other video elements tacked onto just about EVERYTHING makes pages load so effing slowly.
posted by I_Love_Bananas at 9:51 AM on February 10, 2015
posted by I_Love_Bananas at 9:51 AM on February 10, 2015
I mostly just wish I more often had the option of a transcript or at least captioning, because my audio processing is kind if terrible and I tend to lose track of what l was listening to if I get even slightly distracted. Sigh.
posted by nonasuch at 9:53 AM on February 10, 2015 [5 favorites]
posted by nonasuch at 9:53 AM on February 10, 2015 [5 favorites]
Apple may have been instrumental in developing the tech, but they sure blew the implementation. They, just like MS, missed the whole idea of a cloud-based player and a low effort client. Youtube made video on the web just work in a way that no one else did.
All of them, Real, MS, and yes Apple, failed.
posted by bonehead at 9:55 AM on February 10, 2015 [1 favorite]
All of them, Real, MS, and yes Apple, failed.
posted by bonehead at 9:55 AM on February 10, 2015 [1 favorite]
My 12-year-old watches YouTube all the time. I bet he knows more YouTube celebrities than, uh, regular celebrities.
posted by monospace at 9:57 AM on February 10, 2015
posted by monospace at 9:57 AM on February 10, 2015
I would suggest looking back on it with something between awe and worshipful reverence.
I say again, everything branded Quicktime that I've used has been terrible. It might have helped things along, It might form the basis of decent codecs and open standards we have now, but from 1998 to about 2005 I cringed every time I was forced to use it or saw a file that required it.
Also the Apple Quicktime player insisted on creating Daemons for update and "quick load" which ate an unholy amount of memory. Which, you have to admit, wasn't endearing.
posted by pan at 10:05 AM on February 10, 2015 [4 favorites]
I say again, everything branded Quicktime that I've used has been terrible. It might have helped things along, It might form the basis of decent codecs and open standards we have now, but from 1998 to about 2005 I cringed every time I was forced to use it or saw a file that required it.
Also the Apple Quicktime player insisted on creating Daemons for update and "quick load" which ate an unholy amount of memory. Which, you have to admit, wasn't endearing.
posted by pan at 10:05 AM on February 10, 2015 [4 favorites]
YouTube celebrities
Now that is something that no one saw coming.
posted by sammyo at 10:06 AM on February 10, 2015 [1 favorite]
Now that is something that no one saw coming.
posted by sammyo at 10:06 AM on February 10, 2015 [1 favorite]
I've learned how to do a ton of stuff from Youtube. I learned to knit continental from Youtube. I learned to play with my lathe via Youtube, for spindles and bowls. I learned to sharpen bowl gouges on Youtube. I learned how to shape boules of bread on YouTube. I learned how to better skin a deer, how to replace the headlight bulbs on my Honda Fit, how to set up a light box for better pictures, how to prune roses, how to clean bones for display, how to scour fleece, card fleece, spin wool into yarn (both spindle and spinning wheel), how to tune a bike and adjust the shifter for its gears, how to change a chainsaw chain, different sorts of plying for yarn, setting up a Navajo-style floor loom, how to make a home-made small furnace for melting down aluminum cans... it's not just funny cat videos. There are lots of people offering helpful, clear explanations, demonstrations, how-tos, and so forth on subjects you can't even imagine.
posted by which_chick at 10:22 AM on February 10, 2015 [3 favorites]
posted by which_chick at 10:22 AM on February 10, 2015 [3 favorites]
Perhaps I'm stating the obvious, but the collection of choices and descriptions in the political section seems very Telegraphish to me. Even down to featuring the delightful Guido Fawkes, supplying one of the remarkably even-handed and insightful verdicts they're so justly famous for.
posted by forgetful snow at 10:24 AM on February 10, 2015
posted by forgetful snow at 10:24 AM on February 10, 2015
It was definitely one of the smartest moves Google ever made, and even smarter was swallowing their pride and letting Youtube stay mostly as it was rather than trying to fold it in under Google Video. Taking an external product and monetizing it successfully without strangling it is *hard* and they managed it.
posted by tavella at 10:49 AM on February 10, 2015 [3 favorites]
posted by tavella at 10:49 AM on February 10, 2015 [3 favorites]
Last time I checked, the QuickTime player wouldn't do full screen without an upgrade ($$$)
posted by blue_beetle at 11:53 AM on February 10, 2015
posted by blue_beetle at 11:53 AM on February 10, 2015
Whenever I hear people whining about QuickTime, I immediately know they don't know what the hell they're talking about.
Another disagreement here with experiences of ranging back to the early 90s on both Apple hardware and Windows. I haven't willingly, personally installed it on any machine I own or control since pre-2000, and I barely can tolerate it's integration into modern Apple systems.
The final nail in the coffin for me was integrating Quicktime into iTunes, requiring an iTunes installation to get Quicktime. Even before iTunes integration it was an unwieldy beast. With iTunes integration it's even worse for general computer performance, system resource use and general useability than McAfee antivirus. Hell, I've had malware that was less irritating.
Whenever I encounter the rare live Quicktime embedded file these days - and I can't find another source - the file gets downloaded with a plugin like DownloadHelper, which is then played in VLC.
Sure, Apple was among the first to bring full motion video to desktop computers (Anyone remember the original Apple TV?) and it was instrumental in stuff like the game Myst, but there were competing technolgies with a lot of promise that were left by the way-side, especially in the live video/streaming realms. (Example: CUSeeMe, which predated Flash-based video conferencing camsites by nearly 20 years.)
Sure, Quicktime (standalone) was marginally better than RealMedia (which jumped the shark so early and so hard as it turned into one of the worst, most invasive bloatware products/platforms the world has ever seen) that it really is like saying "Well, chicken pox are better than measles!" which is not a strong argument for Quicktime.
posted by loquacious at 12:08 PM on February 10, 2015 [1 favorite]
Another disagreement here with experiences of ranging back to the early 90s on both Apple hardware and Windows. I haven't willingly, personally installed it on any machine I own or control since pre-2000, and I barely can tolerate it's integration into modern Apple systems.
The final nail in the coffin for me was integrating Quicktime into iTunes, requiring an iTunes installation to get Quicktime. Even before iTunes integration it was an unwieldy beast. With iTunes integration it's even worse for general computer performance, system resource use and general useability than McAfee antivirus. Hell, I've had malware that was less irritating.
Whenever I encounter the rare live Quicktime embedded file these days - and I can't find another source - the file gets downloaded with a plugin like DownloadHelper, which is then played in VLC.
Sure, Apple was among the first to bring full motion video to desktop computers (Anyone remember the original Apple TV?) and it was instrumental in stuff like the game Myst, but there were competing technolgies with a lot of promise that were left by the way-side, especially in the live video/streaming realms. (Example: CUSeeMe, which predated Flash-based video conferencing camsites by nearly 20 years.)
Sure, Quicktime (standalone) was marginally better than RealMedia (which jumped the shark so early and so hard as it turned into one of the worst, most invasive bloatware products/platforms the world has ever seen) that it really is like saying "Well, chicken pox are better than measles!" which is not a strong argument for Quicktime.
posted by loquacious at 12:08 PM on February 10, 2015 [1 favorite]
I think there's a bit of arguing-past-each-other going on here, with most of the people complaining about QuickTime referring to its use as a mechanism for viewing video files retrieved over the internet (whether streaming -- after 1999, at least -- or after being fully downloaded), and charlie don't surf's alpha/omega observation being about its key role as one of the first video playback and encoding implementations for computers in any context, and as the architecture underpinning the majority of major tools used to edit and manipulate video on a computer, at least throughout its first decade or two.
posted by nobody at 12:37 PM on February 10, 2015 [1 favorite]
posted by nobody at 12:37 PM on February 10, 2015 [1 favorite]
RealMedia was more like Tuberculosis than Measles.
posted by spitbull at 12:39 PM on February 10, 2015 [3 favorites]
posted by spitbull at 12:39 PM on February 10, 2015 [3 favorites]
I say again, everything branded Quicktime that I've used has been terrible. It might have helped things along, It might form the basis of decent codecs and open standards we have now, but from 1998 to about 2005 I cringed every time I was forced to use it or saw a file that required it.
Also the Apple Quicktime player insisted on creating Daemons for update and "quick load" which ate an unholy amount of memory. Which, you have to admit, wasn't endearing.
If you saw the update daemon, you were a Windows user, and all your problems were due to Bill Gates deliberate decision to make your Windows QuickTime experience as miserable as possible. Bill Gates would cut off his nose to spite his face. But you probably noticed things got a lot better after this happened and MSFT was forced to cooperate with third party developers. Before that time, Apple had to use third-party developers to implement QT on Windows, so they could not be accused of stealing MSFT's trade secrets.
Apple may have been instrumental in developing the tech, but they sure blew the implementation. They, just like MS, missed the whole idea of a cloud-based player and a low effort client. Youtube made video on the web just work in a way that no one else did.
All of them, Real, MS, and yes Apple, failed.
It is likely that you never noticed Apple's cloud-based player, QuickTime Streaming Server. It was open source so it was extremely influential and even YouTube used it for transmitting videos to mobile phones. If you used YouTube on an iPhone (up to the iPhone 4 I think), you were using QTSS. QTSS is now deprecated but its core technologies became part of HTTP Live Streaming, which is now an essential mobile video standard.
Last time I checked, the QuickTime player wouldn't do full screen without an upgrade ($$$)
You haven't checked since 2010, have you? That feature was made free in QuickTime 7, along with most other Pro features.
I haven't willingly, personally installed it on any machine I own or control since pre-2000..
I could go on debunking these misconceptions endlessly, and apparently there is an endless supply of misconceptions. But it is impossible to convince people who haven't used QT during this century, and others who cling so hard to their prejudices that they would compare it to cholera and measles.
But this is not the point of the FPP. All I am saying is that if YouTube changed the world, it relied on Apple and QuickTime technologies.
posted by charlie don't surf at 12:52 PM on February 10, 2015 [2 favorites]
Also the Apple Quicktime player insisted on creating Daemons for update and "quick load" which ate an unholy amount of memory. Which, you have to admit, wasn't endearing.
If you saw the update daemon, you were a Windows user, and all your problems were due to Bill Gates deliberate decision to make your Windows QuickTime experience as miserable as possible. Bill Gates would cut off his nose to spite his face. But you probably noticed things got a lot better after this happened and MSFT was forced to cooperate with third party developers. Before that time, Apple had to use third-party developers to implement QT on Windows, so they could not be accused of stealing MSFT's trade secrets.
Apple may have been instrumental in developing the tech, but they sure blew the implementation. They, just like MS, missed the whole idea of a cloud-based player and a low effort client. Youtube made video on the web just work in a way that no one else did.
All of them, Real, MS, and yes Apple, failed.
It is likely that you never noticed Apple's cloud-based player, QuickTime Streaming Server. It was open source so it was extremely influential and even YouTube used it for transmitting videos to mobile phones. If you used YouTube on an iPhone (up to the iPhone 4 I think), you were using QTSS. QTSS is now deprecated but its core technologies became part of HTTP Live Streaming, which is now an essential mobile video standard.
Last time I checked, the QuickTime player wouldn't do full screen without an upgrade ($$$)
You haven't checked since 2010, have you? That feature was made free in QuickTime 7, along with most other Pro features.
I haven't willingly, personally installed it on any machine I own or control since pre-2000..
I could go on debunking these misconceptions endlessly, and apparently there is an endless supply of misconceptions. But it is impossible to convince people who haven't used QT during this century, and others who cling so hard to their prejudices that they would compare it to cholera and measles.
But this is not the point of the FPP. All I am saying is that if YouTube changed the world, it relied on Apple and QuickTime technologies.
posted by charlie don't surf at 12:52 PM on February 10, 2015 [2 favorites]
I could go on debunking these misconceptions endlessly, and apparently there is an endless supply of misconceptions. But it is impossible to convince people who haven't used QT during this century, and others who cling so hard to their prejudices that they would compare it to cholera and measles.
But this is not the point of the FPP. All I am saying is that if YouTube changed the world, it relied on Apple and QuickTime technologies.
Sorry if I / we (maybe we) seem defensive, but proselytizing for the glory of Apple gets on my nerves. Also, I can't imagine bad daemon software is solely the province of "Embrace, Extend, Extinguish"
... And waiting till 2010 for full-screen video seems more than a little nuts.
I'll be quiet now.
posted by pan at 1:39 PM on February 10, 2015
But this is not the point of the FPP. All I am saying is that if YouTube changed the world, it relied on Apple and QuickTime technologies.
Sorry if I / we (maybe we) seem defensive, but proselytizing for the glory of Apple gets on my nerves. Also, I can't imagine bad daemon software is solely the province of "Embrace, Extend, Extinguish"
... And waiting till 2010 for full-screen video seems more than a little nuts.
I'll be quiet now.
posted by pan at 1:39 PM on February 10, 2015
All I am saying is that if YouTube changed the world, it relied on Apple and QuickTime technologies.
Nope: The History of Flash: The Dawn of Web Animation
posted by Pseudonymous Cognomen at 1:48 PM on February 10, 2015 [2 favorites]
Nope: The History of Flash: The Dawn of Web Animation
posted by Pseudonymous Cognomen at 1:48 PM on February 10, 2015 [2 favorites]
YouTube is also an example of an American company co-founded by an immigrant. Nearly 50% of all tech companies in Silicon Valley have an immigrant founder. 40% of all Fortune 500 companies were started by either an immigrant or a child of an immigrant. Why? Immigrants are twice as likely to launch a business compared to American-born. So, Congress, let's get on with passing comprehensive immigration law reform, and let's leverage the immigrant spirit to grow more companies, like Youtube, Google, Yahoo, Intel, U.S. Steel, Sun Microsystem. Here's an article on the economic development and job-creation benefits that flow from having an enlightened approach to immigrant talent. http://www.governing.com/gov-institute/voices/col-entrepreneurial-immigrants-international-students-community-development.html
posted by richardherman at 1:51 PM on February 10, 2015 [2 favorites]
posted by richardherman at 1:51 PM on February 10, 2015 [2 favorites]
I'm no fan of today's Apple, but QuickTime was one of their better ideas. It came from a kinder, gentler, pre-Jobs 2.0 Apple; the one that nearly went out of business before it got turned into a consumer electronics juggernaut, but gave us a lot of pretty neat stuff along the way.
Apple Computer was a pretty cool company; Apple Inc. is a design bureau for Foxconn.
posted by Kadin2048 at 1:57 PM on February 10, 2015 [1 favorite]
Apple Computer was a pretty cool company; Apple Inc. is a design bureau for Foxconn.
posted by Kadin2048 at 1:57 PM on February 10, 2015 [1 favorite]
If you saw the update daemon, you were a Windows user, and all your problems were due to Bill Gates deliberate decision to make your Windows QuickTime experience as miserable as possible
It doesn't matter whose fault it was - using QuickTime was miserable. As an end user on a PC-compatible machine, it sucked. That's what we're saying. Not that Steve Jobs or Apple suck, but that QuickTime sucked. The reasons are immaterial, the fact is, as you all but state yourself, that using QuickTime, as an end user in a Windows machine at the time when QuickTime videos were common in webpages, was miserable.
It and RealPlayer used to make me want to murder whoever thought of the concept of streaming. I rarely wanted to watch a series of three second clips interspersed with "buffering" messages.
posted by Dysk at 1:57 PM on February 10, 2015
It doesn't matter whose fault it was - using QuickTime was miserable. As an end user on a PC-compatible machine, it sucked. That's what we're saying. Not that Steve Jobs or Apple suck, but that QuickTime sucked. The reasons are immaterial, the fact is, as you all but state yourself, that using QuickTime, as an end user in a Windows machine at the time when QuickTime videos were common in webpages, was miserable.
It and RealPlayer used to make me want to murder whoever thought of the concept of streaming. I rarely wanted to watch a series of three second clips interspersed with "buffering" messages.
posted by Dysk at 1:57 PM on February 10, 2015
Sorry if I / we (maybe we) seem defensive, but proselytizing for the glory of Apple gets on my nerves.
I don't intend to seem fanboyish but this really is the one area where Apple deserves full credit. QuickTime was a product of the Apple Advanced Technology Group, which was formed just after Jobs was kicked out, and was one of the first projects he killed when he returned. The ATG was the only thing keeping Apple afloat during the no-Jobs era.
Nope: The History of Flash: The Dawn of Web Animation
Yep. That story is a bit of revisionist history by the SmartSketch developers, trying to erase the impact of Macromedia's existing multimedia products. And I have to laugh at their Disney stories, my store had the Disney account, and I was working with Macromedia and Disney long before SmartSketch ever existed. Did I not make it abundantly clear that I was right in the middle of all of this, and I actually know what happened from firsthand knowledge?
Flash has a long heritage, which originated in a product called Videoworks. I think I have a copy of that in storage around here somewhere, I used it sometime around 1985. Eventually that product became Macromind Director, which produced files in Shockwave format. In 1996 Macromind bought FutureSplash and made its output compatible with the Shockwave format, and spun off Flash as a development platform with a limited subset of Shockwave features. Director was too hard to use for authoring, Flash was a dumbed down version of Director, more limited and thus much easier to use.
And besides, that was all animation with interactivity and has nothing to do with web video which is the topic of this FPP. Flash Video did not exist until 2002.
Look, I just don't know what to tell you guys. This is my area of professional expertise, I worked hard to make a lot of this stuff happen. This is the central technology of my career and you guys are telling me it didn't happen the way I witnessed it. You are telling me the sky isn't blue, it's red. I give up.
posted by charlie don't surf at 2:33 PM on February 10, 2015 [2 favorites]
I don't intend to seem fanboyish but this really is the one area where Apple deserves full credit. QuickTime was a product of the Apple Advanced Technology Group, which was formed just after Jobs was kicked out, and was one of the first projects he killed when he returned. The ATG was the only thing keeping Apple afloat during the no-Jobs era.
Nope: The History of Flash: The Dawn of Web Animation
Yep. That story is a bit of revisionist history by the SmartSketch developers, trying to erase the impact of Macromedia's existing multimedia products. And I have to laugh at their Disney stories, my store had the Disney account, and I was working with Macromedia and Disney long before SmartSketch ever existed. Did I not make it abundantly clear that I was right in the middle of all of this, and I actually know what happened from firsthand knowledge?
Flash has a long heritage, which originated in a product called Videoworks. I think I have a copy of that in storage around here somewhere, I used it sometime around 1985. Eventually that product became Macromind Director, which produced files in Shockwave format. In 1996 Macromind bought FutureSplash and made its output compatible with the Shockwave format, and spun off Flash as a development platform with a limited subset of Shockwave features. Director was too hard to use for authoring, Flash was a dumbed down version of Director, more limited and thus much easier to use.
And besides, that was all animation with interactivity and has nothing to do with web video which is the topic of this FPP. Flash Video did not exist until 2002.
Look, I just don't know what to tell you guys. This is my area of professional expertise, I worked hard to make a lot of this stuff happen. This is the central technology of my career and you guys are telling me it didn't happen the way I witnessed it. You are telling me the sky isn't blue, it's red. I give up.
posted by charlie don't surf at 2:33 PM on February 10, 2015 [2 favorites]
you guys are telling me it didn't happen the way I witnessed it. You are telling me the sky isn't blue, it's red. I give up.
You're making statements that are objectively false, though, that's the problem. (And the Apple fanboyism just comes across as kind of obnoxious.) Flash video is not Quicktime. Low-bandwidth streaming content delivery c. 1996 is not necessarily Quicktime (whether it was Smartsketch or Director or something else instead is not relevant to this larger point). Youtube has never used Quicktime as a delivery method. The traceable lineage of Macromedia (later Adobe) Flash, which was and is the delivery platform for Youtube, does not in fact include Quicktime (that Quicktime videos could be ported to the FLV format is also irrelevant, because it's not the only format supported for Flash conversion and never was).
posted by Pseudonymous Cognomen at 2:45 PM on February 10, 2015
You're making statements that are objectively false, though, that's the problem. (And the Apple fanboyism just comes across as kind of obnoxious.) Flash video is not Quicktime. Low-bandwidth streaming content delivery c. 1996 is not necessarily Quicktime (whether it was Smartsketch or Director or something else instead is not relevant to this larger point). Youtube has never used Quicktime as a delivery method. The traceable lineage of Macromedia (later Adobe) Flash, which was and is the delivery platform for Youtube, does not in fact include Quicktime (that Quicktime videos could be ported to the FLV format is also irrelevant, because it's not the only format supported for Flash conversion and never was).
posted by Pseudonymous Cognomen at 2:45 PM on February 10, 2015
If you saw the update daemon, you were a Windows user, and all your problems were due to Bill Gates deliberate decision to make your Windows QuickTime experience as miserable as possible. Bill Gates would cut off his nose to spite his face. But you probably noticed things got a lot better after this happened and MSFT was forced to cooperate with third party developers. Before that time, Apple had to use third-party developers to implement QT on Windows, so they could not be accused of stealing MSFT's trade secrets.
[...]
It is likely that you never noticed Apple's cloud-based player, QuickTime Streaming Server. It was open source so it was extremely influential and even YouTube used it for transmitting videos to mobile phones. If you used YouTube on an iPhone (up to the iPhone 4 I think), you were using QTSS.
Arent you praising Apple for doing the very thing you just pooh-poohed Microsoft for? Yeesh.
Anyway, speaking as the person who brought up Quicktime in the first place: I wasn't saying Quicktime was inherently crappy (though, as a Windows user, that was certainly my experience). I was saying the files were crappy (not the format), because the people who encoded them cut every possible corner in order to keep the file size down. YouTube made that corner-cutting unnecessary.
posted by Sys Rq at 2:51 PM on February 10, 2015
[...]
It is likely that you never noticed Apple's cloud-based player, QuickTime Streaming Server. It was open source so it was extremely influential and even YouTube used it for transmitting videos to mobile phones. If you used YouTube on an iPhone (up to the iPhone 4 I think), you were using QTSS.
Arent you praising Apple for doing the very thing you just pooh-poohed Microsoft for? Yeesh.
Anyway, speaking as the person who brought up Quicktime in the first place: I wasn't saying Quicktime was inherently crappy (though, as a Windows user, that was certainly my experience). I was saying the files were crappy (not the format), because the people who encoded them cut every possible corner in order to keep the file size down. YouTube made that corner-cutting unnecessary.
posted by Sys Rq at 2:51 PM on February 10, 2015
Youtube has never used Quicktime as a delivery method.
It is like I am talking to a brick wall.
..QuickTime Streaming Server. It was open source so it was extremely influential and even YouTube used it for transmitting videos to mobile phones. If you used YouTube on an iPhone (up to the iPhone 4 I think), you were using QTSS.
Normally I would assume I do not have to state the obvious objectively true facts, and make it clear that QuickTime Streaming Server uses Quicktime.
posted by charlie don't surf at 2:53 PM on February 10, 2015 [1 favorite]
It is like I am talking to a brick wall.
..QuickTime Streaming Server. It was open source so it was extremely influential and even YouTube used it for transmitting videos to mobile phones. If you used YouTube on an iPhone (up to the iPhone 4 I think), you were using QTSS.
Normally I would assume I do not have to state the obvious objectively true facts, and make it clear that QuickTime Streaming Server uses Quicktime.
posted by charlie don't surf at 2:53 PM on February 10, 2015 [1 favorite]
It is like I am talking to a brick wall.
If you want to think so, I suppose; it's worth noting that Youtube has been around since a few years before there was an iPhone (since 2005, in fact! I believe you'll find that the first iPhone was introduced in 2007) and it would have been successful without the iPhone (which has never had a majority of mobile phone market share, in any case).
Objectively, the claim that Youtube's success is built on Quicktime and Apple technology is demonstrably wrong.
posted by Pseudonymous Cognomen at 3:13 PM on February 10, 2015
If you want to think so, I suppose; it's worth noting that Youtube has been around since a few years before there was an iPhone (since 2005, in fact! I believe you'll find that the first iPhone was introduced in 2007) and it would have been successful without the iPhone (which has never had a majority of mobile phone market share, in any case).
Objectively, the claim that Youtube's success is built on Quicktime and Apple technology is demonstrably wrong.
posted by Pseudonymous Cognomen at 3:13 PM on February 10, 2015
Without Apple and QuickTime, we wouldn't have YouTube, or digital satellite TV, or TiVo, or any of the modern video conveniences.
Yes we would.
posted by markr at 3:34 PM on February 10, 2015
Yes we would.
posted by markr at 3:34 PM on February 10, 2015
When it looked like QT would become the cross-platform standard, little Billy Gates had a fit. He demanded that Apple knife the baby, and discontinue QT players in favor of Microsoft's player. And then Microsoft would graciously allow Apple to continue development of multimedia authoring software, as long as MSFT could have a monopoly on playback.
Little Billy Gates? I feel like it's 1998 and I'm reading Slashdot again.
posted by octothorpe at 3:50 PM on February 10, 2015 [2 favorites]
Little Billy Gates? I feel like it's 1998 and I'm reading Slashdot again.
posted by octothorpe at 3:50 PM on February 10, 2015 [2 favorites]
Objectively, the claim that Youtube's success is built on Quicktime and Apple technology is demonstrably wrong.
It is like I am talking to a brick wall.
Check the YouTube history at Wikipedia if you don't believe me.
YouTube originally offered videos at only one quality level, displayed at a resolution of 320x240 pixels using the Sorenson Spark codec (a variant of H.263), with mono MP3 audio.
Sorenson Video is a codec originally released for QuickTime 3. Apple wrote an encoder using SV to replace their original Cinepak codec, this is when online video really took off. All subsequent Sorenson products are based on the original QuickTime 3 release, and IIRC the original codec is upwards compatible with all Sorenson codecs up to about 2010 I think.
I think I will stop banging my head against this brick wall now. It is pointless. I will never convince you that the sky is blue.
Little Billy Gates? I feel like it's 1998 and I'm reading Slashdot again.
I have a very low Slashdot user ID, but I haven't been around there for years. I was more of a Kuro5hin user.
posted by charlie don't surf at 3:55 PM on February 10, 2015 [1 favorite]
It is like I am talking to a brick wall.
Check the YouTube history at Wikipedia if you don't believe me.
YouTube originally offered videos at only one quality level, displayed at a resolution of 320x240 pixels using the Sorenson Spark codec (a variant of H.263), with mono MP3 audio.
Sorenson Video is a codec originally released for QuickTime 3. Apple wrote an encoder using SV to replace their original Cinepak codec, this is when online video really took off. All subsequent Sorenson products are based on the original QuickTime 3 release, and IIRC the original codec is upwards compatible with all Sorenson codecs up to about 2010 I think.
I think I will stop banging my head against this brick wall now. It is pointless. I will never convince you that the sky is blue.
Little Billy Gates? I feel like it's 1998 and I'm reading Slashdot again.
I have a very low Slashdot user ID, but I haven't been around there for years. I was more of a Kuro5hin user.
posted by charlie don't surf at 3:55 PM on February 10, 2015 [1 favorite]
Computer video, sure. But "no Apple, no digital TV" is a biiiiiig stretch; the broadcast industry had its own strong motivations for driving the change from analog to digital. (And had deeper pockets to invest in it than Apple did at that time; now, of course, Apple could pretty much go out and buy them all if it chose to.)
posted by We had a deal, Kyle at 4:02 PM on February 10, 2015
posted by We had a deal, Kyle at 4:02 PM on February 10, 2015
Am I missing something?
Sorenson isn't Apple. Apple is a licensee of Sorensen, like Macromedia, Adobe, Youtube and many of the big broadcast companies. Youtube may not have written their own codec, but neither did Apple for Quicktime, if I'm reading it right. They came from Sorensen and others like Fraunhoffer, neither of which appear to be Apple subsidiaries. Both have many other clients besides Apple.
If QT's DNA is in Youtube, it appears to me to be because they were both licenced from the same private codec firm, less because Apple's code was used in Youtube.
posted by bonehead at 4:07 PM on February 10, 2015
Sorenson isn't Apple. Apple is a licensee of Sorensen, like Macromedia, Adobe, Youtube and many of the big broadcast companies. Youtube may not have written their own codec, but neither did Apple for Quicktime, if I'm reading it right. They came from Sorensen and others like Fraunhoffer, neither of which appear to be Apple subsidiaries. Both have many other clients besides Apple.
If QT's DNA is in Youtube, it appears to me to be because they were both licenced from the same private codec firm, less because Apple's code was used in Youtube.
posted by bonehead at 4:07 PM on February 10, 2015
Computer video, sure. But "no Apple, no digital TV" is a biiiiiig stretch; the broadcast industry had its own strong motivations for driving the change from analog to digital.
Well.. no digital TV this soon with these qualities. Maybe it's a little hyperbole, but if you had left it to the broadcast industry, they'd still be squabbling over codecs. Come to think of it, they still are.
I have seen projects with basically unlimited funding and heavy support by conventional broadcasters that failed miserably. I had a friend who worked at a public TV station somewhere around the late 90s, where Microsoft was secretly testing a new lossless digital video transmission system based on Windows Media, I used to hear about it all the time. The system was intended for end-to-end use, for everything from live recording of shows to delivery to the transmitter. They would embrace and extend from the TV networks outwards to the user. The station started out just using it to send their feed to the transmitter. And immediately viewers started phoning with complaints that the picture was fuzzy and the sound was out of sync. So they turned it off and went back to analog. Microsoft placed such a high priority on this project that they took a substantial group of developers off Windows and dedicated them to getting this project running. And every time they tried a new revision, the complaining phone calls started again. After a quite a few weeks, Microsoft was starting to feel the pain of losing some of their primary OS developers so they scrapped the project, after investing millions of bucks, and incurring substantial delays in the next Windows version.
If QT's DNA is in Youtube, it appears to me to be because they were both licenced from the same private codec firm, less because Apple's code was used in Youtube.
(facepalm)
Sorenson did not exist as a company until Apple funded them, they were a subcontractor.
posted by charlie don't surf at 4:30 PM on February 10, 2015 [1 favorite]
Well.. no digital TV this soon with these qualities. Maybe it's a little hyperbole, but if you had left it to the broadcast industry, they'd still be squabbling over codecs. Come to think of it, they still are.
I have seen projects with basically unlimited funding and heavy support by conventional broadcasters that failed miserably. I had a friend who worked at a public TV station somewhere around the late 90s, where Microsoft was secretly testing a new lossless digital video transmission system based on Windows Media, I used to hear about it all the time. The system was intended for end-to-end use, for everything from live recording of shows to delivery to the transmitter. They would embrace and extend from the TV networks outwards to the user. The station started out just using it to send their feed to the transmitter. And immediately viewers started phoning with complaints that the picture was fuzzy and the sound was out of sync. So they turned it off and went back to analog. Microsoft placed such a high priority on this project that they took a substantial group of developers off Windows and dedicated them to getting this project running. And every time they tried a new revision, the complaining phone calls started again. After a quite a few weeks, Microsoft was starting to feel the pain of losing some of their primary OS developers so they scrapped the project, after investing millions of bucks, and incurring substantial delays in the next Windows version.
If QT's DNA is in Youtube, it appears to me to be because they were both licenced from the same private codec firm, less because Apple's code was used in Youtube.
(facepalm)
Sorenson did not exist as a company until Apple funded them, they were a subcontractor.
posted by charlie don't surf at 4:30 PM on February 10, 2015 [1 favorite]
YouTube originally offered videos at only one quality level, displayed at a resolution of 320x240 pixels using the Sorenson Spark codec (a variant of H.263), with mono MP3 audio.
"As Apple began to embrace MPEG-4 and move away from other proprietary codecs, Sorenson Media licensed Sorenson Spark (Sorenson H.263) to Macromedia, which was included with Macromedia Flash MX v6 on March 4, 2002.[15][16] Sorenson Spark is the required video compression format for Flash Player 6 and 7.
Macromedia later tried to find a better video codec. Starting with Flash Player 8 (released in September 2005), the preferred video codec became VP6." (Youtube went live in November 2005.) "
So: "Macromedia used a codec based on H.263 (which was an ITU standard and not an Apple one) developed by an independent company as a plugin for Quicktime to deliver video in Flash but moved on to something else by the time Youtube actually went live" ≠ "Apple and Quicktime are responsible for Youtube's success" (still).
posted by Pseudonymous Cognomen at 4:45 PM on February 10, 2015
"As Apple began to embrace MPEG-4 and move away from other proprietary codecs, Sorenson Media licensed Sorenson Spark (Sorenson H.263) to Macromedia, which was included with Macromedia Flash MX v6 on March 4, 2002.[15][16] Sorenson Spark is the required video compression format for Flash Player 6 and 7.
Macromedia later tried to find a better video codec. Starting with Flash Player 8 (released in September 2005), the preferred video codec became VP6." (Youtube went live in November 2005.) "
So: "Macromedia used a codec based on H.263 (which was an ITU standard and not an Apple one) developed by an independent company as a plugin for Quicktime to deliver video in Flash but moved on to something else by the time Youtube actually went live" ≠ "Apple and Quicktime are responsible for Youtube's success" (still).
posted by Pseudonymous Cognomen at 4:45 PM on February 10, 2015
Sorry if I / we (maybe we) seem defensive, but proselytizing for the glory of Apple gets on my nerves.
That's OK. The value of the company hit 700 billion dollars today. They'll get over it.
posted by spitbull at 4:53 PM on February 10, 2015 [1 favorite]
That's OK. The value of the company hit 700 billion dollars today. They'll get over it.
posted by spitbull at 4:53 PM on February 10, 2015 [1 favorite]
if you had left it to the broadcast industry, they'd still be squabbling over codecs. Come to think of it, they still are.
Not really; there's a very clear codec technology progression in broadcast, from MPEG2 to AVC to HEVC. The only dithering is over timing those infrastructure upgrades.
(The real squabbling comes within codec generations as suppliers fight it out over video quality vs. bitrate. Bandwidth is everything to broadcasters.)
posted by We had a deal, Kyle at 5:00 PM on February 10, 2015
Not really; there's a very clear codec technology progression in broadcast, from MPEG2 to AVC to HEVC. The only dithering is over timing those infrastructure upgrades.
(The real squabbling comes within codec generations as suppliers fight it out over video quality vs. bitrate. Bandwidth is everything to broadcasters.)
posted by We had a deal, Kyle at 5:00 PM on February 10, 2015
So, I have never been a multimedia expert, but the way it seemed to me was that QuickTime was a very capable and impressive multimedia library. And also, Apple distributed an awful media player program that served as a user-interface to their impressive QuickTime library. But they decided to call the user-interface program "QuickTime Player", which seemed to create a lot of confusion in a lot of people, who now associated the word "QuickTime" with "a crummy media player that just keeps advertising that I pay more money to upgrade, even though I already spend a ton of money on this computer because I heard it was better for multimedia stuff." I've never understood why they wanted to sully the name of QuickTime like that.
posted by Galaxor Nebulon at 6:32 PM on February 10, 2015 [1 favorite]
posted by Galaxor Nebulon at 6:32 PM on February 10, 2015 [1 favorite]
All this talk about Quicktime and Microsoft is all besides the point of this article, which is about on-line video.
When Youtube first started there were many, many video sharing sites that various companies were trying. They all were an incredible pain to use. Most of them had proprietary players and required you to download an enormous driver onto your machine that would only play videos from their web site (if they worked at all). Or, the opposite, they would require uploaded videos to be a very specific, special format that it sometimes would require a PhD to figure out the exact parameters to set up so the uploaded video would take.
And the Internet was a lot slower back then, which meant that struggling with videos on these websites took incredible amounts of often wasted time.
Youtube stood out from all of them. They would take videos of many different formats and it would just upload and play. You could play their videos without downloading anything to your PC (except for Flash, which most people had anyway). No drivers, no special log ins were required to play.
People used it because it was the only one that pretty much always just worked without any hassle. So everyone started migrating to Youtube. It was easy enough so that the general public would use it.
And just as it is said that porno is what made the Internet take off, copied content is what make Youtube take off. The Youtube employees looked the other way as movies, television shows, and music videos all made their way to their site, which made Youtube really popular.
When Google bought it, this was the one area they slowly began to clamp down on because of the threat of massive lawsuits. But otherwise, as has been mentioned, they wisely kept their hands off.
posted by eye of newt at 8:48 PM on February 10, 2015 [2 favorites]
When Youtube first started there were many, many video sharing sites that various companies were trying. They all were an incredible pain to use. Most of them had proprietary players and required you to download an enormous driver onto your machine that would only play videos from their web site (if they worked at all). Or, the opposite, they would require uploaded videos to be a very specific, special format that it sometimes would require a PhD to figure out the exact parameters to set up so the uploaded video would take.
And the Internet was a lot slower back then, which meant that struggling with videos on these websites took incredible amounts of often wasted time.
Youtube stood out from all of them. They would take videos of many different formats and it would just upload and play. You could play their videos without downloading anything to your PC (except for Flash, which most people had anyway). No drivers, no special log ins were required to play.
People used it because it was the only one that pretty much always just worked without any hassle. So everyone started migrating to Youtube. It was easy enough so that the general public would use it.
And just as it is said that porno is what made the Internet take off, copied content is what make Youtube take off. The Youtube employees looked the other way as movies, television shows, and music videos all made their way to their site, which made Youtube really popular.
When Google bought it, this was the one area they slowly began to clamp down on because of the threat of massive lawsuits. But otherwise, as has been mentioned, they wisely kept their hands off.
posted by eye of newt at 8:48 PM on February 10, 2015 [2 favorites]
I just got my first mac laptop this year, and the QT player is still pretty annoying: all video files are assumed to be QT, so the QT player tries to open them and fails. Installing VLC was one of my first moves. Why? Because QT may be successful as a codec, but it's always sucked (and continues to suck) as a player or platform. Because I want my player to play all of the codecs, invisibly, and have all of the reasonable basic features a video player should have.
I could go on debunking these misconceptions endlessly, and apparently there is an endless supply of misconceptions. But it is impossible to convince people who haven't used QT during this century, and others who cling so hard to their prejudices that they would compare it to cholera and measles.
One of the reasons that tech is hard is that you need to release things, but people remember the bumps without much faith that they'll actually get fixed down the line.
It's like if you touched a hot stove once as a kid, and years later the stove manufacturer is all like, "oh yeah, that's way better since we installed an 'off' mode. If only you paid attention to my updates!" Would you be down to touch the stove again? Apple failed on the QT player, and it's stuck with lots of people. You can interpret that as the evil of Bill Gates rattling down through the centuries, but it really doesn't much matter.
posted by kaibutsu at 10:05 AM on February 11, 2015
I could go on debunking these misconceptions endlessly, and apparently there is an endless supply of misconceptions. But it is impossible to convince people who haven't used QT during this century, and others who cling so hard to their prejudices that they would compare it to cholera and measles.
One of the reasons that tech is hard is that you need to release things, but people remember the bumps without much faith that they'll actually get fixed down the line.
It's like if you touched a hot stove once as a kid, and years later the stove manufacturer is all like, "oh yeah, that's way better since we installed an 'off' mode. If only you paid attention to my updates!" Would you be down to touch the stove again? Apple failed on the QT player, and it's stuck with lots of people. You can interpret that as the evil of Bill Gates rattling down through the centuries, but it really doesn't much matter.
posted by kaibutsu at 10:05 AM on February 11, 2015
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Now when oculus or something gets to real immersive VR presence, woo!
posted by sammyo at 7:35 AM on February 10, 2015