Youtube in HTML5 Videos

HTML5 is a new web standard that is gaining popularity rapidly and adds many new features to your web experience. 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.


Currently YouTube videos are Flash and Flash is external plugin which is sometimes buggy. Since HTML5 is a new standard for web, it is also supported on mobile devices. It is lightweight and no additional installations required.

Try YouTube in HTML5 here: http://www.youtube.com/html5

Supported Browsers

We support browsers that support both the video tag in HTML5 and either the h.264 video codec or the WebM format (with VP8 codec). These include:

• Firefox 4 (WebM, Beta available here)
• Google Chrome (WebM and h.264)
• Opera 10.6+ (WebM, Available here)
• Apple Safari (h.264, version 4+)
• Microsoft Internet Explorer 9 (h.264, Beta available here)
• Microsoft Internet Explorer 6, 7, or 8 with Google Chrome Frame installed (Get Google Chrome Frame)

Notes

• Fullscreen support is partially implemented. Pressing the fullscreen button will expand the player to fill your browser. If your browser supports a fullscreen option, you can then use that to truly fill the screen
• The HTML5 player has a badge in the control bar. If you don't see the "HTML5" icon in the control bar, you've been directed to the Flash player (due to restrictions listed below)
• The HTML5 player also has a badge to indicate the video is using the WebM format. If you don't see the "WebM" icon, the video is encoded using h.264
• If you want to find videos with WebM formats available, you can use the Advanced Search options to look for them (or just add &webm=1 to any search URL)

Additional Restrictions (we are working on these!)

• Videos with ads are not supported (they will play in the Flash player)
• On Firefox and Opera, only videos with WebM transcodes will play in HTML5
• If you've opted in to other testtube experiments, you may not get the HTML5 player (Feather is supported, though)