YouTube's new player

The folks over at the Google Operating System blog have posted screenshots of the new YouTube embedded player. Check 'em out.

It seems that the trend is heading towards showcasing features into overlaid menus within the video screen as opposed to buttons next to the player controls. Take a look at the Veoh, for example. For my money, Brightcove has the best player out there now. Now only is the player designed very cleanly, the video is encoded using the high-quality VP6 codec.

What interests me more than the new design are the comments made by visitors.

"One thing that I can't help but think is forthcoming(?) is some publisher control over what's in those thumbnails..."

"i wish they would code a simple flash player that can display high quality videos based on aspect ratios with transparent controls only when you hover over them..."

"Google and YouTube will have to upgrade to Flash8 video and a full screen 16X9 layout option... Movenetwork, brightcove and ABC are becoming the places to be for near streaming DVD quality clips with Yahoo and AOL being next in line. Google and YouTube are still using years-old flash7 technologies and are both living in the ice age. These days you wonder if their developers realy understand it's users demand for quality video and/or their skills to ajust the video webportals into todays availiable and widely used technologies. Flash8 with Flash9 players is already a proven concept and Google/YouTube is still turning it's users crystal-clear uploaded video into stamp-sized fog resulting blockey output with an even worse option to stretch it. This should be the topic, and not launching a new skin for their foggy low-quality encoding policy!"

So there's some food for thought as we work on future versions of our player: first and foremost, users want high-quality streaming video. Widescreen (16:9) videos, as well as channels/playlists. It's still early to tell, but it looks like players that play single, 4:3 videos will soon be very outdated.

By the way, check out a proposed YouTube player redesign proposed by Injection Design. Be sure to browse the site. There are some really cool designs in there. Here is another mock-up design, and another.

Labels: mywaves, player, streaming, video, youtube

posted by mywaves @ 10:47 AM