Why YouTube Is Staying With Flash Rather Than HTML5… For Now.

In an earlier post I discussed why Apple announced it would no longer be working with Adobe. To sum it up, Apple disliked Adobe Flash player for a variety of reasons. In Apple’s word’s Flash player had constant issues, was a closed system, and alternative solutions allowed web developers more options while allowing consumers to view web media without having to rely on a third party plug-in. Instead of choosing to stick with Flash, Apple is now relying on JavaScript, CSS, and the new HTML5. Unfortunately not everyone is cutting the cord from Flash and moving on.

One of the largest and most well-known video compilation websites is YouTube. Millions upon millions of people use YouTube each day and viral videos make it a great place for anyone looking for a few laughs. Here recently there has been a great movement to switch from Flash over to HTML5. YouTube, however, has decided to not make the leap over to HTML5…yet.
Since HTML5 is still a work in progress, it has a lot of issues that need to be fixed before it is a widely used by all browsers. It is for these reasons that YouTube has also not made the switch over. A big issue with HTML5 is that there are significant differences reported when viewing videos. YouTube has a trail session running for HTML5 and when you run the same video on it you can tell that HTML5 does not have as high of a quality as regular Flash. I tried it myself and noticed a difference in video quality when viewing HD, but didn’t see any difference in time delay which was also noted amongst other users.
On top of the lesser video quality and reported delays, there is also no set codec standard. Since there are users uploading video constantly, YouTube wants to minimize the amount of codecs it has to support. Then there are the limitations. HTML5 does not allow users to upload directly from YouTube’s built-in video recording software. The final issue with HTML5 issue is that YouTube wants to protect its Digital Rights so that no one is able to copy and spread the videos all throughout the web without the owner’s consent.
Despite YouTube’s current reluctance they are still waiting for HTML5. With their HTML5 trial running right now, YouTube is sticking with Flash, but is preparing for HTML5 in the near future along with all the other browsers.