After years of capping video playback at 30 frames per second, it looks like YouTube is finally upping the bar.
Back in June, YouTube announced that 60 FPS video playback was on the way in “the coming months”. Alas, the only examples of this to pop up since were a handful of EA game trailers that YouTube handpicked to showcase the new, ultra-slick framerate.
Sometime in the past few hours, however, it seems the roll out started spreading far and wide. A good number of user uploaded videos shot at 60 FPS are now playing back at their proper framerate, rather than being sliced down to a relatively chunky 30 FPS.
It may not work in all browsers (if all else fails, try Chrome. Safari also seems to work. And make sure you’re using the HTML5 Player, though most people will be on that by default by now) — but when it works, it’s gloriously obvious.
See, for example, this video of someone playing Nintendo’s Mario Kart 8 (as spotted by Kotaku). Bump the quality up to at least 720p, and let the frames flood your eyeballs:
(On a side note: holy crap that guy is a beast at Mario Kart)
Videos previously shot at 60 FPS but uploaded before today, however, still seem to be playing at the older framerate.
We’ve reached out to YouTube to find out just how widespread this roll out is (Can all users upload at 60 FPS now, or just many more than before?), and whether or not they plan to re-process any of the old stuff uploaded before they made the switch. Given the absurd amount of video that YouTube has backlogged, however, I wouldn’t bank on much of that old stuff getting the upgrade treatment.
Update: YouTube has confirmed to us that this is, in fact, rolling out to users and promised “more details soon”, but wouldn’t say more just yet.