YouTube Goes Widescreen

If you visit YouTube often you might have noticed something new recently, the most popular video sharing site on the planet has (finally) gone widescreen 16x9 aspect ratio.

As all HD cameras shoot 16x9 this only makes sense. Also, most of the newer sites Out There such as Hulu.com or TheWB.com, etc are widescreen too. And even some of the ones that have been around a while like Blip.TV and Vimeo are widescreen (and this made them more popular with filmmakers and film fans).

YouTube still accepts 4x3 video - it just letterboxes it with side bars. This is what it's doing with all the legacy video on the site as well, including the entire first season of "Pink". Although we shot "Pink" Season 1 the exact same way as Season 2, we uploaded to YouTube and other places in a 4x3 letterboxed file (per their instructions at that time). So all those earlier episodes play back fine, but not full widescreen like the new content.

Here's a link to the most recent episode of "Pink" in widescreen:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bdlpeCKmRbk&feature=channel

And here's the embed:



Notice the embeded video is still 4x3 letterboxed. It doesn't appear they allow widescreen embeds yet - or maybe they're using it to drive traffic to their site? A good idea if so.

Another cool thing is you can select the "Watch in High Quality" link on the bottom right below the video box (on YouTube only, not embedded video). It takes a tad bit longer to download, but the resolution looks twice as good. BTW, it is NOT HD though. It is downconverted to an SD resolution, but it still looks very good.

(To see "Pink" in HD the only current way is on Vuze.com. And we are also putting some sample HD episodes on Vimeo as well.)

In a small, weird way this is similar to re-watching your favorite movies in Blu-Ray. We just re-watched "Pink" Season 2 in widescreen (and in High Quality mode) on YouTube and it was a much better viewing experience (one note too: you can also click the "full screen" button and watch that way and it looks pretty darn good).

Sooner than later most online video will be 720p HD, but for now at least YouTube and other sites are taking steps to make the current viewing experience the best it can be.

UPDATE: Since we posted this you can now actually embed the widescreen videos. Here's the same episode above, but in widescreen (although this blog layout is narrow and it crops the right side off):



UPDATE #2: You can now watch select videos on YouTube in HD. Our last two promos we uploaded in 720p HD - and now there's a "Watch In HD" button on the bottom right of videos. So look for it and definitely watch in HD!

PINK on Vimeo

Filmmakers out there likely know about Vimeo.com, but others may not. It's a really cool video sharing site that allows HD uploads - one of the only ones we know of with this feature (you can also embed the video files on other sites). The viewership on Vimeo seems to mainly be other like-minded filmmakers and artists, etc. - not necessarily "regular video joes", but they have around 1 million registered users we've been told (a fraction compared to YouTube). But nonetheless it is a great place to see creative works and get feeback on your own stuff.

We've held off putting PINK on there since we've been releasing our HD content through Vuze.com. But we've decided to go ahead and put a few episodes on Vimeo as "samples" of the series - and to showcase what can be done with the great filmmaking tools we're using (ie. Canon XH-A1 camera, Canon HV20 camera, Letus Extreme 35mm adapter, etc.).

You can check it out here:
http://vimeo.com/2271692?pg=transcoded_embed&sec=2271692

Or the show is also on the Vimeo HV20 page (thanks Eugenia):
http://vimeo.com/HV20

Again, it is in an HD Flash player, which is very cool. You can play it fullscreen or even embed it on your website, blog, etc. like this:


PINK 2: Daddy's Little Girl from Blake Calhoun on Vimeo.

Holiday Break

The show will be taking a break over the upcoming holiday season (after next episode #20). However, we do have some cool stuff in store while we're "off". New episodes will come back first of the New Year. Thanks for watching the show!

PINK 18: Knockin' On Heaven's Door

New episode...