[Foxdog175]

I'm trying to figure out why iPhone YouTube seems like a completely dumbed down version of the real Web site. It seems like it only finds about 20% of the actual content of YouTube when performing a search. For instance, when I search for, "Just for Laughs Gags", YouTube returns over 10 pages of results (over 100 gags that I love to watch). However, when I search the same phrase on my iPhone, I get 2 returns. Two!! This is pretty frustrating to me. I can't even find my own videos on YouTube.

Is anyone else noticing the same thing or am I missing something?

[JKT]

It is because Google has to re-encode the content into H.264 from Flash for it to be playable on the iPhone and AppleTV, and it will take some time for them to get through all the older content. I suspect that newly added stuff is automatically produced in both formats.

[Foxdog175]

Ah, ok. Hopefully a flash player will get ported to the iphone before then, because by the sounds of that, it could take Google a long time to re-encode every video on YouTube (unless they can be done by batch).

[mdc]

I highly doubt google is manually reencoding everyvideo manually. I heard that in a few months they plan to be caught up.

[Timothy D]

Yeah YouTube sucks on the iPhone bottom line.

[k2director]

Google announced that they would have the entire YouTube library available to the iPhone by the end of the year. It's a big library to transfer over to H.264.

[BRussell]

Here's what Apple says about the timing.

Over 10,000 videos will be available on June 29, and YouTube will be adding more each week until their full catalog of videos is available in the H.264 format this fall.

[ViktorCode]

YouTube on iPhone should have every video recently added, because according to the announcement they all sould have been encoded in H.264. Far better than storing everything in sub-par flash codec.

[icruise]

The iPhone Youtube browser could use some features added, so you could access the most used features of the site, like comments, ratings, and the like. And of course the catalog is still pretty limited.

But assuming you're using wifi, what is there will often look better than what I'm used to seeing on Youtube on my Mac.

[Beansmaster]

You Tube is something I would remove from the main page if I had the choice... If I wanted to be bored to death by someone else's home movies, I would go to my brother's house and let my sister in law play their wedding dvd for the five billionth time.

[jaydon34]

Yah its pure garbage.

[analogika]

Search YouTube for "Robot Chicken" if you need any convincing whatsoever of YouTube's worth.

The "Harry's Favorite Home Movies" aspect of it is painful, but if that's all you're seeing, you're missing out.

It's MUCH more than just MySpace for videos.

[CIA]

You know, a nice offshoot of this once the full conversion is done? The ability in a web browser to choose which format you prefer? If every video is also available in h.264, it would be nice to be able to set my personal YouTube settings to display those videos in quicktime instead of flash for better quality. Maybe they will offer this once every video they have is ported over. I'm specifically talking about browsing on a PC, not iPhone or AppleTV.

[mdc]

That would be very cool if they offer that at youtube.com since I hate Flash video on my PowerBook.

[butterfly0fdoom]

I think the Youtube function on the iPhone is fine.

... over Wi-Fi. I tried watching a video on EDGE, and, if I hadn't seen it before, I'd be scratching my head as to what I'm seeing.

[FireWire]

Originally Posted by CIA 

If every video is also available in h.264, it would be nice to be able to set my personal YouTube settings to display those videos in quicktime instead of flash for better quality.

Amen! YouTube really suck on Mac.. I used it on a PC and everything was smooth and clear, but on my iMac I have to wait until the whole video has loaded before pressing play, otherwise it's un-watchable. I can only hope for the best now that they switched to a real codec.

I wonder why Adobe doesn't put more effort to enhance the Mac version of Flash?

[::maroma::]

YouTube has always played just fine for me on all of my Macs. Not sure what the issue is for other people. I really don't care what codec the videos are in, as long as they can play on my computer(s) and my iPhone.

[FireWire]

What's your configuration? I'm using the latest version of everything (OS X 10.4.10, Safari 3.02 and Flash 9.0 r47, but it was the same using earlier versions). It seems whenever a Flash content is present on any website, Safari CPU usage skyrockets and brings everything to a crawl, and the video is often choppy and blocky). Despite the fact that I have 1.5 Gb of RAM and I don't have that many applications open at the same time...

[::maroma::]

I'm running the latest of everything as well. On an iMac 24". I also watch a fair amount of YouTube on my Mac at work, which I use Firefox, and I'm not even sure if its the latest version of Flash. I'm running 10.4.9 on my Mac at work. Never had any noticeable slowdowns or anything like that with YouTube vids.

[analogika]

It's a HUGE difference on the Intel Macs.

[FireWire]

Ok! thank you! It's time to upgrade I guess

[::maroma::]

Oh, I should've mentioned that my Mac at work is a Dual 2.3Ghz PPC G5. Maybe Firefox does a better job with YouTube? I use Safari at home though.

[CIA]

One annoying thing about the flash videos, if I have one playing in one browser window, but then switch to another window to do something else while the video is playing, it gets all studdery (if thats even a word). If I click back and make the window with the flash video the active one, it gets smooth again.
Quad G5, so I know horsepower isn't the issue. And on even shitty PC's it will play smooth regardless of what window it's in.
I guess that's the problem with a "Universal" codec like flash. Yeah, it will play on nearly anything, but it's not the best choice. IIRC the YouTube videos are encoded in Flash 7 or something, that's not even the most recent version.

[Eriamjh]

If YouTube is that important to you, why not dump the iPhone for the other phone that can do it?