YouTube Video Now In WebM Format

You can't be online without being familiar with YouTube and the hoards of questionably made videos that are available there for people to watch. I would wager most web users have uploaded videos to the site as well. YouTube has announced today that it is transcoding video in a new format when it is uploaded by the user.

The new format that YouTube is using is WebM. The reason for the move to WebM is to allow the video to be played on any device by users from all around the world without needing a different plug-in. WebM is an open media format for audio and video on the web according to YouTube. YouTube will continue to support H.264 format as well.

YouTube notes that it is working right now to transcode more of the videos on its site into WebM to reduce the technical issues that prevent users for accessing video. It will take a while to transcode all the video on YouTube to the new format, the streaming video company notes that each day about six years worth of video is uploaded. The most viewed videos on the site are getting transcoded first and when the workload on the server farms at YouTube is light, more of the processing power will be put to Transcoding the back catalog of video.