Update October 15th: Youtube has returned to using the Flash-based video player which supports 3D viewing.
Back in June, Youtube announced they were working on many new features: YouTube Creator Blog: Look ahead: creator features coming to YouTube.
One of these is support for 48 and 60 frame per second video, as illustrated in these demonstration 720/60p videos on Youtube. Supposedly several channels on Youtube have had 60p capability enabled for testing.
My guess is Youtube has placed a higher priority on their published feature list and likely other features not yet announced (including additional capabilities to completed features such as Creator Studio)- and not on their unannounced shutting down the 3D video player. There are many capabilities yet to come such as improved integration with other Google Services (they’ve just added a way to link in Google Photos, for example).
At some point, 3D will come back. But Google did not support their own Youtube 3D player in their own Google Chrome browser which sends a strong message that 3D has not been a priority at Youtube for quite some time.
Category Archives: 3D
After DailyMotion’s meltdown, they deleted my old videos
As noted in this blog post – Bad week for online video support – Youtube, DailyMotion | 3d.coldstreams.com. – DailyMotion suffered a system failure that resulted in videos uploaded between September 2013 and April 2014 being unable to play.
I logged in to DailyMotion this morning and found that DailyMotion has deleted my videos from that period.
About 10 days ago, Youtube ended support for their 3D video player.
Should I continue shooting and posting videos? We can no longer trust the cloud for anything.
Bad week for online video support – Youtube, DailyMotion
We lost 3D video support on Youtube earlier this week.
Couple of days ago I logged into DailyMotion and discovered that many of my videos do not play. Tonight I saw this error message:
I have no idea how long this problem has been around – think it could be some time as the view counts had not gone up in quite a while on a popular video. Hope they fix it soon.
Google enforcing use of HTML5 viewer on Youtube
This seems to explain why 3D support has disappeared: Google enforces HTML5 use on YouTube for Firefox 33 and newer – gHacks Tech News
(The rest of this post has been rewritten from how it originally appeared.)
Google is now requiring browsers to use the HTML5 player (by default) instead of the Flash player. Only the Flash player supported 3D video viewing options.
The original 3D Flash player support was added by a Google software engineer working in his spare time but did become an official feature in 2011.
What we know at this point is
- HTML5 is now the default video player on all browsers on the Youtube web site
- The HTML5 video player does not support 3D video
- 3D videos cannot be easily watched by casual Youtube viewers on the Youtube web site unless they use work arounds
- The workaround is to replace the /watch?v= portion of the URL with /v/, which forces use of the Flash video player with its 3D options
- Youtube videos embedded on other web sites continue to use the Flash player with 3D options
- Per a note on a 3D group, Google is aware that 3D is no longer working but has higher priorities at the moment. We do not know when or if 3D support will come back and if it does, will be in the near future or the distant future.
- Google has never supported 3D in the Android Youtube mobile app and mobile views accounted for 30% of my channel views.
- Google Chrome has enforced HTML5 player usage for a long time and has not properly supported 3D video viewing.
- Apple stopped supporting Flash. Google does not support Flash in Android. The days of Flash players are numbered.
Related articles
Nokia conducts an interesting research study on usage of 3D cameras by consumers
From Stereoscopy News and 3dstreaming.org:
Abstract | Digital stereoscopic 3D cameras have entered the consumer market in recent years, but the acceptance of this novel technology has not yet been studied. The aim of this study was to identify the benefits and problems that novice users encounter in 3D photography by equipping five users with 3D cameras for a 4-week trial. We gathered data using a weekly questionnaire, an exit interview, and a stereoscopic disparity analysis of the 699 photographs taken during the trial. The results indicate that the participants took photographs at too-close distances, which caused excessive disparities. They learned to avoid the problem to some extent; the number of failed photographs due to excessive stereoscopic disparity decreased 70 % in 4 weeks. The participants also developed a preference for subjects that included clear depth differences and started to avoid photographing people because they looked unnatural in3Dphotographs.They also regarded flash-induced shadows and edge violations problematic because of the unnatural effects in the photographs. We propose in-camera assistance tools for 3D cameras to make 3D photography easier.
via STEREOSCOPY :: Nokia Research Center Publication – Why 3D Cameras.
Click through for a link to the full study.