Apple building YouTube support into Snow Leopard

[AppleInsider]

Apple will further its endorsement of YouTube and open video standards by building support for the Google-owned video sharing service into one of its flagship applications due to ship later this summer as part of Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard.

On the heels of screen recording discoveries in the upcoming version of QuickTime X Player, people familiar with betas of the media player software say a handful of video sharing options will also be rolled into the release.

In particular, the application will let users take any supported video file and upload it directly to YouTube. Users will be prompted to enter their YouTube username and password, and QuickTime X Player will take care of the rest. This includes converting the movie into a file optimized for the video sharing service and then uploading it to the appropriate user account.

Of course, Apple will also offer a similar option for users of its own MobileMe service that will take video files and upload them to a MobileMe Gallery. Both options are reportedly accessible via a new "Share" menu in the QuickTime X Player interface.

That same menu will also see the relocation of several video saving options currently tucked away in the "Export..." dialog of QuickTime Player 7.6, such as exporting videos in formats suited for playback on iPhones, iPods, and Apple TV. In these cases, videos will be converted to their appropriate format and added to the user's iTunes library, where they'll then sync to the various media devices.

With the arrival of YouTube support in QuickTime X Player, Apple will offer built-in support for the third-party video service across all three of its core business segments. The Cupertino-based electronics maker made YouTube a staple of its iPhone experience from the onset with a custom application for browsing videos on the service and later added similar capabilities to its Apple TV set-top-box.

Google, which owns and operates the YouTube service, has been one of Apple's strongest allies in pushing adoption of open Web standards. As part of its agreement with the iPhone maker to include a YouTube application on the touch-screen handset, the search giant agreed to begin converting its vast video archive from Adobe's proprietary Flash format to the H.264 standard.

An artist's mockup the YouTube video upload dialog included in betas of QuickTime X Player

The partnership has helped strengthen Apple's argument against the need for a version of Flash capable of running on its multi-touch platform, as it wants those device to remain free of any dependence on Adobe.

[ View this article at AppleInsider.com ]

[ivan.rnn01]

this should be part of iTunes functionality... That seems logical, doesn't that? Otherwise, why no support for Dailymotion.com is planned?

[Ireland]

I'm waiting for the day they give YouTube a full iTunes tab, to browse, rate and download videos into iTunes from iTunes.

Oh, and I'm also waiting for them to rewrite the behemoth that is iTunes. I have one of the most powerful iMacs and I cannot even scroll through my app screen without sluggishness. Launching the app takes way too long. Considering how important this app is to Apple, and how much perfectionists they normally seems to be, iTunes at this stage is a hog.

[slapppy]

What happens if Silverlight from Microsoft overtakes Flash and becomes the standard on the web?

[str1f3]

Originally Posted by ivan.rnn01

this should be part of iTunes functionality... That seems logical, doesn't that? Otherwise, why no support for Dailymotion.com is planned?

it would be a little bit more seamless but itunes is kind of bloated already

[paxman]

Originally Posted by Ireland

Oh, and I'm also waiting for them to rewrite the behemoth that is iTunes. I have one of the most powerful iMacs and I cannot even scroll through my app screen without sluggishness. Launching the app takes way too long. Considering how important this app is to Apple, and how much perfectionists they normally seems to be, iTunes at this stage is a hog.

Really? I find mine, dare I say it... quite snappy. On my most recent iMac (office) I don't have much of a library but at home it is a fair size and there I'm running an ancient g5 iMac. I guess what I consider to be a fair size library however, is to many a laughable pocket size collection of tunes.

Still, application leanness and general snappiness is always a goal worth striving towards.

[Virgil-TB2]

Originally Posted by slapppy

What happens if Silverlight from Microsoft overtakes Flash and becomes the standard on the web?

I think at that point Jesus would have returned, Hell would be frozen over, and Balmer would be going for sex-change surgery so we'd all have a lot more to think about than Silverlight.

[zorinlynx]

I guess that screenshot means Steve Jobs doesn't mind if we post Ratatouille on YouTube?

We better get right on it!

[daniel84]

What's with the artist mockup? I wouldn't mind a screenshot but you make it sound like you're making it up...

[beg]

Originally Posted by slapppy

What happens if Silverlight from Microsoft overtakes Flash and becomes the standard on the web?

I'm not even sure Microsoft has enough money to pay off everyone to use Silverlight. They have a huge way to go to even make a dent since flash is so entrenched.

Even when they do pay off someone to use Silverlight it doesn't seem to last long. Such as the MLB.

http://news.cnet.com/8301-1023_3-10098963-93.html

Best care scenario for video IMO is that all these flash sites start using h.264 on the backend to drive their flash players and they are smart enough to serve up the h.264 to iPhone users (having a link/parameter switch to play the h.264 on OS X would be nice also).

[Garamond]

Originally Posted by Ireland

Oh, and I'm also waiting for them to rewrite the behemoth that is iTunes. I have one of the most powerful iMacs and I cannot even scroll through my app screen without sluggishness. Launching the app takes way too long. Considering how important this app is to Apple, and how much perfectionists they normally seems to be, iTunes at this stage is a hog.

I agree with you SOOOO much! Please, if anyone related to Apple are reading this; please forward the urgent need of a better application for us with 100k+ songs. The sluggishness of the current one is barely usable.

[Johnny Mozzarella]

I'm sure the folks at PiXAR will be thrilled to have Ratatouille available on You Tube.
</sarcasm>

[Johnny Mozzarella]

Originally Posted by Garamond

I agree with you SOOOO much! Please, if anyone related to Apple are reading this; please forward the urgent need of a better application for us with 100k+ songs. The sluggishness of the current one is barely usable.

Unfortunately "people with 100k+ songs" represents less than .1% of iTunes users.
Their efforts will focus on what makes sense for the other 99.9% of their users.

[hmurchison]

I like easy youtube support but can someone notify Google to stop making Youtube suck?

The new annoying add overlays and just overall failure of Google to monetize Youtube without resorting to annoying shit is disturbing. Most of the video guys I know have Vimeo accounts.

[Virgil-TB2]

Originally Posted by paxman

Really? I find mine, dare I say it... quite snappy. On my most recent iMac (office) I don't have much of a library but at home it is a fair size and there I'm running an ancient g5 iMac. I guess what I consider to be a fair size library however, is to many a laughable pocket size collection of tunes.

Still, application leanness and general snappiness is always a goal worth striving towards.

While I agree that iTunes needs a complete re-write and a complete re-think as well, it's not sluggish at all on my machine either.

I have over a hundred gigs of music and video and about 50 or 60 apps on top of that (too difficult to find out how much space they take up, but probably an extra half a gig or so.

The apps are also not as large as the videos or the music by any means so if you have scrolling problems related to the amount of apps, then even a moderate movie collection should exhibit even more scrolling problems than that (which you don't mention).

iTunes needs a re-write because it sucks and makes no sense in terms of a tool used to organise the media on your hard drive. Even the name makes no sense. I would bet Apple is working as we speak on a sort of "clean room" implementation of a totally new iTunes product different from the incremental updates we now recieve.

If they aren't, they are seriously dropping the ball. While a new media manager from another source would not capture the market because Apple has that market locked up, it would make iTunes look ridiculous and spur the same kind of re-design that they should already be thinking of.

[UltimateKylie]

I don't see how YouTube or Google has anything to do with open standards. This has nothing to do with making parts of Apple more open and transparent, this is just a further tie into YouTube at the expense of competing services. Again, while this is positive for YouTube users, this is not open. And open standard would an agreed standard between all parties like YouTube, MSN Video etc to receive pushed video from various apps/platforms. Just plain bad reporting on AppleInsider's part to keep pushing this with words such as open and standards.

On the other hand... hopefully it works. I know in iMovie 08, YouTube publishing never worked for me. I haven't tried in 09 yet as I have not made any new videos for YouTube recently.

[Johnny Mozzarella]

Originally Posted by Garamond

I agree with you SOOOO much! Please, if anyone related to Apple are reading this; please forward the urgent need of a better application for us with 100k+ songs. The sluggishness of the current one is barely usable.

I also remember hearing something about a Terminal command to reduce iTunes bloat.
Something like "rm -rdf Music/iTunes/"

*Jusk kidding* don't try this one at home.

[Zandros]

Originally Posted by beg

Best care scenario for video IMO is that all these flash sites start using h.264 on the backend to drive their flash players and they are smart enough to serve up the h.264 to iPhone users (having a link/parameter switch to play the h.264 on OS X would be nice also).

Best case scenario would be if they actually had someone competent (or even the uploader) choose the encoding settings on a per-video basis (or accept video without re-encoding). I'm not very fond of macroblocking. And perhaps they could feed High Profile video to computers.

[teckstud]

Just build Safari support into ATV's Take 3 already.

[Oh-es-Ten]

Originally Posted by slapppy

What happens if Silverlight from Microsoft overtakes Flash and becomes the standard on the web?

Oh that's a good one!

Adobe is not going to give up their web standard without a fight, and the nice thing is that MS can't just walk into a market anymore and muscle others out. This is a good thing.

However what is even better is the neutral approach, using H.264 - which means different players could use the same base video without re-encoding.

[Eideard]

Har! Don't hold your breath. Early adopters [read "paid"] among content providers are dropping it.

[ascii]

Apple has had problems on the Mac with Adobe keeping their software up to date, so I can see why they are trying to keep them off the iPhone.

Maybe if they start releasing Mac versions of their apps first (before Windows and fully featured), Apple will let them on the iPhone.

[JakeTheRock]

Originally Posted by Garamond

I agree with you SOOOO much! Please, if anyone related to Apple are reading this; please forward the urgent need of a better application for us with 100k+ songs. The sluggishness of the current one is barely usable.

My guess is if you have enough money to legally have enough money to have 100k+ songs, you're either an oil baron, or the head of a ponzi scheme. In either case, you'd have enough money to pay someone to write an application just for you. Apple knows that virtually no one can afford that much music, and they are not going to rewrite their application to give music pirates a better experience.

[dagamer34]

What YouTube really needs is a hardware accelerated H.264 based on the HTML5 specification so we can ditch Flash ASAP!

[Cubert]

Does anyone know how far along YouTube is in their video conversion quest?

[Virgil-TB2]

Originally Posted by UltimateKylie

I don't see how YouTube or Google has anything to do with open standards. This has nothing to do with making parts of Apple more open and transparent, this is just a further tie into YouTube at the expense of competing services. Again, while this is positive for YouTube users, this is not open. And open standard would an agreed standard between all parties like YouTube, MSN Video etc to receive pushed video from various apps/platforms. Just plain bad reporting on AppleInsider's part to keep pushing this with words such as open and standards.

On the other hand... hopefully it works. I know in iMovie 08, YouTube publishing never worked for me. I haven't tried in 09 yet as I have not made any new videos for YouTube recently.

Obviously I can't speak for Apple, but I think the way they see it the H.264 video standard is "open" (it is), and they are also pushing using the open HTML 5.0 elements to display it on the web (as opposed to Flash, Silverlight etc.).

The part where you can upload it to YouTube *is* proprietary, but I'm assuming that they will allow this upload to other services if they ask and if it seems like there are enough people who want to use it. In iPhoto for instance, you can upload to MobileMe, Flickr, and some others.

[ltcommander.data]

All the talk of Quicktime X has been associated with Snow Leopard. But what about previous OS X and Windows? Will Quicktime X be available for them too? It seems more work to maintain 2 separate version if Apple wants to keep Quicktime X Snow Leopard exclusive.

[macxpress]

You know for just a simple OS update thats supposed to have little new features this seems to be a release with lots of little things added into it all of a sudden. I hope these are last minute additions that will make the OS release buggy. I'm not complaining at all, just saying.....

[macxpress]

Originally Posted by ltcommander.data

All the talk of Quicktime X has been associated with Snow Leopard. But what about previous OS X and Windows? Will Quicktime X be available for them too? It seems more work to maintain 2 separate version if Apple wants to keep Quicktime X Snow Leopard exclusive.

I thought QuickTime X was just an underlying technology thats going to be built into Snow Leopard? Is QT X actually the application and not the underlying technology?

[Ireland]

Originally Posted by Johnny Mozzarella

Unfortunately "people with 100k+ songs" represents less than .1% of iTunes users.

I don't even have 3000 songs. Taste ave I

Still, there's sluggishness and too much time to open the app. My music is in top quality though.

[PG4G]

No Lt Cm Data

QuickTime X is a framework underpinning QuickTime player. As such it's built on other changes in the OS and leveraged against them. Apple therefore won't port it to a lower OS... If those apps use QuickTime they'll just default to the older, less sophisticated API.

Besides why would Apple give up a bargaining point to get people to buy what seems , in many users eyes, to be an otherwise maintenance release of the OS (it's not but that's the view Apple are fighting)

[Ireland]

Originally Posted by macxpress

I thought QuickTime X was just an underlying technology thats going to be built into Snow Leopard? Is QT X actually the application and not the underlying technology?

QuickTime X is marketing term used to mess with your mind. QuickTime X is a cloud filled with candy.

Im my view we all need to throw these terms out the window and see how the OS and that app perform when they are RC Gold. Everything else is just bullshit.

[ivan.rnn01]

Originally Posted by str1f3

it would be a little bit more seamless but itunes is kind of bloated already

May be, but that dialog reads "Publish your movie on YouTube". What you watch in player is rarely your movie.

What you have in iTunes library or in iMovie projects is oftenly your movie (OK, sometimes isquint'ed ).

So, Apple wants deliberately to be co-violator of copyrights. That's the spirit of time

[SpamSandwich]

Originally Posted by Johnny Mozzarella

I also remember hearing something about a Terminal command to reduce iTunes bloat.
Something like "rm -rdf Music/iTunes/"

*Jusk kidding* don't try this one at home.

Heh, heh. That's wicked.

[Johnny Mozzarella]

Originally Posted by macxpress

I hope these are last minute additions that will make the OS release buggy.

You like buggy software? Perhaps you should switch to Windows Vista : )

[Johnny Mozzarella]

Originally Posted by Ireland

QuickTime X is marketing term used to mess with your mind. QuickTime X is a cloud filled with candy.

I think you are confusing QuickTime X and Mobile Me.

[macxpress]

Originally Posted by Johnny Mozzarella

You like buggy software? Perhaps you should switch to Windows Vista : )

Ooops...I meant to say "aren't" going to make it buggy.

BTW...Vista isn't all that buggy. But thats a different topic.

Originally Posted by Johnny Mozzarella

I think you are confusing QuickTime X and Mobile Me.

I was thinking the same thing! QuickTime X is just an underlying technology. It has nothing to do with cloud computing.....

[Ireland]

Originally Posted by Johnny Mozzarella

I think you are confusing QuickTime X and Mobile Me.

No I'm not. Names are all they are.

[CanadianMac2008]

Hmmm... it seems to me like perhaps this has something to do with the hints of video we have found in the iPhone 3.0 beta.

I would think that if Apple includes video recording, not only would they want to have the ability to upload and make small edits directly from the iPhone OS but also better flesh out publishing capabilities on the desktop.

If the camera is really good, then maybe they are interested in really promoting the creative aspect, through a combination of the a) new Hardware and b) Software to do truly amazing things with it. Youtube seems like the logical means to allowing people to share their videos.

Thoughts?

[crmarvin42]

If Apple truely want's everyone to be buying their music, TV shows and Movies from the ITMS, then they really need to optimize iTunes for large libraries. The larger of my 2 libraries is pushing 1TB with all the (Legal) CD, DVD-TV, and DVD-Movie rips. They should probably come up with a moderately priced server solution designed to be paired with the ATV, but that is a whole different discussion.

P.S. Don't assume that those with large audio collections are pirates. I agree that 100k songs appears to mean a pirate, but my wife is a professional music teacher and she buys a couple albums off of iTunes a month. That's not even counting the accompaniment CD's she's backed up to her computer for all the music she teaches. The accompaniment CD's are usually just the same song 2x with one being instrumental, but they add up fast even if they are small albums.