So, it's time for a personal comment, as I have handed in the first half of my thesis and now I have time to complain. The target of the day is online video services - Youtube, Google video, Break, Metacafé etc. I visit these sites a couple of times per week and every time I do, I am annoyed by one or more of the following elements involved in the viewing experience. And everybody else seems to be ok with this since companies such as YouTube burn $1.000.000 on bandwidth each month. Obviously, there is no better alternative, so people have to use them for clip sharing, but in this HD-DVD/Blu-Ray era, shouldn't we require better quality than this?

Why do we accept that low resolution? I just watched this amazing video from a safari with lions, buffalo's and even a short visit by a crocodile. A very beautiful and amazing video, well worth watching. But watching it on Break? The frame rate is at most decent, but at a 320x240 resolution? The camera in my phone records videos at a higher resolution than that!

Secondly: Out-of-sync audio - you'd think that it wasn't very hard to do. I don't know where the problem is but I know that the problem is not there when you record the video, therefore I blame the online video services. And you know it's terribly annoying to watch the mouth move and then the speech comes out a second later...

The loading speeds are at times also unacceptable. A clip that takes 20 seconds takes a minute to load - it's ridiculous but I don't "have time" to spend a minute like that (just like a webpage has to load within 4 seconds or the user will be bothered by it).

And what about the audio levels? I know that the recordings are recorded at different levels, but seriously... At least do a run through all the audio in the clip and make sure that the average level is somewhat equal across the videos... One video, I can't hear the audio - next video, I nearly have a heart attack!

And why can't you move to any point in the clip!? I don't know the resolution of the search bar, but I can't come up with a reason that explains why the YouTube programmers chose to restrict this. If I want to skip 5 seconds back, this is not an option..? Why, YouTube programmer, oh why?

Another issue is the flash/video implementation on my MacBook, which is also terrible. 2 minutes of Youtubing (full screen or not) means that the fan is running at full speed. 2 minutes! What kind of crazy encoding requires this much from my CPU? I don't know who to blame (Apple? Adobe? YouTube? The weather?) but it is unacceptable.

Lastly, do you have to tell me every time that I can press escape to quit full screen mode? I'm no gold fish, I remember the last time you told me... And should I forget, most of you do have a nice "Close"-button anyway...


This is my personal opinion and as much as I dislike the services, I still use them, e.g. to watch videos where KT Tunstall works magic using a loop box or when I want to learn how to close the bag of chips without using a clip - you know, the important things in life :)


/L