YouTube HTML5-ifer For Chrome Makes YouTube A Joy To Use

By , Published December 14, 2009

Chrome extension "YouTube-HTML5-ifier" replaces the flash-based YouTube player with a HTML5 video tag – thus giving you native video playback without the need for a CPU hungry Flash plugin!

http://img46.imageshack.us/img46/8072/selection049.png

The extension can’t show any flash-reliant extras that a video might have, such as annotations, but it does automatically load the best quality video.

Another nice feature thanks to HTML are the auto-fading controls – they only show on mouse over.

http://img340.imageshack.us/img340/9228/selection050.png

Issues
Sometimes videos don’t seem to load so you’re left staring a white box, other times a video will load but won’t play sound until you pause/unpause. Not all videos can be HTML5-ized, either and embedded videos will still play via flash.

Minor quibbles which I’m sure will be addressed in future version of the plugin. All in all it’s a worthwhile extension if you use YouTube a lot.

Download
You can install the extesnion via the Google Chrome Extension gallery @ https://chrome.google.com/extensions

Article originally appeared on omgubuntu.co.uk

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  • Bob Hazard

    Disabling annotations is worth its own plugin anyway!

    Shame it doesn’t work with Feather mode. :( Not sure which is more important I am in love with Feathers… even with 24mbps it’s noticeably quicker in Chromium.

  • http://twitter.com/Mawoon Jeffrey Vandenborne

    Looks really promising, but it’s still a little laggy on some video’s here whereas the flash plugin works correctly. I seen a big decrease in CPU usage though, looking forward to see this evolve more.

  • http://livinginagoogleworld.blogspot.com/ Jonathan Frederickson

    That is awesome right there. For me… it sort of has the effect of MiniTube on my old Ubuntu-running laptop, but it’s all in the browser. Now if only we had one of these for Hulu. THAT would be really great.

  • Deathclaw

    Is there Firefox equivalent?

  • Anonymous

    Fuck yeah! This is awesome. Been waiting for that for a long time actually, never thought Chrome actually has that good video tag support already, but it seems it does (at least in winxp)!

  • kofgadol

    doesn’t support full screen yet

  • http://seifsallam.co.cc/ Seif Sallam

    i already tried this before on Ubuntu and Windows, but it HTML video tags doesn’t work well with Chrome.

  • http://twitter.com/jonrogersuk Jon Rogers

    One big problem for me – known to the developers – it doesn’t work in Chromium browser. Almost every other extension I’ve tried does, but youtube html5-ifier gives a black, paused video and won’t play.

  • abelta

    Am I the only one whose videos are loading in lo-def with this extension?
    It’s a shame because it really does reduce CPU use and load times, but it doesn’t even have an option to configure it and have it in hi-def.
    Anyway, it’s a keeper if only because it frees you from flash.

  • abelta

    It loads in lo-def for me. I’m gonna keep it though in the hopes that it will improve in following versions.

  • Anonymous

    thanks for the tip

  • MLC

    It’s provided by Google, and they own Youtube. I wouldn’t be surprised if they replace all flash videos on Youtube with HTML5. This would force browsers to take on higher and more open standards, decrease peoples’ dependence on flash, and would be altogether better for everyone involved, I think.

    • simone

      If you notice there is a banner “Try Google Chrome, the new browser” at the bottom of youtube webpage since some days.

  • Anonymous

    Great app;)

  • manny

    i see this as part of chrome OS

  • Anonymous

    And don’t forget that Dailymotion already proposes native HTML 5 on their website, they call it open video. It works!!!

  • http://twitter.com/Heimpjuh Heimen Stoffels

    You can also join the HTML5 bèta: http://www.youtube.com/html5
    It has support for Feather (although I have no idea what that is). It works quite nice though :)

  • Anonymous

    It is good that annotations and other flash-dependent material don’t show up. Its so irritating. At least for some time, we have YouTube back like what it was in the old days. No irritating annotations, baloons and subtitles. Just a good old video.