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Tudou first video site to encode to H.264 format

Tudou.com has started encoding all its video files to the H.264 format. Tudou is the first video site worldwide that is adapting to this standard on a large scale. This is technically a very significant step, that will mean a further improvement in the user experience.

H.264 means that the images in video files will be much clearer. Especially in videos with fast moving images such as sports footage, or rich images like scenaries you will see a huge difference. Tudou can now streams clips in a quality that is similar to TV quality.

In order to watch the video’s in the H.264 format, users will have to upgrade to Flash version 9. If they have an older version they can still watch every clip in the flv format.

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  1. @ana: You are right, that’s indeed why Joost is able to get such high quality video. I actually meant none of the big video sharing sites, like YouTube and all its clones. None of them is doing this yet, and I look forward to see who will follow.

    In the end H.264 will be the standard, but changing all the files to this format is a enormous task. It also takes a huge amount of extra storage, because you are basically storing all files in two different formats.