YouTube now replaces Flash with HTML5 as default

YouTube has dumped Flash for HTML5. It will now use HTML5 video by default on all modern browsers including Chrome, Safari 8, IE 11 and beta variants of Firefox. YouTube had announced HTML5 support in 2010. However, it lacked support for Adaptive Bitrate (ABR) that allows more videos with less buffering. This is one reason why it had to continue using Flash. “HTML5’s Encrypted Media Extensions have been somewhat controversial in the web standards community because they enable DRM support in web browsers,” points out Techcrunch . However, YouTube engineering manager Richard Leider, writes in an official blogpost , “Combined with Common Encryption, we can support multiple content protection technologies on different platforms with a single set of assets, making YouTube play faster and smoother.” With HTML5, YouTube will be able to make wider use of Google’s VP9 video codec. This switch will also allow videos to start 15 to 80 percent faster and reduce the required bandwidth to stream a video by 35 percent. “That may not seem like a big deal right now, but once you start streaming 4k video, that 35 percent reduction could be the difference between enjoying the video or staring at the “buffering” screen’” further adds the report. This move also shows how everyone has decided to distance themselves from Flash as it doesn’t go beyond web browsers. “YouTube’s move highlights the shrinking relevance of Adobe Flash on the modern internet. Adobe itself has spent the last few years severing many of its ties with the product — the company’s Flash 2012 roadmap narrowed its focus to gaming and “premium” video, and in 2011, the company killed Flash Player for mobile, saying at the time that HTML5 was the “best solution for creating and deploying content in the browser across mobile platforms,” states TheVerge .