So it's better that 90% of the users may see the video than 99% who could see it?
Flash is CPU intensive too, it's far from optimal video format on older machines.
I thought that everyone know that all video formats are CPU intensive,
and especially if you are doing elaborate video processing. Many
programs that are used to process video will work only on Microsoft
and sometimes Mac OSs. The reason is there are just not enough other
OS users out there to justify the expense of making processing
programs that will work on them.
If you call those videos for good quality, then you must be quite blind, even
if the resolution is higher on google, it's not much better than the youtube
videos, the format hasn't been made to have good quality but lower bandwidth
usage (poor quality -> smaller file -> less bandwidth needed).
But the discussion concerning the higher resolution videos on Google
has nothing to do with flash. The low resolution videos that stream on
Google are usually flv/swf. However, for those with an interest in
downloading some of these videos at higher resolution to a special
Google player that you have to download, you find that an avi often is
used. The bit rate is increased over that used for their streaming
flash to about 128 kbps for the avi, resulting in considerably higher
resolution for the video, if the source material is good enough. Some
of these downloadable videos are encrypted and sold, so that likely is
one reason an avi is used as well as a special player. Avi files have
long been used for downloading encrypted video files that are bought.
You must also keep in mind that many of the videos submitted by users
of Google, Youtube, MySpace etc are made by inexperienced video
makers, often using inexpensive equipment. For many of these videos,
you will get poor resolution no matter what video format is used for
them.
You have pushed your extreme mpeg crusade in great detail here many
times in the past. If you want to get something done, replying to me
and many others here will do little. You will have to discuss it with
programmers at Google, YouTube, MySpace, many major news sites, etc. I
think you will find that there are many other considerations of
importance to them other than how many OSs can view a format. Some
relate to selling video - many want part of that market, and this
partly explains why there is a glut of video formats now.
My discussion with you is closed. I doubt if anyone will change your
mind, and I really don't care what video format or OS you use.