YouTube at 60 FPS Finally Available!

article_post_width_youtube60fps

Since earlier this year, there’s been a lot of talk about YouTube finally supporting videos recorded and encoded at 60 frames-per-second. In fact, this option has been available for several major companies’ YouTube channels as well as a few of the very popular YouTubers out there, like Total Biscuit. However, as of October 29, 2014, this option is available to all YouTube users!

Many people will question the need for video beyond 30 frames-per-second. After all, they may argue, isn’t 24 frames-per-second the standard for normal film? While this sort of frame-rate is fine for professionally-produced TV shows and films, keep in mind that most of that makes good use of motion blur to further stylize the appearance. But, the fact is, 24 or even 30 frames-per-second is far from true-to-life. For a while now, some TV manufacturers have been faking higher frequencies by doubling frames (which is often the case when producing 60 fps film anyway), but you can easily spot the difference between something that is true 120 Hz and something that is simply a doubling trick to produce that.

But, in the case of YouTube, you’ll now be able to see fast-motion video as it was originally meant to be seen. Moreover, videos that are slowed down to show of something really cool will look much better because there are twice the actual frames to work with on a slow-down. Thus, video can be far more precise.

Not only is this great for those that are filming fast motion and complex scenes, but this is fantastic for the gaming community of Let’s Players. Now, you’ll be able to fully capture what you see on the screen and deliver that to your audience, but be warned: encoding at 60 fps not only takes twice the traditional file-size (in most cases), but also requires a lot more computing and encoding power!

Jessica Brown

Retro Games and Technology Editor. She'll beat pretty much every Mega Man game without breaking a sweat.