YouTube releases 60fps live streaming in gaming push

21 May 2015

YouTube is stepping into the gaming market it seems, ratcheting up its offering to include 60fps live streaming, at 720p and 1080p – it also now has HTML5 playback.

Last October the video site announced a whole raft of new features that would come on stream, including analytics, more royalty-free audio files, and better use of collaborators.

But then, and now, all we really cared about was when 60fps video, and now live-streaming, would start up.

The only drawback is that, at this stage, the higher frame rate is only supported as part of an early preview for HTML5-compatible browsers.

“When you start a live stream on YouTube at 60fps, we’ll transcode your stream into 720p60 and 1080p60, which means silky smooth playback for gaming and other fast-action videos,” YouTube explained in a statement.

“We’ll also make your stream available in 30fps on devices where high frame-rate viewing is not yet available, while we work to expand support in the coming weeks.”

A couple of new games are already supported, with HTML5 playback also announced.

“As of this week, YouTube live streams will use a HTML5 player in supported browsers,” YouTube said. “And because our HTML5 player supports variable speed playback, you can skip backward in a stream while it’s live and watch at 1.5x or 2x speed to catch back up.”

Here’s a game at this speed, by the way:

Playing games, via Shutterstock

Gordon Hunt was a journalist with Silicon Republic

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