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11.3.4 Technology
e video and audio content on YouTube is encoded in Adobe’s Flash video format using the
H.263 codec (Kruitbosch and Nack 2008; Gill et al. 2007; Miller 2007). Users may upload
video material in a variety of formats including WMV, MPEG and AVI, but YouTube con-
verts them all to Flash before making them available on the site. is allows users to view
the video without additional browser plug-ins since it is known that the Flash browser
plug-in is present on well over 90% of clients.
In contrast to podcasting, where a le is downloaded to an MP3 player, the video is streamed
using Adobe’s Flash progressive ...