YouTube said it was coming, and it’s finally here. Google’s uber-popular video site now supports clips running at up to 60 frames per second. But don’t get too excited if if you’re not running Chrome, as the new increased frame rate doesn’t appear to work in anything but Google’s browser.
On Windows, Firefox, Opera, and Internet Explorer failed to run videos at the improved frame rate.
There wasn’t an official announcement from YouTube on its blog or social media accounts at this writing, but Kotaku spotted several new video game uploads that were now working at the higher frame rate.
Videos capable of running at 60fps will have an indicator under the quality option in YouTube.
Why this matters: Higher frame rates for video streaming may not mean much for most of the stuff you see on YouTube, but it certainly makes a difference for video game clips that end up with noticeable distortion when not running at the native frame rate of most modern video games. It also boosts the appeal of YouTube as a destination for gamers—especially after Google lost its rumored bid to acquire live game streaming site Twitch.tv.
Not all browsers
YouTube has actually had the ability to play 60fps videos for some time as the site offered three preview videos at the new frame rate back in June. The difference now is that the site appears to be accepting uploads from users at the new speed.
It’s easy to spot a game running at the increased frame rate by clicking on the settings cog in a running video and looking at the HD options under Quality. If you see options that say 1080p60 or 720p60, then you know you can boost them to a better frame rate.
But Windows users will have to be running Chrome to see the 1080p60 options. Checking out 60fps YouTube game clips on Firefox, for example, didn’t show the option at all displaying a regular 1080p option instead. In fact, there appears to be a bit of a glitch with the new 60fps feature since the 720p and 1080p options didn’t work at all in Firefox or Opera.
If you want to check out some videos at the new frame rate, check out the embeds in this post. Just make sure that you set the videos to run in 720p or 1080p to get the 60fps effect.