Why are embedded YouTube videos in Safari low quality on iOS7?

Same here: all videos in safari are now played back at ultra-low quality with no way of changing it, both on iPad and iPhone running ios7 :(

Facebook app is having the same issue.

I have the exact same problem. Brand new iPad air, yet the embedded youtube videos (and most embedded videos) are always playing in awful quality with no way to change the resolution. Dirty fix is to open them with Chrome instead of safari, then request the desktop version of the site, and then you're able to use the completely broken youtube options on the video (very hard to do, you'll see).

Is everyone affected by this? I should think that would be a MAJOR issue, no?

This is a very serious problem that makes safari borderline unusable and needs to be addressed by Apple. The videos are of such low quality you cannot make out what is gong on when watching a sports clip.

Additionally there is no way to open the video in the YouTube app from safari making it extremely difficult to easily watch the video in an app capable of displaying high quality.

I don't understand how there is not more visibility regarding this issue, this problem eliminates the usefulness of watching youtube videos in a number of applications.

Vimeo videos and other other sources play fine in high quality, this is not a connection or bandwidth problem, it is not a setting, it is a serious bug that needs to be fixed.

Supposedly it's resolved in iOS 7.1 (at least in the beta versions). Couldn't check for myself because I'm not a developer but now I can't wait for the final release! This is SUCH an annoying problem!

It ISN'T solved in 7.1

Come on Apple! At least give some reaction on why this is default behaviour? It wasn't in iOS 6.x!!

I don't know what the actual answer is, but I am having the same issue. The page https://developer.apple.com/library/safari/documentation/AudioVideo/Conceptual/U sing_HTML5_Audio_Video/AudioandVideoTagBasics/AudioandVideoTagBasics.html

https://developer.apple.com/library/safari/documentation/AudioVideo/Conceptual/U sing_HTML5_Audio_Video/AudioandVideoTagBasics/AudioandVideoTagBasics.html

has some good info. And the page

https://developer.apple.com/library/safari/documentation/AudioVideo/Conceptual/U sing_HTML5_Audio_Video/Device-SpecificConsiderations/Device-SpecificConsideratio ns.html#//apple_ref/doc/uid/TP40009523-CH5-SW1

states

"Optimization for Small Screens

Currently, Safari optimizes video presentation for the smaller screen on iPhone or iPod touch by playing video using the full screen—video controls appear when the screen is touched, and the video is scaled to fit the screen in portrait or landscape mode. Video is not presented within the webpage. The height and width attributes affect only the space allotted on the webpage, and the controls attribute is ignored. This is true only for Safari on devices with small screens. On Mac OS X, Windows, and iPad, Safari plays video inline, embedded in the webpage." -

Which, I believe, means on the iPad using Safari and embedded videos, that the video plays at the resolution of the initial window (determined by the programmer), and does not naturally play on the YoutTube player, or at a higher res if you enlarge the video. And since you can't request a higher resolution from YouTube bc there is no tool bar option, you get the res you get regardless of your communiation speed.

This seems to be the "problem" that we're encountering - that its a "feature" specific to Safari on the iPad (not ipod, not iPhone, not desktop). Why they do this, I dunno. Its terrible. In my case, the video plays at a higher res (and better) on my smaller iPhone than does on my iPad mini (3/2014) with Retina. Go figure.

I came upon this post, hoping to find the answer and a work around. Yeah, its a major Apple issue but specific to the embedded video viewed through Safari on the ipad. This probably affects the quality of about 30% of all videos seen on websites with ipads. (10 million a day? - so no big deal right?)

I would love to be wrong on this, better yet, see an immediate fix.

Enjoy

I can't even play the videos on YouTube using safari. The portion were video is displayed gets black out and a small part on above displays grains like we see when YouTube cannot play video saying error has occurred

Additional observations here.

Since this thread mentioned Safari I had hopes that Chrome would do it, but nope, same deal.

iOS 7.1, iPad mini Retina, and embedded YouTube videos are supremely low resolution. I tried on iPhone 5 (also iOS 7.1) and saw the same thing, although someone said this shouldn't happen on iPhone.

I made some screenshots for reference and comparison. I won't upload them here as the forum scales them down making them irrelevent for comparison, so here are links.

iOS 7.1 Safari: http://www.screencast.com/t/AKy9WAt0

iOS 7.1 Chrome: http://www.screencast.com/t/mwF0QiuKaVm

OS X 10.9.2 non-retina Mac, manually set to HD: http://www.screencast.com/t/8jIepEBS

What's really interesting is that the non-retina Mac loaded the same low res video at first, and of course I was able to manually change it. However on a retina MacBook Pro, the video that loaded was the 720p version! So it looked great from first load… very intresting. I assume that YouTube is sniffing the retina display and delivering an HD version… so why doesn't that happen on iOS?

Perhaps it's a YouTube bug, and not an iOS bug?

-Joseph

EDIT: Vimeo embeds don't seem to have this issue. Maybe it's time to look at them more closely.

Hi guys,

Just a + 1, having the exact same "bug" here... iPad Air, iOS 7.1 (fr)

Very very annoying!

So, Apple's Fault, YouTube's fault, something else?

Anyway, please, update!

What happens when you view the video with the YouTube app?

There is no use to yelling at Apple on these forums as Apple isn't here. We are all users like yourself trying to help others.

Watching the video in the YT app is fine; the highest quality is available and everything looks great.

I have brand spanking new iMac. I have a YouTube channel that I record and upload videos on. They are of the poorest quality, like 280 or something. Very frustrating indeed. As far as I can tell, there is no editing the quality. I may have to purchase software to record videos then upload that way?