In the early days of the Internet, webcams were one of the devices content creators could use to share their lives with viewers. Now, as 2016 rolls around, and as better camera technologies have improved video quality within the online video community and beyond, YouTube has opted to decrease its support for webcams. On January 16, 2016, the video site will shut off a feature that previously allowed users to upload footage directly from webcams.
In a brief update discussing the change, YouTube explained that it would discontinue the direct webcam upload feature “because it is rarely used and is built on technology that is no longer supported.” According to TheNextWeb, the outdated technology in question is Flash, which YouTube dropped as its default player (in favor of HTML5) in January 2015.
Users who still wish to upload webcam videos to YouTube can download them externally and then upload the resulting video file to YouTube. For most people, though, that won’t be an issue; webcams have been outdated for a while now, and outside of the Internet’s more risque corners, webcam feeds rarely show up at all anymore.
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Instead, for most YouTube users, the discontinuation of direct webcam uploads does little more than signal the death knell for an early Internet staple. If, for some reason, you’re one of the people still uploading YouTube videos from a webcam, well, you should invest in a real camera. Your viewers will appreciate the quality jump.
