YouTube Buys Irish Digital Start-Up

The firm was founded six years ago by an associate professor at Trinity College Dublin's engineering school, and its software has been used in major motion pictures like Lord of the Rings, X Men and Spiderman.

YouTube is hoping it can help improve the quality of the massive amounts of amateur footage on its site.

In a detailed blog about the acquisition, YouTube said the Green Parrot team would help sharpen the images uploaded by users all over the world.

"Take, for example, videos of the recent protests in Libya. Although emotionally captivating, they can be jerky, blurry or unsteady," it said.

"What if there was a technology that could improve the quality of such videos - sharpening the image, reducing visual noise and rendering a higher quality, steadier video - all while your video was uploading to the site?"

Green Parrot's technology does exactly this.

Some of YouTube's most popular videos are shot using cheap camcorders or mobile phone cameras.

The company says 35 hours of video is uploaded to the site every minute.

The acquisition means that the Green Parrot team will now move from their base in Dublin to California in the coming months to work alongside Youtube engineers.

"We're excited to join Google, where we will apply our expertise to improve the online video experience for hundreds of millions of users worldwide on many different products, platforms, and services," Green Parrot said in a note on its Web site.

"We've enjoyed collaborating with organizations in the film industry as well as all our clients, and we'd like to thank everyone for their generous support," it added

"As the number of video creators worldwide and the richness of their video increases, demand for our technology has grown across multiple platforms."