YouTube seems laser-focused on amping up its overall content quality as of late, with the acquisition of original video site Next New Networks just last week and today’s news that it has acquired digital video technology company Green Parrot Pictures.

“Some of YouTube’s most popular or moving videos are shot using low-quality mobile phones and video cameras. Take, for example, videos of recent protests in Libya. Although emotionally captivating, they can be jerky, blurry or unsteady.

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 is simply being uploaded to the site? You can imagine how excited we were when we discovered an small, ambitious company based in Ireland that can do exactly this.”

Green Parrot’s technology has been used in movies like The Lord Of The Rings and X-men, improving the quality of videos while decreasing bandwith hogging and improving speed. YouTube has hundreds of millions of users and sees 35 hours of video from all over the world uploaded to the site every minute, but the quality of the content is sometimes negligible. And the company needs to step it up if it wants to compete with cable.

The acquisition of Green Parrot Pictures is just one small step in this long march towards being the go-to destination for niche video.