Youtube Upload, increase quality/control (HQ hack obsolete)

[astin]

your video is re-encoded to 320x240 mono

this is hq stereo with &fmt=18 trick
http://tw.youtube.com/watch?v=RO1SysI0m78&fmt=18

[FoxLocked]

Looks better. But im trying to get it high quality without adding &fmt=18

[frifox]

just to let everyone know, youtube converts our HQ flv's to LQ again... new method is not working anymore

everyone back to the drawing board =)

[Captain Satellite]

just to let everyone know, youtube converts our HQ flv's to LQ again... new method is not working anymore

everyone back to the drawing board =)

As long as you keep posting your findings on a public board, I think your findings and their usefulness will be short-lived. It's a pretty sure bet they are looking over your shoulder. :wink:

[rajman]

just to let everyone know, youtube converts our HQ flv's to LQ again... new method is not working anymore

everyone back to the drawing board =)

Yehh I realised this y'day as 2 of my lastest vids got re-encoded =( It was sometime in the evening (UK time) the method got blocked, as I uploaded a few vids earlier on in the day and they stayed HQ, oh well here we go again ;-p

http://www.youtube.com/TheRajmanHD

[frifox]

any word on the w16 method, is that one still alive?

[ThePapaX]

any word on the w16 method, is that one still alive?

The W16 method returns and error after processing it did not skip anything... The video got rejected after that.... Damm I didn't enjoy your method... Today was my first upload in HQ and realize it is not working anymore.. shit...

[frifox]

just to let everyone know, youtube converts our HQ flv's to LQ again... new method is not working anymore

everyone back to the drawing board =)

As long as you keep posting your findings on a public board, I think your findings and their usefulness will be short-lived. It's a pretty sure bet they are looking over your shoulder. :wink:

yes, i'm well aware of that... in fact, youtube should thank us for finding the holes in their system we did quite a job for them.... lol

[frifox]

today, i uploaded a tampered FLV, it went live in HQ as usual... then after ~30 mins it went offline and they say:
Failed (unable to convert video file)

apparently they got a bit smarter this time if they cant convert video to LQ, then they take it offline and complain... and if they manage to convert it to LQ but fail to make HQ MP4 version, they complain as well lol

[mikejf]

same problem here- HQ vid I posted on June10 is now LQ, but it took about 12 hours to do so. Vids before June 9 are still ok.

The new message frifox is getting, "Failed (unable to convert video file)", is what I was afraid would happen. I wonder now if a vid errors during encoding, it is now always rejected? Before, if a vid errors, it went ahead and posted. If they are now rejected, no method that causes the encoder to error will work. Now, we need a method that makes the encoder think it completed the entire encoding, but skips the data and audio.

[bayme]

Ok, first to say, i think that YouTube doesn't encode all videos over 350 kbps to mono.
I've uploaded 2 videos (songs) which were both audio and video over 350 kbps (normal flv) and YouTube does not re-encoded their. They are in stereo.
http://youtube.com/watch?v=CYJwn-sQP8I
http://youtube.com/watch?v=J_HnwB7I_rA

They are not over 350, they are 328 kbit/s.
Plus they're from April, so they're still old-school, and left as is on server. Nothing strange there.

[SmashKing]

Yeah, I think this is it. As Frifox said, if they can't convert it to LQ, it get's rejected. I think we should stop being lazy and just add the freakin' 7fmt=18 or 6. Just put "[Add &fmt=18]" to the end of your videos if you can. Or do a Video Annotation in the begining telling your veiwers to add that. And what's the point of HQ "hacking" when a mojority of the people don't pay attention to the quality, and want to watch the freaking video. It's the content of the video that matters.

[bayme]

Yeah, I think this is it. As Frifox said, if they can't convert it to LQ, it get's rejected. I think we should stop being lazy and just add the freakin' &fmt=18 or 6. Just put "[Add &fmt=18]" to the end of your videos if you can. Or do a Video Annotation in the begining telling your veiwers to add that. And what's the point of HQ "hacking" when a mojority of the people don't pay attention to the quality, and want to watch the freaking video. It's the content of the video that matters.

Just do what I do:
Post a link to the format 18 version in the description at the right of the video, as seen here for example.

[manono]

Yeah, I do the same:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a8Fsa1FhV8s

And then when you wait a few seconds you get both playing at the same time.

I agree with one of the comments that the Jackie DeShannon version of that song beats the better known Searchers version all to hell. That's a nice video.

[SmashKing]

Hey, does anyone know the bes video settings for the &fmt=18 trick?

[bayme]

Hey, does anyone know the bes video settings for the &fmt=18 trick?

Well, the YT-output for format 18 is 480x360 pixels, so it's best to input that resolution as well. Not all encoders offer that resolution, but x264 does. If you have the time to upload large files, use singlepass lossless encoded files with x264, and use the YouTube uploader so you can upload up to 1 GB per video.

For audio I would upload uncompressed wav (44.1 kHz samplefrequency).

If you can, upload uncompressed, or lossless compressed video and audio is always best. Re-encoding or transcoding is always less favorable.

By the way, if you really want quality, use dailymotion or vimeo or host the videos yourself.

[frifox]

as bayme said, uploading in lossless is always preferred.... but the file sizes and uploading times simply doesnt worth it.


i found the following specs to give pretty much same resulting youtube video as uploading lossless:

• Filetype: MP4
  Resolution: 480x360
  Video: x264 @ 5Mbps (2-pass VBR)
  Audio: AAC-LC @ 256Kbps (VBR)

i use MeGUI to make the MP4... and with those specs, 10 min video will be less than 400MB

[sean2doc]

Hey, does anyone know the bes video settings for the &fmt=18 trick?

Well, the YT-output for format 18 is 480x360 pixels, so it's best to input that resolution as well. Not all encoders offer that resolution, but x264 does. If you have the time to upload large files, use singlepass lossless encoded files with x264, and use the YouTube uploader so you can upload up to 1 GB per video.

For audio I would upload uncompressed wav (44.1 kHz samplefrequency).

If you can, upload uncompressed, or lossless compressed video and audio is always best. Re-encoding or transcoding is always less favorable.

By the way, if you really want quality, use dailymotion or vimeo or host the videos yourself.

Can anyone tell me how to find width & height in Hex Editor? or is the secret too much to reveal? seems like w16 is the only answere for now
I've been trying to find out last couple of days man..really got frustrated

thanks in advance.

[frifox]

lol, open the FLV in hex editor.. and width and height are there in plain english text ... "width" and "height" that is, not the actual values =P

[ricardouk]

I read about it a while ago here and tested it today, youtube is recoding my flv's that were under 350k, so the highquality fmt=18 version looks alot worse than the original upload

Couldnt they leave the <350 version untouched?

[bayme]

i found the following specs to give pretty much same resulting youtube video as uploading lossless:

• Filetype: MP4
  Resolution: 480x360
  Video: x264 @ 5Mbps (2-pass VBR)
  Audio: AAC-LC @ 256Kbps (VBR)

Why would you stop at 5Mbit/s video and 256 Kbit/s audio? Simply doesn't make any sense to use bitrate limits if your target is a filesize-barrier and time is your variable. I found the following specs to give better resulting quality on YouTube than the ones you mention:

• Container: MKV
  Resolution: 480x360
  Video: x264 Single pass ratefactor based (CRF), Ratefactor 1.0 to 15.0 depending on length of video and desired size of file to upload.
  Audio: Uncompressed PCM, 44100 Hz, 16 bit, 2 ch (Stereo)

Make sure you use slight sharpening after resizing to 480x360, if your conversion software offers that.

It doesn't make sense to compress audio. It's only 110 MB if you use the full 11 minutes of wav audio. (Transcoding from AAC to AAC is really bad.) That leaves you with 890 MB room for your video.

If the video you upload is intended for worldwide viewing by potentially thousands of viewers, I don't see why uploading it as large and high quality as possible would not be worth it. Of course it is! Unless of course you only upload trance-audio that isn't really yours and you expect your video to disappear from YouTube soon.

[mikejf]

does adding &fmt=18 to url play in stereo? if so, can someone provide a link to video playing in stereo posted after June10?

[tworegon]

does adding &fmt=18 to url play in stereo? if so, can someone provide a link to video playing in stereo posted after June10?

You don't even have to upload a stereo flash file to get stereo this way. This was uploaded as wmv file.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AcQjo9V1eEI&fmt=18

As long as you have the latest flash player installed in your browser, it WILL play stereo.

[frifox]

if anyone is interested in HQ audio with NO picture/video, you'll be interested in this one:
http://youtube.com/watch?v=wMVev-GEV3c

[Golgota]

Guys, i upload this Vid:

-Display : 640x480 (Resize - FullScreen)
-AVI format (H.264)
-Bitrate : 3000Kbps
-Audio : Mp3 48, 320Kbps (testing)

Standard Quality fully SUCKS!! but in HQ mode quite good, but i think it's not HQ enough compared to VMuTube production
What do u guys think?

OOPS!!! sorry bout the link then (Forgot)
http://youtube.com/watch?v=JfJrNNXMzwg

[ricardouk]

link?

[ricardouk]

I actually think the quality is pretty good, the quality of the embeded version is fine, when i switch to fullscrenn it looses quality but its acceptable.

the higher quality version looks better and brighter.

[manono]

I don't guess we're discussing the fact that the AR is completely screwed up?

[ricardouk]

yes but i usually had black bars to avoid that, perhaps Golgota didnt do it.

[NiGHTsC]

Not asking for any hack tips...
but how do you upload a video with "High Quality" option?
my video is DivX 5 800x480 29.9FPS 1751kbs / MP3 128Kbps 44100Hz stereo.
I tried to upload it but still didn't have the High Quality option, even with that "&fmt=18" trick

Thank you.