does youtube give hidden details about the current playing video ?

[vhelp]

when visiting youtube, i'd like to know what format the "current" playing video in my window is. sometimes i have the option -via pulldown- to select 240p, 360p, 480p, 720p, but i'd like to know if it is playing an flv vs mp4 file.

when i right-click the video window there is no properties. also, i know it may play different format depending on the computer setup, netbook, laptop, desktop pc work pc, etc., can have different setup or flash version. I do go to keepvid.com and it sometimes gives me up to 4 choices but not the one the i particulary saw playing in my window.

so, is there annother way of determing this query without having to d/l all the videos, even if just to see what keepvid reports, which may not always be accurate ?

thank you.

-vhelp 5460

[poisondeathray]

It seems to me 720p, 1080p are usually wrapped in mp4 , and 480p and below are wrapped in flv

I haven't seen any examples that defy this observation

Just curious, why does it matter ?

[vhelp]

specs for internet:
* netbook pc, 166GHz 512mb ram xp home sp3, 1024x600 res
* modem: dsl
* browser: opera, firefox, ie 8

Just curious, why does it matter ?

thats a good question.. please excuse my long post..

its been a long while since i passed on youtube videos due to 56k modem, yt re-encodes, and anything that had to do with them since the time i stopped working in that area. but now i have a little bit faster internet, i decided to give youtube another go and see what i've been missing since and catch up on it all. i know that most the videos will be poor dispite claims of hd.

but here ia a perfect example of my confusion and need to know what format is the one playing in my window--so i can d/l that one. here's the video:

Miley Cyrus - Fly On The Wall

the window gives you 240p, 360p, 480p, and 720p HD viewing versions

keepvid reports these:

Miley Cyrus - Fly On The Wall
›› Download FLV ‹‹ - Low Quality - 400×226
›› Download FLV ‹‹ - Medium Quality - 640×360
›› Download MP4 ‹‹ - High Quality - 480x360
›› Download MP4 ‹‹ - High Definition - 1280x720 <-- D/L'ed

this video looked and played very nice in the yt window in my netbook, but thinking that it was prob the 1280x720p video i preoceeded to d/l it and it did not look so good--lots of mpeg errors and chisel chod garbadge, well, it still looked ok for the most part but not the one what played nicely on my netbook it was much cleaner.

another one..

Miley Cyrus - See You Again

the window gives you 240p and 360p viewing versions

Miley Cyrus - See You Again:
›› Download FLV ‹‹ - Low Quality - 400×226
›› Download FLV ‹‹ - Medium Quality - 640×360
›› Download MP4 ‹‹ - High Quality - 480x360 <-- D/L'ed

this video played smoothly in my netbook yt window but was poor quality. and when I downloaded the high quality mp4 version it was playing in high-speed and poor quality.

and here's another one, a really nice one i think..

Miley Cyrus - 7 things

the window gives you 240p, 360p, and 720p HD viewing versions

Miley Cyrus - 7 things.
›› Download FLV ‹‹ - Low Quality - 400×226
›› Download FLV ‹‹ - Medium Quality - 640×360 <-- D/L'ed
›› Download FLV ‹‹ - High Quality - 854×480 <-- D/L'ed
›› Download MP4 ‹‹ - High Quality - 480x360 <-- D/L'ed

this video played smoothly in my netbook yt window in very good quality. and when I downloaded the three clips above, the best ones were the flv files, the high quality mp4 had mpeg errors and whatnot. still, you can't tell which one it presented to you.

it would be nice if yt told you what video it is playing so at least you know what you have. plus it could help choose the correct one to actually d/l. so far all my digging around has not turned up any hidden clues how to tell what format etc yt is presenting in your yt window at the click of a button or icon or link.

its diapointing and energy draining to have a piece of crap in your hands in the end after going through the d/l process - which takes time for most peoples connection speed - and have to conclude to throw away that clip. its a waist of resource and time and kills the enjoyment part of it all.

there were other things/issues to list here but didn't want to bog down this discussion with all of them. these are things i'm just now discovering on dsl connection, you'd think they cleaned up their act after 5 years, but i guess not. this is so frustrating and disapointing in this day and age but i continue to live with these things just as everyone else has.

all in all, now that i have faster internet, i am having fun watching videos that i couldn't before even on my ipod touch. i would like to try hugo on this connection but after a friend at work gave me a link to a hq video (looked great on his monitor) when i tried to get in, it wanted me to sign up and pay a fee before i could watch the video, that was a quick killjoy for me, so i gave up on that.

i hope i have all the links correct and not missed anything else.

-vhelp 5461

[poisondeathray]

I think keepvid is doing some funky business (either re-encoding or giving your the wrong video)

If you don't use keepvid and look in your temp internet directory, I think you will see what I posted above to be true. I will double check with one of your links to verify

Also, how are you playing back locally (the downloaded files) ? You mention errors, but are they decoding errors on your end? Try other software for playback e.g. mpchc or kmplayer ? Maybe it's the "horsepower" ? Maybe the netbook can't handle it ?



EDIT: I'm pretty sure my post above still stands. The 720p version is mp4 wrapped, the others are flv wrapped. The 720p version is noticably better (when I say noticably better, both watched at the same size, for example both at 1280x720, or fullscreen at whatever your display is ). Also, I don't see any gross errors (but still yucky youtube quality)

As an aside: you can tell that 1st video was shot on DSLR by tell tale moire and aliasing...YUCK

I'm not sure what you meant by "--lots of mpeg errors and chisel chod garbadge" - maybe you can explain what this means ? Did you mean the regular YT compression? Did you mean the aliasing ?

[intracube]

Miley Cyrus - Fly On The Wall

this video looked and played very nice in the yt window in my netbook, but thinking that it was prob the 1280x720p video i preoceeded to d/l it and it did not look so good--lots of mpeg errors and chisel chod garbadge,

Although the video has the option of 720p on YouTube, it looks like it was up-scaled (badly) from a standard definition source. There's a mixture of aliasing, and also composite video artifacts.

As an aside: you can tell that 1st video was shot on DSLR by tell tale moire and aliasing...YUCK

Although DSLRs can produce similar artifacts, I don't think they've been used here. Isn't Miley Cyrus quite high profile in the States? Judging from the production values of the video, it's likely to have been shot on professional equipment.

I'm pretty sure my post above still stands. The 720p version is mp4 wrapped, the others are flv wrapped.

I concur - mediainfo is reporting the same thing on the files in my cache.

vhelp, I can't see 480x360 as an option on the first link you posted. On the second link, only 480x360 is available - and it's an flv file.

when I downloaded the high quality mp4 version it was playing in high-speed

I haven't had a problem playing back videos from YouTube. What software are you using to watch the videos?

Regarding the links you posted, the weak point in the chain is the original file uploaded to YouTube.
For a comparison - reasonable quality 720p:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cfWMo43bq9I

[poisondeathray]

As an aside: you can tell that 1st video was shot on DSLR by tell tale moire and aliasing...YUCK

Although DSLRs can produce similar artifacts, I don't think they've been used here. Isn't Miley Cyrus quite high profile in the States? Judging from the production values of the video, it's likely to have been shot on professional equipment.

Perhaps... But I'd be willing to wager money it was either a Canon 7D , 5D MK II , T2i or in that lineup. I've dealt enough with them to recognize it. It's almost a signature.

Many "professionals " use DSLR's now. Especially "indy" types. Very popular for music vids.

But the accessory equimpent, matte boxes, follow focus, stabilizers, lenses etc... ends up being many times the cost of camera body. So it depends by what you mean by "professional equipment"

Although the video has the option of 720p on YouTube, it looks like it was up-scaled (badly) from a standard definition source. There's a mixture of aliasing, and also composite video artifacts.

Ahhh I see you mean - I had a closer look - you mean the "dot crawl" from analog signal on the neon signs.... you could be right

Regarding the links you posted, the weak point in the chain is the original file uploaded to YouTube.
For a comparison - reasonable quality 720p:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cfWMo43bq9I

Yes, but you can't compare a studio shot, "talking heads" interview type video content with a dancing music video. The former has much easy to compress material. Youtube will kill the quality music video, even if an uncompressed , incredibly well shot version was uploaded

vhelp, I can't see 480x360 as an option on the first link you posted. On the second link, only 480x360 is available - and it's an flv file.

This is why I think keepvid is re-encoding or doing some funky business and adding more options

[vhelp]

EDIT: I'm pretty sure my post above still stands.

i'm not doubting you.

I'm not sure what you meant by "--lots of mpeg errors and chisel chod garbadge" - maybe you can explain what this means ? Did you mean the regular YT compression? Did you mean the aliasing ?

yes, the usual mpeg / yt recode nonsense is what i mean. i see what you mean by the alias which i did see like around the cars for instance but i also thought it could be from deinterlace though not really sure and don't care at this point.

so, i ran that found (640x360.flv) video through mediainfo:

AVC, 480x360, 23.976fps @ 519Kbps, AAC audio.

i then renamed it to .mp4 and proceeded to demux but nothing would open this file, even dgavc would crash out, then i remembered flvextract v1.2.1 and renamed back to flv and ran the file through but only to find nothing was produced, so i googled and found an updated version 1.6.1 and was presented with an .264 raw file. i ran that in dgavc and it worked flawlessly. so i guess v1.2.1 is h263 and v1.6.1 is h264 respectively.

so it seems keepvid is giving incorrect info after all. sheesh. so its that much more dificult to know what the playing format in yt video window and you can't rely completly on keepvid's report of file details, and if you want a given file to d/l you have to d/l all, review and keep the one that looks the best. i don't know of any other method for this. that's why i asked the question.

resource
FLV Extract v1.6.1 comes with cli support for command line function--gui possibilities

-vhelp 5463

[vhelp]

REgarding the issue with keepvid re-encoding videos. its possible that they, on some, maybe certain flv or mp4 but i can't say four sure, but given the fact of such crummy looking videos from yt..

but, in this case, i'm pretty sure (for at least one video) KV did not re-encode.

pdr, thanks for the tip about video in temp folder. it was actually not there. i'm from the windows 98 era and only just strated surfing internet through xp thanks to dsl and my new netbook. goog-bye w98 and dialup

so, here's how i found the video. these are the videos i d/l and dump into a folder..



..and here's the video's the played in my yt video window at the sites i visited. as you can see they were put into these cache folder in yt naming convention as they played, and as you can see the details are similar to the video's above.



see the details in the two pics above, notice the filesize for both screen shots. they are the same.
if KV did re-encode, then those two files would be different. i think that this is a unique find, but there you have it.

now if i could just get rid of the duplicate pics below.. @ mod's, feel free to delete pics below if you come to this topic, thanks.

-vhelp 5464

[poisondeathray]

So I'm curious what the these 480x360 mp4 versions are - that don't show up to the public viewer

They have different dimesions and filesizes to any of the other videos in your screenshots

Maybe because you're in the Miley fanclub, you get special treatment

(BTW, when I said re-encode by keepvid, I was referring to the inaccessible options - i.e. it's reencoding to give you more options)

[vhelp]

well, i have a theory.. we got a hint in the above nonsense. remember the issue with demuxing the flv. it has an avc stream in it. the reason flvextract failed the first time was bc i was using an old version (i found in my desktop video folder) from the old days of yt'ing back in 2005 or 06 or something. that tool was designed for flv (h263) in it. if my memory is correct, yt changed all that some time in 2007 and went the flv (h264) container format. now i hear a roomer spreading the they may change to webm, sheesh. i have no idea what that format is and too numb to bother looking it up. anyway. this has been an interesting quest and i think we learned a little something new.

yes, i am a Miley fan, thanks to the disney channel.

edit: i was not finished.. so keepvid must be bombing out on the h263 vs h264 details, probably using an old filereader and getting it wrong.

-vhelp 5465

[intracube]

Perhaps... But I'd be willing to wager money it was either a Canon 7D , 5D MK II , T2i or in that lineup. I've dealt enough with them to recognize it. It's almost a signature.

The first example has strong colour banding on the scarf, while the second has composite video dot crawl (also visible on the simulated web-page and the end of the video:


Going through a standard def composite video link somewhere in the chain would explain many of the video artefacts. It still could've been shot with a DSLR, but somebody's screwed up somewhere - who works with composite video in 2010/2011 (except for archived programmes). Hmmm.

Many "professionals " use DSLR's now. Especially "indy" types. Very popular for music vids.

Indeed. Also used occasionally on TV shows; an episode of House, for example - (taking advantage of the shallow DOF).

But the accessory equimpent, matte boxes, follow focus, stabilizers, lenses etc... ends up being many times the cost of camera body. So it depends by what you mean by "professional equipment"

Red Camera, Arri D-20, Sony CineAlta etc. I'm don't know if the Arri and Sony are typically used for music videos - just guessing.

I couldn't see any DSLR rolling shutter artefacts - but it might not be apparent with the type of camera movements in the video.

Ahhh I see you mean - I had a closer look - you mean the "dot crawl" from analog signal on the neon signs.... you could be right

Hey! That comment wasn't there when I first read your reply - only spotted it while composing this response. I'll leave the uploaded images anyway to illustrate what I meant.

Yes, but you can't compare a studio shot, "talking heads" interview type video content with a dancing music video. The former has much easy to compress material. Youtube will kill the quality music video, even if an uncompressed , incredibly well shot version was uploaded

Of course, any significant movement will turn the YouTube version to mush. But there were a number of static/low movement shots in the first video that could've been a higher quality on YouTube.

[intracube]

So I'm curious what the these 480x360 mp4 versions are - that don't show up to the public viewer

It used to be possible to append an '&fmt=' tag to the end of a YouTube URL, and be able to watch other versions of the videos not available from the embedded Flash player's menu. I think they were used for low bandwidth devices like the iPhone, etc. The ability to use the &fmt tag was removed last month:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/YouTube#Quality_and_codecs

[El Heggunte]

@ vhelp

drop keepvid, use Clipnabber instead

and yes, netbooks are evil

[Gavino]

Or, since I see you have Firefox, use its DownloadHelper add-on.
This gives you a choice of which version of a yt clip to download.