Youtube's butchering my videos!

[fonebone10]

I'm encoding with the x264 codec and meGUI. I'm recording with a Blackmagic Intensity Pro (compressed) with a 4 TB RAID setup. My settings are as follows:

meGUI settings

HD 720p 60 fps
Render in Sony Vegas with Lagarith Lossless codec

Final encoding settings: Using Megui, I encode using x264 with  the following settings:

DXVA enabled

Mode: Constant quality [18]

AVC profile: High profile

AVC Level: Unrestricted

B-frames: 3

Adaptive B-Frames: 2-optimal

Reference frames: 5

Number of Extra I-Frames: 40

MAX GOP Size: 250

Min GOP Size: 40

Quantizers:

Min: 10    Max: 51     Delta: 4

Quant. Ratio: 1.4 and 1.3

Mode: Variance AQ  (complexity)

Rate Control:

VBV Initial Buffer: .9

Quantizer Compression: .6

Motion Estimation:

Chroma M.E. [enabled]

M.E. Range: 16

M.E. Algorithm: Multi hex

Subpixel Refinement: 08 - RD refinement

Macroblocks: default settings

Extra:

MV Prediction Mode: auto

Trellis: 1 - Final MB

Psy-RD Strength: 1.0 

Noise Reduction: 0

The settings I left out, I left it at default or 0.

This is my quality before: http://rapidshare.com/files/375227463/Quality-muxed.mp4.html

This is my abysmal quality on Youtube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2eZZVdicbmw

Warning: Video contains swearing.

[aedipuss]

first i'd try uploading a 30p version and see if that helps.

[fonebone10]

Okay, will do. Right now I'm off my editing computer and on my macbook pro, so I'll render another video and put it on Rapidshare and youtube again to see if it improves.

[creamyhorror]

You might also try upscaling your video by 20-25%, because Youtube used to (and possibly still does) damage vertical resolution during its reencode process, making videos look lousy.

[fonebone10]

You might also try upscaling your video by 20-25%, because Youtube used to (and possibly still does) damage vertical resolution during its reencode process, making videos look lousy.

I feel retarded for asking, but how do I upscale my video... -_-

[creamyhorror]

In order to process the video, you have to use MeGUI's AVS Script Creator, right? There's a resize setting in there, use that.

The bigger issue is the 60fps, which is just unnecessary and will kill the quality on Youtube (since it requires twice the bitrate). That alone should fix your problem.

[aedipuss]

youtube handles 1280x720 fine. no need to go any bigger, you'll get the HD version link as long as the bitrate is high enough. i usually use around 5-6mbps.

[creamyhorror]

The point is that Youtube damages/reduces vertical resolution, so when you upload a 720p video you get something of lower detail or effective resolution despite the output being 720px in height. If you upscale to 960p before encoding and uploading, the 720p Youtube version will look better.

[Pinstripes23]

fonebone10:

It's not bad once you put the youtube video into 720p mode. Put the "yt:quality=high" tag on the vid and it should default to the 720p mode. Plus also reducing the fps to 30fps from the original 60fps should give you more control and less what youtube does with it

The point is that Youtube damages/reduces vertical resolution, so when you upload a 720p video you get something of lower detail or effective resolution despite the output being 720px in height. If you upscale to 960p before encoding and uploading, the 720p Youtube version will look better.

I disagree. If you upscale you are giving youtube more control on what to do with the video. At least if it's 720P there's nothing to resize on the output when youtube encodes the final video.

[creamyhorror]

I disagree. If you upscale you are giving youtube more control on what to do with the video. At least if it's 720P there's nothing to resize on the output when youtube encodes the final video.

Youtube does its funky thing with vertical resolution whether it has to resize to 720p or not.

[fonebone10]

Well, I tried lowering the FPS to 30, no luck there... as for upscaling, all I did to "upscale" was check the "use recommended resolution (mod 16)" box. No luck there either.

[neomaine]

Instead of using MeGUI to x264 you may want to try VirtualDub and divx/xvid with a CQ of 3. You'll end up with a slightly larger file to upload but encoding with be much much faster and easy enough to clip out the segment you want to encode.

[V1de0Luvr]

I have no problem uploading 720p video to YouTube, reduced to 30fps of course, encoded with Handbrake (CLI):

HandBrakeCLI.exe -i "filename.mpg" -o "filename.mp4" -O -e x264 -b 2000 -E faac -6 stereo -R 44.1 -B 128 -r 29.97 --crop 0:0:0:0 --strict-anamorphic -x ref=2:bframes=2:subq=6:mixed-refs=0:weightb=0:8x8dct=0:trellis=0

[creamyhorror]

Well, I tried lowering the FPS to 30, no luck there... as for upscaling, all I did to "upscale" was check the "use recommended resolution (mod 16)" box. No luck there either.

Did you definitely reduce the FPS? Using Vegas? Post the Mediainfo output for your encode.

[Pinstripes23]

I disagree. If you upscale you are giving youtube more control on what to do with the video. At least if it's 720P there's nothing to resize on the output when youtube encodes the final video.

Youtube does its funky thing with vertical resolution whether it has to resize to 720p or not.

What is the funky thing? I doubt it's a resizing problem. If you upload at 1280x720P, youtube doesn't resize as one of its viewing options is 720P. Upscaling it will just give youtube more control on how to downscale it back to 720P using whatever resizer it uses, which is what you don't want.

[creamyhorror]

What is the funky thing? I doubt it's a resizing problem. If you upload at 1280x720P, youtube doesn't resize as one of its viewing options is 720P. Upscaling it will just give youtube more control on how to downscale it back to 720P using whatever resizer it uses, which is what you don't want.

Mainly what one guy noticed: http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?p=1278198#post1278198

- I might be getting the same problem as imk was with his HD uploads - if I upload at somethingx480 the result looks quite bad, almost like vertical resolution has been halved (even though it's still 480). But if I upload at a higher resolution e.g. 768x576 (as my source is PAL anyway), the 640x480 output looks significantly better. I thought doing my own resizing (using lanczos4) would be better but I am clearly wrong! This poses an annoying problem with NTSC sourced material - anyone had better luck with 480 line uploads?

Regarding the vertical resolution halving issue with 480 line HQ videos, this definatley occurs with HD 720p videos too This must have been what was happening to imk's videos. To get good results with my PAL videos for both HD and HQ I upscaled to 1536x1152 - obviously being VHS sources they look quite blurry in "HD" but in the standard YouTube window they're not too shabby and there's no serious blocking or anything.

[fonebone10]

ID : 1
Format : AVC
Format/Info : Advanced Video Codec
Format profile : High@L4.1
Format settings, CABAC : Yes
Format settings, ReFrames : 5 frames
Codec ID : avc1
Codec ID/Info : Advanced Video Coding
Duration : 33s 800ms
Bit rate mode : Variable
Bit rate : 8 789 Kbps
Maximum bit rate : 13.7 Mbps
Width : 1 280 pixels
Height : 704 pixels
Display aspect ratio : 16:9
Frame rate mode : Constant
Frame rate : 29.970 fps
Resolution : 8 bits
Colorimetry : 4:2:0
Scan type : Progressive
Bits/(Pixel*Frame) : 0.325
Stream size : 35.4 MiB (99%)
Title : Imported with GPAC 0.4.6-DEV (build 1)
Writing library : x264 core 80 r1376M 3feaec2
Encoding settings : cabac=1 / ref=5 / deblock=1:-1:-1 / analyse=0x3:0x113 / me=umh / subme=8 / psy=1 / psy_rd=1.0:0.0 / mixed_ref=1 / me_range=16 / chroma_me=1 / trellis=1 / 8x8dct=1 / cqm=0 / deadzone=21,11 / fast_pskip=1 / chroma_qp_offset=-2 / threads=12 / sliced_threads=0 / nr=0 / decimate=1 / mbaff=0 / constrained_intra=0 / bframes=3 / b_pyramid=0 / b_adapt=2 / b_bias=0 / direct=3 / wpredb=1 / wpredp=2 / keyint=250 / keyint_min=40 / scenecut=40 / rc_lookahead=40 / rc=crf / mbtree=1 / crf=18.0 / qcomp=0.60 / qpmin=10 / qpmax=51 / qpstep=4 / vbv_maxrate=50000 / vbv_bufsize=50000 / ip_ratio=1.40 / aq=1:1.00
Encoded date : UTC 2010-04-13 00:29:20
Tagged date : UTC 2010-04-13 00:29:21

[aedipuss]

the only thing that jumps out at me is the height is 704. youtube wants 720p, and will have to re-size along with re-encode it to 720.

if you are editing in vegas, render using the sony avc template for "internet 16/9 HD 30p" custom set at 1280x720 at a high enough bit rate, > 5mbbs. the results on youtube always look fine.

[fonebone10]

The height is 704 because someone in this thread told me to upscale the height, even when it's at 720, it is still choppy.

@aedipuss
I render uncompressed AVI so I can have the best quality when I put it into meGUI.

In case if you don't know what I mean, which I'm sure you do... here's what I do when I'm rendering my videos.

1. Import file into Sony Vegas
2. Render just the video in uncompressed AVI
3. Render just the sound in a wave file
3. Create an AVIsynth script with the video file
4. Import the wave file.
5. Choose my x264 settings
6. Autoencode
7. Get the mux file.

[aedipuss]

no need for megui. for youtube uploads the sony avc output works very well. it won't hurt to try it at 720p. and 704 from 720 would be a downscale....

[fonebone10]

Could I have some gameplay examples rendered in the Sony AVC format if possible? I just want an example, because I want absolutely phenomenal quality for my videos, I can't stand having bad quality. It sucks to be a perfectionist.

[creamyhorror]

Give us the links to the 720px and 704px Youtube videos, then we can see what Youtube's encoding settings are. Maybe Youtube is dropping the bitrate too low or something.

even when it's at 720, it is still choppy.

Choppy? Or low quality? Choppy is a different problem (e.g. incompatible settings or too high bitrate).

[Pinstripes23]

Mainly what one guy noticed: http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?p=1278198#post1278198

Ok I thought it was something within the past couple months, but that thread was like a year ago.....a year in youtube's world is ancient with all the changes that the site has gone through since then. Right now I would not recommend to let youtube downscale a video.

[Pinstripes23]

@ fonebone10

You deleted your youtube video, but what was your main complaint about it? I mean I did not expect it to look as good as the original, plus with the lower fps not as smooth. But the 30fps is a youtube limitation as afaik, they don't encode to 60fps with 720P.

[fonebone10]

Give us the links to the 720px and 704px Youtube videos, then we can see what Youtube's encoding settings are. Maybe Youtube is dropping the bitrate too low or something.

even when it's at 720, it is still choppy.

Choppy? Or low quality? Choppy is a different problem (e.g. incompatible settings or too high bitrate).

Links:

Lagarith encoded 704. 30 fps
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xqYPj7cVYbY

Lagarith encoded 720. 30 fps
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RHraDeGIGt0

Sony AVC. 30 fps
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sLJ5P-xSmco

[creamyhorror]

I just looked at the Lagarith and Sony AVC 720p clips.

1. How exactly did you convert from 60fps to 30fps? Your conversion method messed up - every frame is blended, resulting in a horribly messy video. It's probably best to simply drop every alternate frame, which easy to do in Avisynth - just add a "SelectEven()" line into the script (which you can edit when using MeGUI's Avisynth Script Creator).

2. Youtube's bitrate seems to be about 2200kbps, with a peak of 2650kbps. (It's the same for the Sony AVC one.) That won't be enough for good quality if the video is high-motion. If you encode with a long section of blank video at the end, you may be able to provide more bits to the demanding section (since Youtube allocates a particular bitrate, a longer video = more bits to distribute). This method used to work, but I'm not sure about now.

[fonebone10]

All I did was when I prerendered in Sony Vegas, I changed the frame rate from 59.97 to 29.97...

[Pinstripes23]

vegas blends the frames...you were better off just eliminating every other frame to get down to 29.97fps

[creamyhorror]

Yeah, Vegas's conversion sucks if you just want to halve the rate...

[fonebone10]

And in the AVISynth script creator, all I have to do is... what now?

Is it really as easy as putting "SelectEven()" at the end of the script? Or is there something more?