Preparing Video for YouTube

[vhelp]

My latest endeavor with flv video for youtube was with consintrating
on improving quality through encoding via pre-prep work -- fine tuning
the NR filter cleaning methods.

Also my latest of videos was with HD, as captured from my:
--> Pinnacle PCTV HD pro stuck

(unlike Hauppague malesting their mpeg2-ts and ps-mpeg's, Pinnacle keeps
their hands off, and in short, the videos [mpegs] are clean and 100% stable
during viewing and capturing/recording and I never have a problem with
this product, so far )

As I was saying ...

..where I captured (recorded) OTA abc broadcast of the hit movie,
"Win a date with Tom Hamilton". I thought it was a cute movie.

I mainly consintrated on the still scenes because I feel that this area
helps focus on quality of video algos in the long run. Motion would prob
benefit, later on in the research.

This pic (below) was derived from an (pre-preped) flv encoded video and
imported into VirtualDub for quick analysis review. Since youtube defaults
their video dimension to 446 x 336, I have decided to follow this path.

As you can see, I have considered the youtube look. Yes. They do
default their viewing window to 446 x 336 dimensions, though the videos
are still 320 x 240 dim. Anyway, this viewing dim gives a nicer and a
sort of truer (youtube) look when reviewing an flv encoded video.

The idea behind this youtube look is simply to prepare yourself for what
youtube will dish out, not to mention, how you are already confortable
with this setup. So, in a sense, WYSIWYG.





Unfortunately, there are no video window apps that allow one to resize
it according to his/her will. There are several command line tools that
will accept a Folder and Video File for playing in a window. But, the
window is tied to the video's dim attributes. That means, that when
you open a video, the given tools window will size/shape itself accord
ing to the videos' internal dim stats.. ie, 320 x 240 dim.

If anyone knows of a command line tool that accepts user configurage
paramers and where it features a Resizier function, please let me know,
because I'm interested in incorporating it into one of my front-end tools
and these flv videos. Otherwise, I may just have to create my own

TIPS:

** Viewing Dimensions-- Set your video window size to W:446 x H:336 for
youtube viewing standards this will help prepare your youtube video analysis work, etc.

** Blocks-- Remember, that 8x8 is the standard processing of color
images. And, 16x16 is usually the sweet-spot for improved or less artifacts
in your encoded (any codec) videos. Trust me, they are!

** Wide vs. Full-- It is prob better to host a widescreen video with
the black bars still in tact, in an effort to gain some quality. Keep the realism
as they were inteneded. Full screen will require more hops and jumps to maintain
quality, but if that is all you have, well, there may be some ways. You just have
to discover them.

** Re rgb [0-255] vs. yuv [16-235] color range-- Also, for viewing videos, remember
that in youtube, their vidoes are using RGB color space and with 0-255 color
range. So, when reviewing videos, remember that some players will change
color space to the FLV format, which is YUV and yv12 color sampling format.
And, when the setup is YUV, the colors will (prob) look worse then what youtube
dishes out (though, it is the flv videos' truer image) and also, that you will prob
see a greater number of image artifacts in those players. This is normal.
But, since the majority of youtuber's are knowledged in youtubes RGB video
window appearance, that is what they are (in so many words) programmed to see,
hence, lesser artifacts are realized -- let them sleep in abliviousness.

** more to come.. in time.

-vhelp 4387

[vhelp]

wow. Ok. This time, I was able to Upload another test flv video on youtube.
This time, I got away with a :30 second (low-motion scene) clip.


YouTube Video: sampler #3





Video Source: HDTV recording
Movie/Film: Win a date with Tom Hamilton
Capture Card: Pinnacle PCTV HD pro stuick (usb2)
Source Video: various via pre-prep (NR) and encoding work
Video: FLV format (youtube re-encoded)
Length: 30 seconds


Description:
This latest demo is based off an HD capture (recording) by above equipment
Sat, August 18, 2007 from a Connecticut broadcast, chan WTNH ABC. This
station airs Movies every Saturday night.

The movie was 60 fps, and I felt that (for youtube) it could be brought down
to 19.980 fps for that extra push in quality. Most youtube videos are tweaked
in this area, anyway. And, 19.980 fps is a good reduction scheme from Film
source -to- youtube.

For the frame-rate reduction step, I used VirtualDub.

Also did some futzing around with the color, but I need to find a good setting
for youtube videos. And, this videos' doesn't seem to that of the above pic
in my prev post. Next time. I'll get it better.


Comments:
I think that this demo came out better than the others. I used a slightly different
technique, from processing the video -to- uploading it, etc., but its probably
all the same youtube nonsense. But, I like it better.

Well, i'll stop at this point, as its very late for me here.

-vhelp 4388

[goyomora]

Hi, sorry for the last post I was on defense mode hehe. I so sick of haters, and people bashing me, " I'm a scam" (want to sell something) and more nonsenses, that I regret to expose this tweak. , so I dont really want to share other encode techniques or methods for flash video, I'll keep it for myself.

About flv TVC
This flv could be recreated because is generated by a propietary engine created by effectmatrix. I check the binary mask at low level, "header" (there isn't one per-se, there is no way of reverse engineering), I don't see any different or special structure and I don't really care because know the Flash Video limitations and YouTube austere-well-implemented encoders. YT need to change, to improve their service; not us!, so I don't spend time on this.

And in the case of be posible to recreate this flvs with freeware, I don't really use it, because for me for Video OnDemand porpuses is not efficient way. I like practical. That's way know I'm using Stage6 for sharing to my close friends and family don't botter to way a little for view full HD videos.


Some hints
vhelp your logs are nice, I recommend you use a single video for all a general testing more specific video for precise easy mesure and compare, like this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5M-qOHVpsBc

Because, Videos from movies or tv programs are a very high quality footage that looks very good in differents formats in opposition to ordinary homemade footage.

-Greg

[45tripp]

I thought the general idea(s) of this topic was about
finding ways to improve (through technique, etc) youtube video quality
-- not tricking it to accept non-standard flv's as assumed, above.

I think the subject is quality.
I'm also interested in pushing the upload boundries to their limits.
The issue, I'd say, is gaining maximum control over your content.

and i'd guess you could do your own encode taking tvc
out of the picture and hacking the flv header.
anyone care to try?

Ok.
so I've eliminated crapware from the process.
using the knowledge of the 350k bitrate limit according to mediainfo,
i tried hacking flv headers, to change reported duration and therefore
reduce reported bitrate.
This was successful.
This opens up encoding choices (i continue to use ffmpeg), taking out
the poor tvc. It provides maximum flexibility concerning choice of
audio options. It also puts the duration misinformation under your
control.
In essence you have an flv upload limit of roughly 27MB, in which you
can distribute bits as you please.

I first upped video bitrate to 400k, on a 320x240 resolution.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0s6s9F6WDjc

But i was already happy with what i'd achieved at 320x240.
So I moved resolution up to 448x336 keeping 400k, audio at 48k,
dropping frames to 20fps:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wCmWuv7gol8

I'm happy with the result.
I like the idea of slightly cheating the system.
You still want your video to stream nicely, and not have people giving
up on it.
I don't have the best internet connection, and thought a 450k total was
a good target. Any ideas on this? Obviously you can do what you please.
But there's also the duration misinformation to consider. I like
it being a resonable percentage, maybe even up to double the duration.
You don't want people seeing a 10 min duration even though it's only 2
mins and not viewing it.

I also put up a sample pushing things to the max. Took a 1280x720
sample and cropped to 960x720. It was an avc mkv with 5.1 aac (shooting
myself in the foot a bit) with roughly a total bitrate of 1300k and i
encoded 2 mins, to flv (1500k) with 192k audio. Got about 25MB.
Changed duration in header to 10 mins.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OoVkD2k4byM

Don't know about the quality. It was the only HD sample I had around (don't even know what it is),
and I didn't feel like upscaling 300.
Anyway, it's just an indication of the capabilities and limitations.

Wow, the Guba clip looked really good. A bit
stretched on the A/R,

nothing wrong with the a/r.

in that it's no different from my youtube encodes.
the aspect ratio of all is squeezed, it was more important to me to
have 4:3 with action and detail to work with. didn't want to cut too
deep into the picture.

here's something more like it,
with my new preferred settings:
300 trailer 448x336 letterbox, 400k, audio at 48k, framedrop to 20fps
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=34tQi8HIpsA

I think that this demo came out better than the others. I used a
slightly different technique, from processing the video -to- uploading
it, etc., but its probably all the same youtube nonsense.
But, I like it better.

I like it better too.
it's a bit over the 260k youtube transcode flv bitrate.

broadcast of the hit movie,
"Win a date with Tom Hamilton"

hit movie?
it's actually tad hamilton,
and odd as it may seem it actually sounds better than tom.


gl

[Digitales]

Apparently YouTube uses at least Lame MP3 encoder version 3.97.
If you download (recently?) added video and open flv in hex editor then you can find string Lame3.97 from the file. Please note that not all videos contains this.

For those flv's which don't contain "Lame"-string I have used FLV Extract and opened extracted mp3 file with EncSpot which shows some info about mp3 and also guesses encoder used and it says FhG fastenc.

I have also one question:

1. Upload video to youtube
2. Download youtube generated flv file (use videodownloader for example)
3. Upload flv file downloaded in step 2 to youtube with different name.
4. Download youtube generated .flv
5. Do binary compare for files downloaded in steps 2 and 4 and observe that they are identical.

So no re-encoding happens here... is it because flv encoding parameters match exactly YouTube's requirements or is the decision not to re-encode based on some special headers found on the file?

Is there any good program which can be used to reverse-engineer flv files at the 'atom-level'?
has anyone tried FLV-Info?

320x240 and 64k mono audio and whatever YouTube uses by default is enough for Me if I only could encode flv's myself from uncompressed sources.

By the way next version of Flash Player will support H.264 & aac mp4 video so I guess we have hope that YouTube starts using H.264 in the future.

[45tripp]

Hi, sorry for the last post I was on defense mode hehe. I so sick of haters, and people bashing me, " I'm a scam" (want to sell something) and more nonsenses, that I regret to expose this tweak. , so I dont really want to share other encode techniques or methods for flash video, I'll keep it for myself.

If you make reference to an example in the same breath used to describe the underlying technique, you'll be less open to attack.
This is a fine community. Anything you share will not fall on deaf ears, and will most likely be fully appreciated.
If you have something worth sharing, you might reconsider.

And in the case of be posible to recreate this flvs with freeware,
That's way know I'm using Stage6 for sharing to my close friends and family

You'll notice I had progress with that.
Haven't found time to look at stage6 yet.

Apparently YouTube uses at least Lame MP3 encoder version 3.97.

do we particularly care?
the video encoding is also good.

So no re-encoding happens here... is it because flv encoding parameters match exactly YouTube's requirements or is the decision not to re-encode based on some special headers found on the file?

It doesn't re-encode because it's already at their spec.
My posts state the parameters required to avoid re-encoding.
Flv1 flash, with a reported duration (according to mediainfo, header info) under 10mins and
a total reported audiovisual bitrate under 350kbps (according to mediainfo, header info)

320x240 and 64k mono audio and whatever YouTube uses by default is enough for Me if I only could encode flv's myself from uncompressed sources.

You can.

[m4tze]

Hi there, I'm new to this Forum but I was very impressed by the Quality 45tripp could get on youtube videos.

Thought I might try to ask, if you could write some kind of How-To on this.
I've been trying out different things for an hour, but I just don't get such an insane quality on youtube...

[45tripp]

Thought I might try to ask, if you could write some kind of How-To on this.

for what it's worth
https://forum.videohelp.com/topic336882.html#1752103

gl

[m4tze]

Alright, I'll have a look, thanks alot
Does that also work for game recordings?

[themaster1]

So finally who got it right in all this mess

I tried the vp6 codec it's not bad at all but but youtube reencode my files *sad

media info says the codec used is Sorenson h263 lol

Someone enlighten me with a simple procedure to follow

[45tripp]

So finally who got it right in all this mess

I did.

I put up a guide at request.
The link is in my last post.

gl

[themaster1]

Allright thanks 45 tripp

But how can u have a smooth picture with this bullshit codec known as Sorenson because i got macroblocks everywhere, it's just awful wow

Plus notice i used deblocking,smooth filters before encoding my video...

Bitrate was 330k for the video(lenght:2min 47)...awful

it's not possible to encode in 700k without getting my video reencoded for certain?

[45tripp]

artifacts are to be expected at low bitrates

it's not possible to encode in 700k without getting my video reencoded for certain?

possible
read the guide, find out how

gl

[vhelp]

Sorry I haven't been around here lately. I've met up with a few
set-backs, though mainly on account of my dial-up.

Well, I think I made some headway in the flash (flv) endeavors. After
a few months of slow and boring tinkering, I think I made some headway.
Anyway.

Here are some of the few things going on..

My goal here is to find a good A-Z process that follows the youtube
flv video format. Until they may Changes or Impremovements to their
features, etc., I want to stay as close to their format standars as
possible. And so, here I am, trying to meet that goal.., but I am
tempted to try other alternatives

I did notice that youTube acts a little strangly on some browsers.
For instance, in my Opera, it re-loads and takes for ever to load a
video. And, when you Back or Forward, it has to reload. However,
when used in Netscape, it does not do this. Plus, the video did
play rather smoothly. Perhaps it was a combination of things that
I was doing during my findings. Perhaps its the Flash plugin ver
I have installed in the broswer. I don't know how to tell what
ver I have in each browser, so i'm guessing at this point.

As I was saying.. ahh.. in my last upload, I noticed something
piculiar. My (youTube -> encoded flv) video file had come out to
the same size as my pc -> encoded flv video. And when I test viewed
the two, I could not belive that they looked identicle. I'll have
to do somre measuring (video analysis) of the two to certain. I'l
find the time, perhaps later.

But, for what its worth, I like my latest upload the most!

Tomorrow, I'm going to continue producing several more flv videos
and upload them to youTube. These will be videos of TV commercials
or previews of upcoming shows, or whatever I have on hand and time
for.

Dial-up was my biggest set-back.., until recently I (through google
searches) I found a youtube uploading tool (I tiny little applet
that takes a few params and does the rest) I like it. Its short,
simply to use and doesn't require any [s:3a8fccb3c9].NET[/s:3a8fccb3c9] or other OS nonsense.
So, I can now brake the "limit" barrier -- at least to some degree --
over dial-up.



Video Source: Analog CableTV
Movie/Film: TV Series, Star Trek: Voyager "Investigations"
Capture Card: Pinnacle Studio AV/DV (pci) capture card
Source Video: various via pre-prep (NR) and encoding work
Video: FLV format ([s:3a8fccb3c9]youtube re-encoded[/s:3a8fccb3c9])
Length: 46 seconds

Description:
About the video. I applied various NR (noise reduction) applications
to the video. Once, inside Virtualdub, and for the other, a sort of 2-pass
method NR function inside AVIsynth (MVdegrain) which seemed to work out
well -- it was painfully slow but so was the virtualdub filter.

EDITED: -- prev comments about vhs edited out from above desc. --
Not to confuse anyone, but the clip was not from vhs, it is from my analog cable.
It was very late for me, I started commenting on vhs from a thought that came
to me but for what I don't know nor can remember now

I think that's about it. Its late, and I'm pretty tired.

-vhelp 4413

[Soopafresh]

Looks pretty nice, Vhelp!

[vhelp]

Hi Soopafresh,

Thanks. But, what I'm really having slight trouble with, is the audio.
I'm a bit weak in that department with these tools. It might sound awful
to you on your end, but that will depend on how I encoded the video without
actual audio support on my other computer because I don't have speakers
on that on that pc. But I could make a new post of inquries or search the
topics for assistance when I get the time later on.

..EDITED

-vhelp 4414

[vhelp]

I found what looks to be a discovery of some sort. Ok. Recalling my
comment about Opera and Netscape broswers and how each have different
symtoms -- well, Opera did. Anyway.

Unfortunately, this tip (below) does not work for Opera broswers.

TIP: -- use www.keepvid.com to D/L FLV video, then open youtube url.

What I found was that in Netscape v7.1, if you first *DOWNLAOD* the
youtube (flv) flash video (at least using www.keepvid.com) and then
go to a clean page and paste the youtube video url, it will play
immediately and without any re-downloading.

Ok. Now this might not be a problem for those in DLS or Cable Modems,
but, for those on dial-up (like myself) it is a real time saver!

But, you have to decide within yourself if this is a futule move or
not. I don't know. I guess it all depends on how you view your videos
during your quest in all your video endeavors and what-nots.

-vhelp 4415

[Soopafresh]

Thanks. But, what I'm really having slight trouble with, is the audio.
I'm a bit weak in that department with these tools. It might sound awful
to you on your end, but that will depend on how I encoded the video without
actual audio support on my other computer because I don't have speakers
on that on that pc. But I could make a new post of inquries or search the
topics for assistance when I get the time later on.

It sounds okay. Everything degrades when the audio goes down to 56k mono. I wish youtube would run a normalization routine so it wouldn't be necessary to ride the volume controls all of the time.

[vhelp]

@ Soopafresh

I'm not even using 56k audio. I'm using 48k. But, to my ears, the audio
sound about the same to me, when I encode these on my other pc with the
audio card/speakers. But at 32k, man.., it sounds awlful !! The Madonna
clip (from vhs ep recording) I upload had no audio, and i was able to use
the a 32k audio in order to fit the bitrate limits of youtube with decent
quality results.

Man. I never realized how painful encoding to FLV can be. I mean, finding
the right encoding param among other things. So far, the way I see it,
the bottom line is the source video. Either too much noise or too much
motion, or combination of either, can throw off the flv bitrate past
expectations. I'm using the 2-pass method in ffmpeg because it seems to
produce slightly better video quality. So far, I have not touched on
mencoder, (though I have a few scripts on hand) yet.., with flv video
encoding.

Well, so far, the way I've been preparing youtube videos..

** Capture my tv program.. ie, (my favorite) Star Trek: Voyager
** (I brake apart certain sections that interests me)
** save (cut) those as new_avi's
** import into virtualdub for my rather unique filtering, to new_avi
** then, I import (via avs script) the new_avi into avisynth and filter,
** and at the same time, import that back into virtualdub for final filter
** touch, and then make a new_avi (huffy) out of that, and then bring
** that into my encoding tool where I encode to flv using ffmpeg cmd-line
** via 2-pass method.

I assure you, the above is quite laborous, though mostly on account of the
filtering aspects.. ie, 0.31 f/psec processing -- that's less than 1/2 a
frame per second But, because of my noisy cabletv source, I have no
choice but to apply such obsurd filter algos. Which reminds me, I have
another clip to upload

-vhelp 4431

[MysticE]

For what it's worth this guy (I use the term loosely) has rather nice nice looking vids. He claims he uses a $200 camera with WMV.

Not for the faint of heart.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=im7IorDZ9uY

[olyteddy]

According to this: https://forum.videohelp.com/topic340204.html it just got a lot easier.

[vhelp]

Hi guys. I'm still going at it in this youtube endeavor.

Not to sound like a broken record, but..

I feel that the majority of the members here trying to get good youtube
quality videos has to do with a few things that are not being addressed.

Noise in the video; the source type.. ie, analog tv capture; vhs; satellite
tv or digital tv captures. These are few of those things.

Then, there is the other aspect of what makes a youtube video stand out,
in terms of quality.. pre-processing or filtering. Now, the tipical or
usual way of filtering is seeming to be less effective for this medium.
Thus, other means of (brute-force) filtering is necessary. And such
filtering requires large amounts of time to process. Now, for a one
minute or even 10 minutes (youtube's limit) is prob acceptable for this
alternate routine of filtering, but that is a user decided option. If
the person wants good video on youtube, he/she has to go beyond the noram
way of filtering.

So, going in and filtering the usual way of:

--> 1 minute video @ 3 minute filtering time

could now look like this:

--> 1 minute video @ 60 minutes filtering time

And of course, the numbers are CPU processor dependant, etc.

So, how you filter out (or clean) the above source will vary from person
to person. Thus, the results vary from youtube video to youtube video.

Other aspect of adding to video quality is changing (or, lowering) the
video's frame rate.. ie, from 29.970 down to 24 fps might help lower the
bitrate and boost the video's picture quality, but at a small penalty --
picture studder. But, for youtube type video's, I have found this perfectly
acceptable, though not to mention, most vidoes on youtube is this way and
we have become accustom to these sort of video's, hence an appropriate move.

So, (in my youtube videos) I have found two methods of aiding in quality:

Either by reducing the frame rate slightely or processing it with dup
frames, every so many frames. By dupping the frames, (but keeping the
original frame rate) you actually help the FLV encoding descisioning,
in terms of actual quality. I know it sounds pretty rediculous, but I
have found this to work out well in my videos. So this makes for an unusual
key element in producing fairly decent quality youtube videos. And if
you need proff-of-concept, then you can have a look at the many videos
I have uploaded to youtube so far. But I'm still debugging the quality
aspects, as I write this response and am pre-processing/filtering for
another youtube video.

As a matter of fact, I am planning a longer video play for youtube, but
I'm still debuggin the quality aspects of it all. I'm in the middle of
the whole process and it does require attention to detail. What I am
trying to say, is that, you can't just apply a usual wall paper to a
canvas, cause it may not look good in this room.., or that room, and so on.

But, it looks like there lots of videos being made with cheapo cam's like
quick cams and other 'progressive' type video cams. Lots of people are
using those little usb type cams. And, they are not so bad, in terms of
quality. And, with the right Light set up, (which seems to be coensidencely
appropriate for those cams) and Shutter Speed (ever notice how some of
the video's are 'dup frame' or Studdery [not that they are bad this way]) ??
All this helps in the quality of even those cheap-budget cams

-vhelp 4434

[SatStorm]

Vhelp, personally I can't watch something that stater so much, like your latest upload! But I have to admit that the picture quality is very good.

By reading your tests (and other related things), I end up to the conclusion that the resizing factor is very important, so the correct filtering.

The videos must be progressive and have a posterized - like pre-filtering at 448x336 framesize to look best. Also, the compression of the source makes a difference: you can bypass youtube re-encoding by outsmart it or you can create files encoded in a way that youtube's re-encoding won't harm them a lot.

I did a short test: I filter with Chroma Smoother / 2d cleaner / Dynamic Noise Reduction a small file and re-encode it to 448x336 mpeg 1 CBR at 2000Mb/s. I upload it and the result looked far better other things I uploaded before. Of course, using mpeg 1 is not practical. I shall try with flv encoding later (and keep the bitrate low, around 350, so to avoid youtube re-encoding).
Also, IMO, the nature of divx/xvid is not good to feed youtube.

[vhelp]

I shall try with flv encoding later (and keep the bitrate low, around 350,
so to avoid youtube re-encoding). Also, IMO, the nature of divx/xvid is not good to feed
youtube.

TIP:

Try and keep it below 349k bitrate.. that include Aud/Vid together.

I uploaded a video, not too long ago, and it was 349k total, but youtube
managed to 'touch' it anyway. I think I know the reason why, though.
The problem basically has to do with the utility we use to retrieve the
video properties.. like frame rate; resolution; audio; bitrate; etc.
And the tool's internal algorithm that does the 'bitrate calculations'
is what is causing some video's that are boarder-line to 350k that just
might be a few bits too high, but the calculating algo is rounding
to a nearest appropriate number.

So, I say, shoot for 1 or 2 bits less, like 348k or 347k as your max goal.
And, as long as you follow that rule, its my belief that youtube will not
touch it. That would mean Aud and Vid, as muxed together as one complete
video, who is arriving at 348k, as an example. I like to use the tool
- mediainfo - that 45tripp (thanks) suggested, earlier. So far,
it has proven to be very useful.

SatStorm, the whole point of dup-frame or reduced frame rate is to
make the quality stand out a little more, but at a slight cost of video
stability or studdery motion. Youtube videos are mostly like this because
that was how most everyone cought on in terms of get the best out of their
videos. And because the video is so small and too low a bitrate anyway,
there really isn't much else you can do with it excet butcher it a little
or you tricks -- whatever makes it work for you. I think that by now, if
people want to see a 'smooth' video, they either go to those *other* places
and D/L or stream-view them live and be happy.

Youtube offers a great deal more than just video. There's a whole realm
of ideas and unique and hard-to-find videos that you can't find anywhere
else. However, the quality of viewing even those videos are crappy at best,
but then, you go in realizing all that and make the best of it (the experience)
and enjoy the video for what it is (or use feel like when you were a kid) and
that's all.

So, in truth, its not all about studder/jerky and poor quality video anymore.
It's more or less, who has the video you desire to find (for various reasons)
and includes current but unique videos, today

That about best describes what youtube 'ing is all about -- and not quality,
though we cheat a little, to get more mileage.

And, as far as obtaining good quality (youtube) videos, you have to really
filter the hell out of the video source prior to encoding to flv. Course,
you already know that

SatStorm, now that I re-think about it, that latest vid you saw at
youtude (star trek: enterprise) with the 'stuttery' play, I did not mean
for that to come out that way. It was the way I encoded it, not realizing
that I made a user error in video setup. However, I left it alone cause
it would have been too much work to fix it -- I'm still on dial up, you know.

I do want to get into uploading longer clips. But then that would require
a lot longer 'processing' time

-vhelp 4435

[SatStorm]

Hmm, this weekend I shall try this 349/348 bitrate thing. Regarding framerate, I stick with 25fps myself.

A little bit off topic now: Youtube (and daily motion, etc) can turn a very good source for rare staff, especially music videos extremely rare (local tv shows, etc). For the last months, I do exactly the opposite of what you do: I convert flv to mpeg and I try to restore in the best possible way the picture.
Using deemon's videoenhancer, msu smart deblocking, neat video, msu smart sharpening and video denoise, I manage very good results when the videos are a first hand encode and the noise is not a part of the picture. Of course this is rare.

I intent around xmass, to upload extremely rare things on youtube, that may interest some people (music related). So those tests you are doing interests me a lot: If I can afford a "good" source to them (the best possible they can have from youtube), it's going to be a great help for some people!

[vhelp]

Hi SatStorm,

I intent around xmass, to upload extremely rare things on youtube, that may interest some people (music related). So those tests you are doing interests me a lot: If I can afford a "good" source to them (the best possible they can have from youtube), it's going to be a great help for some people!

This is a good hobby, SatStorm! Providing such RARE videos. Youtube is
a greate place for such videos. Believe me, people don't always realy care about
the quality of the video when they are too interested/involved in reminesing the
past (child-hood memories) thanks to your rare videos. They just want to go back
to a place in time, even for a moment, perhaps away from work, if you will.

I myself recently saw some rare child hood memories of Underdog episodes, a cartoon
I used to watch growing up.

Now, I wanted to touch a little bit on some things about video encoding, etc.

I have been exploring MANY filter-chainging techniques and scenarios over the last
several months now. Its been a drooling experience, though quite interesting. And
I'm still at it.

I don't want to get too involved in this, under this topic, but..

Satellite and Digital Cable prob don't need as much filtering. Actually, it is my
understanding that they need a different form of filter application applied to them.
They don't exhibit noise (like analog sources) but they do exhibit something else,
DCT or Macro Block like artifacts that need to be 'uniquely' addressed. I don't
believe there are any such filters that exactly addresses that aspect of filtering
for these types of sources. I have my own ideas of how to go about addressing those,
but at this time, I'm not ready to dive right in just yet. I'm still addressing analog
sources.

Ohh, regarding flv and 350k videos.. I think you were close, but maybe missunderstood
the current youtube flv encoding trend vaguely described in this thread topic.

You see, the whole idea of encoding a video with a 350k bitrate max is spacifically for
the FLV video format, and not mpeg; xvid; x264; divx; etc. The video *must* be encoded
to flv format, and in an flv container, *NOT* avi. Don't use VP6, because it is actually
an RIFF avi format, and youtube will see it as another format all together, because it
needs to be in the FLV (RIFF) format. That's why everythign else gets re-encoded.
So what you want is the FLV (RIFF) format. And the tool to use (which I use) is ffmpeg.
And don't forget, that when you encode the video, to be sure that you respect the rule,
that when adding/facturing up the bitrate, that audio and video are together in this
equation -- ie, --> (audio + video) = total bitrate.
And you want to try and aim for no higher than 348k bitrate, IMHO.

However, when a given video becomes a certain length (I'm sure it varies by length)
youtube performs certain housechores, prob repacking the flv structure or some other
internal reorganation or something, and the bitrate will be prob be lower, but the
video will not be re-encoded. So, it is my best guess, that the 348k max is still
in effect for even longer videos. Just understand that youtube may do some internal
housecleaning and as a result, the bitrate will be re-calculated to a new value,
though prob not matching your original one, going in.

In fact, I just uploaded another clip onto youtube, and they did touch it, but not
re-encode it. They only recompacted it or something but the video still looks the
same, just as it did going in. Course, if I could get all my vid's to look as good
as I feel this latest one has come out, I wouldn't mind seeing them on youtube while
I'm at work, for instance.

--> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=68KlIwhX8xo

-vhelp 4436

[SatStorm]

Your latest clip looks close to the one I uploaded using mpeg 1 as a source myself!

Off topic:
Most people don't care about the picture quality indeed, but there are many VJs and music video collectors that really do. So, if I can provide them with a "good" source, is going to be a great help for them!
You probably don't know it, but youtube, daily motion, etc, help us, the true music video fans, to give a hit to that black market that exist around the music videos. In Europe, the non UK / USA music videos of the 70s, 80s and early / mid 90s do exist but never aired on the Viacom channels (In the matter of fact, Viacom don't even have them). Most of those music videos (and live performances) aired on local channels once or twice and then they disappeared from the waves. Chart success is not important for them, especially in Dance music, the point is to have sold out events, not record sales. So, it was a matter of luck to catch them on TV back then and tape them.
Some "smart" people manage to have access on that material and a "black" market appeared around this situation. The Internet and sites like youtube, help people to share their treasures with people that don't have them. And since those are TV appearances and lost archives, we can bet that we never gonna have them somewhere official to watch them (like on DVD or some TV reruns - many of those TV stations don't even exist today! )

semi-topic:

Unfortunately, here in Europe the Satellite channels do need much filtering if you wish to watch them on a 37+ LCD screen. They may look "OK" on a 29" CRT screen but on bigger ones, no way!

And even more advance filtering technics are needed when you use letterboxed videos and you wish to do them 16:9 (this is what I also do the last year).

Today, with my 6600 Core2Duo, I need around 30min for a 3.30 min music video, something that goes me back 9 years, when I use to encode DVB to VCD using a Duron 700!!! A Core 2 Quad turns necessary soon for me...

On Topic:
I'll do some tests using ffmpeg and the super encoder.
~348 bitrate or less for both Video / Audio, at 448x336 framesize, on FLV (RIFF) format using standard FLV container.

[seven_deuce offsuit]

Has anyone ever tried Kenstone's method of uploading videos using Photo-jpeg? I've never tried it myself but I was wondering if anyone's seen good results using it.

[vhelp]

Alright. This one deserves a little more detail and explanation. And, I thought is was deserving
of a mention, here.

Ok. I finally defeated youtube's upload file limit when uploading via dial-up -- (with my current
modem, the max speed through-put I can obtain, is 48000 bps) -- where the file size of 13,547kb
for my latest video's length of 5:20 took 2 hrs. It was a rough ride indeed. There were many
time outs (where the model would stall because the server on the other end would serve other
people's upload/download functions with higher priority.. ie, DLS/Cable modems over my dial-up)
and I had to *keep* it alive or else it would disconnect and end the upload.

More on that issue, later, in my next post. But first, let me lay out the video, below, and then
get to the other issue, aftwards..

YouTube Video: #022




Video Source: Analog CableTV
Movie/Film: Movie: "The Matrix" -- opening scene with Trinity running from the Agents
Capture Card: Pinnacle Studio AV/DV (pci) capture card
Source Video: various time-consuming pre-prep (NR) and encoding work
Video: FLV format ([s:959d3f6969]youtube re-encoded[/s:959d3f6969]), Stereo audio
Bitrate: 347k !!
Length: 5m:20s

Description:
About the video. As usual, I applied various NR (noise reduction) applications to the video,
using a 2-pass method in some parts, and processed in two stages. The first stage was
where I apply an IVTC and Filter in one phase. And in the second stage, I use avisynth
(NR) filters and incprorate a 2-pass scenario, and framesever that into virtualdub, and
do last minutes filtering.. ie, crop and light NR touches.

fwiw, I forgot to crop the left/right edges of the video. I left the video's original faint
black edges, by accident. Oh well.

When I encoded the video to FLV, the final bitrate was at 346k. But, whatever youtube
did to it, (injected its own meta-data) may have had something to with it chaing to 347k.

Also, I am very happy to say, that youtube did not touch this video's quality of any sort,
and the same video going in, is the same one, coming out.

About the video:
This movie was aired on Sci-Fi station. They had it in widescreen presentation, but they
applied an unusual crop inside the Aspect Ratio and made it a 1.778AR widescreen. It was
ok as far as the video goes. Nothing had seem to be missing, IMO. But, I did not actually
do any investigation on weather or not it was Anamorphic or, as indicated above, cropped
and set for 1.778AR. The movie is originally 2.35AR presentation. However, the movie was
definately IVTC 'able back to 24p

At this point in time, for youtube vidoes, it wasn't so important to bother with exactness

My personal comment about those who might be having trouble with obtaining good quality
youtube videos when aiming for 350k bitrate. The simiple answer is this.. Don't !!
That is, don't go for 350k. You have to go lower, like 346k or 347k, max. Do that, and
you should obtain the results you've been hoping for.

I hope I got everything down, as I finish this up on this post.

-vhelp 4463

[vhelp]

As I was about to mention in my prev post, above..

I was having a lot of trouble with this 'stalling', otherwise known as, error: Socket Error #10054,
and where it will disconnet and bail out of your upload.

(I did a little research on this error, via google search, and here some information you might want
to consider (those of you who are still using dial-up) when uploading and receiving this type of
error to no avail, below)

R: http://kb.globalscape.com/article.aspx?id=10235
S: Socket error #10054

As I was saying..

My latest movie length is 5m:20s this time around. I can't say I would do this regularly, but then
again, I don't do many video uploads to youtube. But, there is a way around this socket error, and
I feel that I might have found the solution to eleviate the problem for larger filesize, but the only
problem is that you have to manually keep an eye on the certain things. I discovered it (over time)
while I was trying to upload longer length (or larger filesize) videos, and I kept a close eye on a few
things, and tallied them up with a few huntches here and there and trial n error manovers

The error happens when either Youtube or your youtube Uploader tool bails out on account of the
above mentioend error message.. where the waiting for the server to respond or hangs around until
the server will respond (instead of the passive mode) and might quit when it gets tired of waiting
for a response, or something like that, happens. But, sometimes, the error message (above) is not
the same error string/number, but is very similar. I would read through it (above) and also these,
below, for some more insight and posible solution:

If you read the above resource links I posted above and below, you will come across a couple of possible
solutions. But, those solutions will depend on your Uploader tool!!

Look for a configuration setting (under PORT) called: PASV and/or EPSV, and also Buffer Size

This article explains the BUFFER setting:
F: http://kb.globalscape.com/article.aspx?id=10293

And, this article explains the PORT [PASV] setting:
F: http://forums.globalscape.com/tm.aspx?m=403&mpage=2#

And, (another option) is the article about the PORT [EPSV] Extensive Passive:
F: http://forums.globalscape.com/tm.aspx?m=403&mpage=2#

(unfortunately, those of us who are still on dial-up because there is still no support for DSL or
Cable modem in our areas, have no choice in these -extream- situations. So, we go through
crude processes to get a certain job done)

The method I used is a bit cryptic. And, I feel that it is prob best that I find a more eligant way
of circumventing the socket error nonsense by means of some form of automation intervention.
So, in light of this, I'm going to do a little research into this and see if I can come up with a good
automated utility that can run in the background, otherwise, its prob better that you research
your Uploading (or FTP) tool in the areas mentioned above, and go with that route, instead.

-vhelp 4464