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

[rajman]

try SVN-r10464. i stole it from MeGUI :P

in my tests, i found latest builds to be quite picky. such as, muxing into flv container rarely worked without crashing, and some mp3's caused ffmpeg to freeze. there are other bugs i encountered too....

so i snatched FFMPEG from MeGUI, which didnt have those bugs... and that build was SVN-r10464

Thanks again Frifox, will try that

[vhelp]

ffmpeg FAQ for -t and -ss commands..

(these two are usually found together: -ss -t, so I post about both )

-t duration
Restrict the transcoded/captured video sequence to the duration specified in seconds.
hh:mms[.xxx] syntax is also supported.

-ss position
Seek to given time position in seconds. hh:mms[.xxx] (or, hh:mms:cc) [.xxx] syntax is also supported.

EXAMPLE USAGE:

ffmpeg -ss 00:03:51.04 ... process time of 3 minutes and 51.04 seconds.
ffmpeg -t 1.0 ... gives one second duration

-vhelp 4727

[babymammoth]

How to detect wheather or not your vids are in HQ or are in the Que to be encoded or are
finally in LQ..

"untouched" uploaded hq videos,

(actually they are touched, in metadata YT inserts some info:
Writing application : YouTube, Inc.
tagging application : YouTube Metadata Injector.

and corected audio, onlastsecond event etc,
file size increase about 3500 b)


so this hq files has no "Insight" statistics info
selecting this option returns error "There is no viewing data for this video."

this is quick way to check hq or not

[Spritemoney]

the thing i hate 'bout the new HQ hack, is how the thumbnails are pixalated, There is like one way to bring HQ back
Someone has to hack youtube, and unpatch the holes, lol, or someone tries to work on youtube, and unpatch the holes without them noticing , there is always a chance of that happening , and yes youtube re-encode it's like 2 times, if we find a way to bypass the h.264, or make it work with h.264, i know there is a way to make it work. Also like 2 months ago, there is this guy (i forgot his username, sorry) but his account got shut down by copyright, anyways he knew how to make HQ vids, except u gotta click on watch in higher quality, but they looked very good, not as good as frifox, (with that one trailer) but almost.

[harmster]

.... he knew how to make HQ vids, except u gotta click on watch in higher quality, but they looked very good, not as good as frifox, (with that one trailer) but almost.

If you just want "Watch In Higher Quality" which will automatically added by youtube after 1-4hrs upload time just render or convert your AV to:

Video: 480x360 30fps
Audio: 160 kbps 44.1 kHz

That's enough for the TRICK.. which later you can force it to stereo by adding fmt thing.. no idea if this fmt trick still work as I'm currently using Fri.. trick (some of my vid's got credits to Fri-Fox "More Info" - if you happen to find one then you know it's me)

[cjwcorp]

How do you open FLVBind?
When i click the executable, it just blinks and shuts off.
Where do I extract the file too?

[harmster]

How do you open FLVBind?
When i click the executable, it just blinks and shuts off.
Where do I extract the file too?

Open in DOS mode.. Click Start -> Run -> type "CMD" hit OK button and so on...

[bayme]

one way to bring HQ back Someone has to hack youtube, and unpatch the holes, lol, or someone tries to work on youtube, and unpatch the holes without them noticing

What I think they should do is make it optional. I proposed the idea back in 2007 but they didn't respond (I actually emailed Daniel Danciu and John Harding, but all I got was silence)..

It's not at all hard to have it made into an opt-in setting while uploading your video. That way they can simply pose the limits we should work with, for example (this is exactly how I emailed it);

[ ] Yes, I prefer encoding my own Flash Video, so I have total control over the audio- and video-quality of my video on YouTube.

Important: If you select this option, our players and servers require a few limitations regarding the format your file needs to be in:

- Your Flash (.FLV) file should be encoded using the Sorenson H263 specs. * Go here for more information on this.

- Your upload should not use more than 800 kbits per second of bandwidth, at playback per viewer. * Go here for more information on this.

- Maximum video resolution: 640 x 480 pixels (448 x 336, 512 x 384, 576 x 432 are recommended, go here for more information on this).

- Maximum framerate 30 fps (25, 24, 21, 20, 18, 15 fps or below are all fine).

- For correct display of your uploaded Flash Video, make sure your video has Pixel Aspect Ratio 1:1 and screen Aspect Ratio 4:3, so if your upload is widescreen (5:3) or HD (16:9) prepair your video using letterboxing, adding black bars. * Go here for more information on this.

That way if you would choose that option they can do file-checks for those things and you're done. Of course you could ask for HD quality, or ask for 3 Mbit/s bandwidth, but I personally think Google/YouTube simply cannot handle the traffic capacity required for that (yet). YouTube must already serve around 40 petabytes of data daily by now. That's an insane bill they have to pay, just the electric power use that is required for such data-transfers is mind-blowing.

[45tripp]

But I keep getting the message "Invalid duration specification for t: .04" Why is this?

-t 0.04

try SVN-r10464. i stole it from MeGUI :P

in my tests, i found latest builds to be quite picky. such as, muxing into flv container rarely worked without crashing, and some mp3's caused ffmpeg to freeze. there are other bugs i encountered too....

which will be a celtic build.
a pretty stable release,

still, latest from here should be better:
http://arrozcru.no-ip.org/ffmpeg_builds/


tripp

[SpongeFreak52]

I like what you're going at, bayme. 800kbps WAS the supposed highest non-lag bitrate we found out, correct?

And really, YouTube doesn't need all of these bandwidth concerns, it's run by freaking Google! Personally, I think we should all send e-mails such as the one bayme posted. You never know what might happen.

[bayme]

Indeed. Maybe some attention helps:

John looks like a nice enough guy to me: http://johnmharding.blogspot.com/
(I see he has a cooling fan mounted in his home-server exactly like I had done it a few years ago)
And Daniel is here: http://www.danciu.ro (there may be more YT/GV flash-involved people I don't remember the names of..)

It might just be that they didn't get to read my email, because I used @youtube.com addresses at the time..

[dzvero007]

With a tricks, how much overal bit rate do you get ? Without any tricks, I got a video which is 905 overal bit rate (800 kbps only video) when watched in "high quality". Is it good compared to your's ? I'm very happy with the quality and there's no buffering at all.

I noticed that there are 2 different downloading speeds for YT videos. When watching in high quality, the video is downloading at 300-400 kb/s, compared to 100 kb/s in LQ. That's why I think my video in HQ does not buffer.

[SpongeFreak52]

With the tricks, you can get several megabits (1000 kilobits per megabit), and full resolution videos, so they look perfect even under fullscreen mode.

[vhelp]

Hi everyone

I did not provide any links to any videos I was testing today because I am trying to observe
the rule to wait the 24 hours. However, because of the video I used in this YT scenario, I
don't think that there will be an HQ mp4 video later on. Anyway.. I appolize in advance for
anything mentioned here (below) have already been gone over and then some.

( where to begin.. there was so much exciting things going on in this YT project today )

So, it looks like YT 's current strategy is a 2-pass process. In the first past, it re-encodes
your video as a LQ flv and (after a little waiting around some) an HQ flv. The high quality
version is the one that results from using the &fmt=6 parameter. But this can be tricky
because of the way one might have their browsers flash "windowed" player configured to play
LQ vs. HQ videos.

It seems that in the HQ flv version, you have some room to vear a little from the standard
specs. For example, I uploaded an 7.781MB MP4 w/ 480x192 pixel dimensions and no sound
and YT took it with no problem, processed it (2hrs 20mins over dial-up) and that was the end.
This time, I used their upload facility rather than the external one as I used to use in the past.

UPLOAD VIDEO: MP4 (h264) @ 480x192, no audio
Upload was over dial-up, using their upload facility.. 2hrs, 20min to transfer video.

YT STREAMING DOWNLOADER SITE www.keepvid.com

PASS 1: resulted in a 320x240 LQ flv (no sound) video, @ 4.0MB in size.
After uploading the video, there was only one video available. That was there standard version.

PASS 2: resulted in a 480x192 HQ flv (no sound) video, @ 4.5MB in size.
After waiting another 45 mintues or so, an *new* video was available. This time, it was their
HQ version.

(Regarding the pass 2..
The pass 2 is where they do the HQ flv version for the initial or default video. It is my guess that
this is to serve as the initial standard HQ flv video when the user finishes uploading a video and
YT has something to offer them right away. Later, when the true HQ mp4 version is available, a
link or option will be made available. The hope would be that everyone will have learnt to configure
there browser for the HQ mode and the LQ would prob serve for those who want it for one reason
or another. So, the pass 2 encoding is prob for that)

In my first inquire (after I had uploaded an mp4 (h264) video) in a matter of minutes I was able to
obtain their first generated LQ flv video. You have to wait until the "processing" message is removed,
and then you should immediately attempt to obtain the video using one of the sites above. It was
4.0mb in size. After waiting around for another 45 minutes, that 4.0mb was removed from their que
list and was replaced by the HQ flv or &fmt=6 version. I would suspect that the 4.0mb is
still available to those who do not have their browser configured for the high quality video and the
4.0mb video would probably be the default video playing, unless one uses either of the &fmt=6
or &fmt=18 "undocumented" format commands as part of the url string.

Because I am fairly confident that there will be no HQ mp4 file later on, 24hrs later or what have you,
I choose to share my YT experience with you all here at this time.

Tomorrow (if time allows me) I am going to upload another video but this time I hope that it is
more in spec with obtaining an HQ mp4 video in the end. I might have a faster connection avail
at the time.. I hope. I'll share my next attempt, part 2 with you all here if all goes as planned.

Until them, get a life, everyone

-vhelp 4730

[rajman]

Guys since Frifox has gone on vacation and not back for a couple of weeks lets try surprise him by getting the HQ hack working again....I mean with no pixelated thumbnail aswell! I think Im getting close as Ive had a video up for 20 hours and its untouched with no pixelated thumbnail XD
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1S7lfrKR6CU
Will have to wait 48 hours like many are saying to see if it goes untouched, but Im quite confident ive found out another way and testing that at the moment

[mcsbliss]

^ oooh nice. &

Until them, get a life, everyone

rofl ): fri's ffmpeg command is working for me so far. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ePSr51bkUXU 48hrs and going. i used a different route for my motion vids though. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oT-Cx_8HGCE okay quality y/n? seems choppy for me but 20fps is the best i could do without it degrading in quality even more. i used sony vegas, avanti/ffmpeg, padding, & fri's patch. hasn't passed the 48hr test but it's been 24hrs & i checked the insight option babymammoth mentioned. all saying "there is no viewing data for this video."

btw, have a good vacation fri. haha.

[cjwcorp]

My HD Videos are staying!
And they are more HD than ever. The only problem is the pixilated thumbnail.

Here are my videos.

http://youtube.com/watch?v=o2zlJ-dH47s

http://youtube.com/watch?v=qA_Jau-a1Ok

http://youtube.com/watch?v=iD8i5_2D3rA

[Golgota]

Yaaa... same goes to me too, hope it would last longer. I think let us not to advertise the HQ on Youtube. (hoping that can reduce YouTube attention on the Expertist)

Here it is: W16 + VMuTube 1.1 & IMuTube 1.7


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m4frrPPcPDY

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AsWjlDd2STw

[peteman]

ok, I did a short video (using image) with ffmpeg using the following settings:

ffmpeg -i mysong.mp3 -acodec copy -loop_input -f image2 -i 16x12.png -vcodec flv -r 1 -g 5 -sameq -shortest output.flv

Yea, this way it stays HQ, no YT compression, but the image is ridiculously small lol ... how in the earth I'm able to use a little more larger image than just 16x12?

[harmster]

ok, I did a short video (using image) with ffmpeg using the following settings:

ffmpeg -i mysong.mp3 -acodec copy -loop_input -f image2 -i 16x12.png -vcodec flv -r 1 -g 5 -sameq -shortest output.flv

Yea, this way it stays HQ, no YT compression, but the image is ridiculously small lol ... how in the earth I'm able to use a little more larger image than just 16x12?

Just patch or "alter" the first frame to be 16x12 or 19x14 - should do the trick..

[harmster]

One of my few video link that still maintain STEREO - I noticed metadata already changed by youtube.

Dont bother about this VID QUALITY as the footage was download from youtube then re-mix with new audio track + patching 1st frame with 16x12 before uploading back for the test.

Video added on 20th and 21st June:

1.http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N8F-oc39KBw
2.http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cL9GQlDQbe0

[peteman]

hmm... I tried the Frifox's hexedit method (hexalter uTubeVideo.flv 0x120=0x08,0x06,0x11,0x1F ) to an ffmpeg encoded .flv video, but youtube tells me "Failed (unable to convert video file)"... is the 228th hex-pair right spot after all? Are there any other hexeditors than hexalter that lets me actually see all the hex-pairs? That way I could locate the hex-pair where to put that 08 06 11 1F...

[mikejf]

Guys since Frifox has gone on vacation and not back for a couple of weeks lets try surprise him by getting the HQ hack working again....I mean with no pixelated thumbnail aswell! I think Im getting close as Ive had a video up for 20 hours and its untouched with no pixelated thumbnail XD
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1S7lfrKR6CU
Will have to wait 48 hours like many are saying to see if it goes untouched, but Im quite confident ive found out another way and testing that at the moment

still looking ok so far, keeping a watch on it for next 24 hours. But it appears to not be in YT queue and will be skipped by encoder. thumbnail looks good. How did you do it? something about that pause at the beginning?

[peteman]

One of my few video link that still maintain STEREO - I noticed metadata already changed by youtube.

Dont bother about this VID QUALITY as the footage was download from youtube then re-mix with new audio track + patching 1st frame with 16x12 before uploading back for the test.

Video added on 20th and 21st June:

1.http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N8F-oc39KBw
2.http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cL9GQlDQbe0

Nice! Did you used hexaltering or the other one (combining 16x12 frame FLV video to your actual FLV video)?

[harmster]

Pete..

only combining frame - both actually wearing same concept, either one will work

[peteman]

Pete..

only combining frame - both actually wearing same concept, either one will work

ok, cool... but I just can't seem to to get it work.. YT gives me: "Failed (unable to convert video file)".. i've tried both methods, twice. I'm even using the same ffmpeg version that Frifox's is using... by the way, should the hexed/patched .flv file be playable with standard videoplayer? I tried to play it with KMPlayer, but it crashed..

[peteman]

oh man this is frustrating... ive been trying to solve this problem whole day.. YT still gives me"Failed (unable to convert video file)"..

Here's how I do it (and everything should be ok..?!):

1. I have 10 sec long test .mp3 file (128kbps, stereo, 44khz)
2. I have 1024x800 size .png image (saved from FireWorks)
3. I make an .flv video of the .mp3 file and .png image using ffmpeg with this command "ffmpeg -i mysong.mp3 -acodec copy -loop_input -f image2 -i image.png -vcodec flv -r 1 -g 5 -sameq -shortest output.flv"
4. The output.flv plays fine in my video player, no problems.
5. I hex the output.flv with hexalter using this command "hexalter output.flv 0x120=0x08,0x06,0x11,0x1F"
6. I try to play it in my videoplayer (KMPlayer), but it crashes.
7. I upload it to Youtube and after a short while it says "Failed (unable to convert video file)"...

What am I doing wrong here.. I just don't get it..

[bayme]

but I just can't seem to to get it work.. YT gives me: "Failed (unable to convert video file)".. i've tried both methods, twice. I'm even using the same ffmpeg version that Frifox's is using... by the way, should the hexed/patched .flv file be playable with standard videoplayer? I tried to play it with KMPlayer, but it crashed..

LOL, yeah, KMPlayer tries to play it using the FLVSplitter, perhaps updating to the latest version of KMPlayer's internals will solve that? Or set it to use system codecs, in which case it will use ffdshow (for me that works).

[ricardouk]

... ive been trying to solve this problem whole day.. YT still gives me"Failed (unable to convert video file)"..

1. I have 10 sec long test .mp3 file (128kbps, stereo, 44khz)
2. I have 1024x800 size .png image (saved from FireWorks)

What am I doing wrong here.. I just don't get it..

Hi Peteman

I've used avanti to do that a couple of days ago, 6 minute mp3(128) + 1024 png, altough avanti doent list png as source file select all files and it will show png files load it as source 1, on source 2 load the mp3, select the hi quality flash template, on audio settings select them exactly as your mp3 file, as video bitrate select 50 and press convert.



Youtube example:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MnhswI3xGKw

youtube hasnt converted it after 3 days, no mp4 (fmt=8 ) or hi quality flash (fmt=6) versions have been converted.

[rajman]

... ive been trying to solve this problem whole day.. YT still gives me"Failed (unable to convert video file)"..

1. I have 10 sec long test .mp3 file (128kbps, stereo, 44khz)
2. I have 1024x800 size .png image (saved from FireWorks)

What am I doing wrong here.. I just don't get it..

Hi Peteman

I've used avanti to do that a couple of days ago, 6 minute mp3(128) + 1024 png, altough avanti doent list png as source file select all files and it will show png files load it as source 1, on source 2 load the mp3, select the hi quality flash template, on audio settings select them exactly as your mp3 file, as video bitrate select 50 and press convert.



Youtube example:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MnhswI3xGKw

youtube hasnt converted it after 3 days, no mp4 (fmt=8 ) or hi quality flash (fmt=6) versions have been converted.

Thanks for the info, ive never heard of Avanti before this XD