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

[rajman]

Guys Im sorry that I cant share the new HQ method as I did not find it out, someone I know worked it out and I had to beg to get it and promise not to tell anyone =( If I worked it out myself than of course I would have shared it here like I usually do with my findings

[mcsbliss]

boo raj, but i understand. what i wanna know is how do i get a video <350kbps in HQ (without the pixelated images) any tips?

[zappa_engine]

Here is my current theory. There are three or four components to uploading almost any FLV you'd like.

1) initial thumb frame
2) encode rejector frame
3) the normal video
4) if needed, the pad frame(s)

The w16 theory combines parts 1 and 2, so that's why the thumbnails are pixelated. The new theory separates those two parts. That's just my opinion... I'm waiting for the 24 hour tests

[Assault]

If it works zappa, I hope you'll write a guide for it. You're doing a great job so far.

[Spartacomp]

Hi everyone,

If there's any musician who is pleased and satisfied with this stereo result and this video quality, please send me a private message at THIS board (don't forget to include your email address or YouTube channel), and I will give you this SIMPLE solution. Oh, btw, no pixaleted thumbnail ofcourse.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NU4BtAgUS_g

Greetings,

Spartacomp

[Assault]

Couldn't you just share it with everyone who has been working hard here?

[Spartacomp]

Couldn't you just share it with everyone who has been working hard here?

Hi Assault,

I like people who are working hard here, just as I have been working hard myself to try and find a method. You recognize hard working, honest (and definitely not lazy or hypocrite) people by their actions and willingness to share with others. They are also very willing and able to send a simple, private message to someone who is willing and able to help them! Man, if someone would give me an offer like that, I wouldn't hesitate! I am awaiting your private message at this board, or you could just wait until someone who I have shared it with (after sending me a simple private message) will eventually share it with you.

Cheers!

[Spartacomp]

Assault, thanks for your private message, I truly appreciate it!

[zappa_engine]

A little update on my work. A couple of my uploaded videos passed the 24 hour test and a couple didn't. Unfortunately, I'll probably have to redo a series of tests over again because I realized I tainted my results by using old FLV files which I had previously tried to hex edit before or some files were over 350kbps meaning it would be re-encoded anyways (without padding).

I had experimented with trying to optimize the FLV tags while working with these tainted files so that invalidates all my test work, which is painful, because I hand-built these tags by hand (using my head, the reference specs, converting between binary, decimal, and hex, to build tags with very specific options). Now I'll have to do that all over again, or I may simply just wait until I program a utility that does it for me.

What I have done with the utility I released was allow it to save individual FLV tags. I also built a FLV stub builder and a FLV tag appender. I had used these tools to extract a 960x720 initial video tag from Raj's video, and the 1x2 found later, about 24 tags in. I then used my tool to build the FLV stub, and appended a 480x360 blank video, and the final 960x720 tag (with a timestamp set to 3:23). So there was my first FLV created using FLV tags as individual pieces. I uploaded it and it displayed a 3:23 black video (as I expected).

So I decided I'm going to try to use these ideas with a real video. I simply took a 15 second clip of my screencap that was encoded with sameq option (high bitrate), and removed it's metadata tag, added in the 960x720 tag I extracted, this time I wanted to test a theory I think, so I put in my tiny 16x12 video tag next, and then I put in the final timestamp video tag. I uploaded it and it wasn't re-encoded, although the thumb was black.

Final test, was to put in a custom thumb. I searched google images for a 960x720 image, downloaded and used ffmpeg tool to create one video frame for me. I extracted that one video frame and replaced the initial blank 960x720 video tag with this new video frame. I uploaded the results, and my custom thumb displayed. I should note it was the same thumb for the first peview, the second preview, and the third preview so I think since I padded far over what was needed, the blank or missing timestamp in the middle where it expected to grab a thumbnail didn't really exist, so it just used the very first thumb.

I wish I had an easy explanation on how to do all this, but I actually built the FLVs by hand which I realize not many people have the knowledge of how to do it.

The tool I'm creating, in my sweet time, should take care of this later automatically. It should take care of: The initial thumb frame calculated based on the main video, the rejector frame, stripping the meta data, timestamp syncing if needed, combining the main video, and the pad frame with calculation to set the overall bitrate to under 350kbps if needed.

[virtualgamesco]

^ Wow, sounds fantastic! Great work. Can't wait to see that tool (if you're willing to release it, of course - I won't beg).

[themaster1]

Well i cannot wait for such an utility to come out.I'll be a beta tester for sure

[adamlui]

Hi guys,

I've been using the C243 method for a few days and it's been workin fine for 480x360 videos (except for the two invisible seconds appended to the beginning).

I want to upload 1024x768 videos though with just a hi-res picture, but when do it, and it plays in YouTube, the image appears somewhat jaggedy wherever there's edges.. kind of like shrinking a picture from a large resolution. However, when I click fullscreen and press ESC, the picture becomes ultrasmooth and anti-aliased. Anyone know what the deal with this phenomena is?

I read earlier on here that the 16x12 method only works with 480x360. Can anyone throw me a bone on how to upload hi-res videos that don't appear jagged without clicking fullscreen then hitting ESC?

[Assault]

The 16x12 method works with all resolutions, I've done a couple 1024x768 with it. The problem with it though is the thumbnail.

[adamlui]

Yeah I just tried it with hi-res, no jaggies, but no thumbnails C243 has beautiful thumbnails but jaggies and 2 invisible seconds.. I just want to upload hi-res still-image vids with thumbnails and no jaggies when viewed in 480x360 on YT...

[Assault]

I guess for now you'll have to compromise between no jagged edges or no thumbnail. You can always overlay a 16x12 in the corner for a pixelated but at least there thumbnail, =/

[bayme]

The tool I'm creating, in my sweet time, should take care of this later automatically. It should take care of: The initial thumb frame calculated based on the main video, the rejector frame, stripping the meta data, timestamp syncing if needed, combining the main video, and the pad frame with calculation to set the overall bitrate to under 350kbps if needed.

Please know that John and the YT dev/tech team are reading here too. See this post. You might want to get in direct contact with them about your tool, to avoid abuse of your tool by people with bad intentions..

[zappa_engine]

Thanks for the link. John and his team are free to contact me if they have questions and concerns. I don't have any clue about embeddable callbacks and what they could do and a quick google search on the topic yielded no immediate information on it.

I've only worked on this project since I wanted to host some of documentation on how to use my other software project in video format. I found that YouTube didn't quite offer me the solution that fit, with my video falling outside the high quality range, yet falling under the recodes, meaning my screen caps usefulness were destroyed.

[zappa_engine]

Well, as far as I know, I remember reading in the specs that the flv tag type of 18 was a script type and usually it was the metadata. I have noticed on uploads that YouTube strips that out and replaces it with their own metadata header. I'm not sure what the concern is over.

[FreeOurTube]

12TTY

[ricardouk]

Im on 512k connection and that clip looks amazingly good in fullscreen

[adamlui]

That's the highest quality movie trailer I've seen so far on YT, though I haven't viewed that many

One thing though, the videos squished unless I hit fullscreen and ESC, then it becomes letterboxed

[ricardouk]

http://www.on2.com/index.php?443

[zappa_engine]

12TTY

Okay, I received a message from you with these links earlier but I didn't realize what it was. That just shows you what a relatively new user I am in the video world. What these links demonstrate is using the FLV container to encode with a different codec. Normally, ffmpeg flash videos are encoded with H.263 codec. These videos are using VP6 codec. (So what about the possibilities of encapsulating the H.264 codec next?)

Also, I'm not sure if it was intentionally done like that, but the pre-padding was a nice idea. It gave me an idea to work on something similar to this. Instead of padding at the end, the front end would display relatively low bitrate video (like a welcoming loading message, screen shots/caps, maybe some music, and a timer count down etc). In that time, the high bitrate main video would have time to buffer seemlessly to the user as they're occupied watching the low-bitrate padded items at the start. It's truly building the variable bitrate FLV container.

I don't know for sure, but I think it's possible to mix differently encoded content also based on the way FLV is structured, each flv video tag defines the codec used, so we could just build a different video packet. Same with audio...

I'm not saying that it's going to happen but I believe it's very possible. I don't want to paint a picture that may not come to production.

[dark_guard]

Hey guys, I'm new around here. Can I get a quick recap on what is currently the best method for encoding hq videos to youtube? Should we still be using the original method in this guide? thanks.

[zappa_engine]

Okay, for you dark_guard, and everyone else, I'll release my current works so far. It's a mess I'll say, but I'm not calling it final. Use at your own risk. Source code and binary.

(EDITED: The .NET 2.0 Framework is required to run this)

http://flvbuilder.googlecode.com/files/flvreader-080630.zip [obsolete]
http://flvbuilder.googlecode.com/files/flvreader-080704.zip [obsolete, check http://code.google.com/p/flvbuilder/downloads/list instead]
"FLV Reader.exe" -i yourvideo.flv <-- this will produce video_only.flv to upload to YouTube
"FLV Reader.exe" -i yourvideo.flv -info > flvinfo.txt <-- same AND output extra flv tag info (megabyte text file)

It's going to be very verbose. If you have ffmpeg.exe in the same directory, it will make use of it to create a final frame for your video if it needs to do padding. Otherwise, I haven't tested it if it doesn't find ffmpeg. If the video is under 350kbps I haven't tested it. If after auto-padding the file, the duration is longer than 11 minutes, then it probably won't get through YouTube uploads. I haven't tested it. The final frame doesn't show sometimes. All in all, this is really just an alpha product. A tool customized to *MY* needs at the moment.

Sample videos:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dxGtl9I1EHM
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lyIg4vzV-kw

[adamlui]

That trailer is quality man. I actually like it ending where they do, because when blankness plays it makes the video feel messed up or something.. Maybe you could get it to actually end somehow at that point (with the related videos screen showing up), then it would be almost perfect

[FoxLocked]

Okay, for you dark_guard, and everyone else, I'll release my current works so far. It's a mess I'll say, but I'm not calling it final. Use at your own risk. Source code and binary.

http://www.zshare.net/download/1471870141e53cea/

"FLV Reader.exe" -i yourvideo.flv <-- this will produce video_only.flv to upload to YouTube
"FLV Reader.exe" -i yourvideo.flv -info > flvinfo.txt <-- same AND output extra flv tag info (megabyte text file)

It's going to be very verbose. If you have ffmpeg.exe in the same directory, it will make use of it to create a final frame for your video if it needs to do padding. Otherwise, I haven't tested it if it doesn't find ffmpeg. If the video is under 350kbps I haven't tested it. If after auto-padding the file, the duration is longer than 11 minutes, then it probably won't get through YouTube uploads. I haven't tested it. The final frame doesn't show sometimes. All in all, this is really just an alpha product. A tool customized to *MY* needs at the moment.

Sample videos:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dxGtl9I1EHM
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lyIg4vzV-kw

How do we use it?

[zappa_engine]

Once you've made a FLV video file you'd like to upload, here's what you can try in Windows.

1) Rename your FLV file to video.flv and copy it to the same directory as "FLV Reader.exe" and "thumbnail.flv.tag" and "rejector.flv.tag"

2) If you'd like the final frame to show the actual time, you'll have to copy "ffmpeg.exe" into the same directory too so the program can create an image.flv file and extract the video flv tag and import it into our new flv file.

3) Double click "FLV Reader.exe" to run it.

4) The output file will be "video_only.flv" which is a holdover name from my tests. It actually has audio too.

5) Upload this "video_only.flv" to YouTube. Let me know if it works

If you're familiar with DOS console, I'd recommend you load the prompt instead and issue this command: "FLV Reader.exe" -i file.flv

[dzvero007]

zappa_engine, your tool does not work on my computer.

EDIT: Btw, I downloaded the trailer of "The Tale of Despereaux" and then re-touched it video tool. Then I uploaded on YouTube and the quality was pretty good. I can tell better than your's bypassed version.
Ricardouk this time you will not find blocks when watched in full screen :P

I would appreciate if you compare both versions of "The Tale of Despereaux", zippa_engine.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lyIg4vzV-kw
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=flio_UaBRE8&fmt=6

Notice: Mine does not have wrong duration, buffering and has proper thumbnail.

EDIT 2:What I want to proof ? - That tricking the system is unnecessary, while you can obtain comparable (and why not better) quality by the easiest way.


[/u]

[zappa_engine]

Can you explain more? Thanks.