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

[Protolisk]

Really noob here.

So what exactly is the best method to upload to youtube in?

[themaster1]

I got a problem with the HD/HQ links they won't show up and for any vid, anybody familiar with this pb?

I have reinstalled xp recently so Youtube has indeed reset my setup for the connection but i have rechanged it to "fast connection " or even "choose" but no luck thus far. Does the change require a delay? Someone enlighten me...

Edit:
nevermind i found out, i needed flash Player10

[Castaa]

Really noob here.

So what exactly is the best method to upload to youtube in?

As far as my test and research has gone this week. YouTube HQ and anything other than HD quality is fubar'ed right now. Especially widescreen 16:9.

I personally think it's bugged.

[Castaa]

I just got a test case working in HQ. I recorded about a minute of
video with my Logitech Quickcam Pro 9000 using Windows Media Encoder
at 640x360, 30 fps, 4.0 Mbps, maximum quality, WMV V8 codec. The
video is just me moving around dancing in my chair. hehe

Uploaded this raw video to YouTube. HQ was available and looks like it
should converted to: 640x360, 803 Kbps flash video codec.

As a second test I transcoded my source video to 640x360 H.264 4Mbps
using MediaCoder and it also gave a HQ option.

[frifox]

the HQ button doesnt rely on the source video Kbps but rather on how much motion is in the source video.

with a static pic for video 640x360@600Kbps i didnt get the HQ button, on the other hand i DID get HQ button with motion video as low as 640x360@100Kbps (yeah, the "HQ" video was even worse than youtubes original LQ videos hahaha)

[Castaa]

the HQ button doesnt rely on the source video Kbps but rather on how much motion is in the source video.

with a static pic for video 640x360@600Kbps i didnt get the HQ button, on the other hand i DID get HQ button with motion video as low as 640x360@100Kbps (yeah, the "HQ" video was even worse than youtubes original LQ videos hahaha)

I think it boils down average bit rate per pixel of video. A static picture is going to have a very low bit rate no matter what you encode to.

[Golgota]

Yep, same goes to me. i'd upload this video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PgUMke95QUk

Spec:

Format : MPEG-4
Format/Info : Sony PSP
Format/Family : MPEG-4
File size : 54.9 MiB
PlayTime : 2mn 18s
Bit rate : 3317 Kbps
StreamSize/String : 94.1 KiB
Encoded date : UTC 2009-03-12 00:08:53
Tagged date : UTC 2009-03-12 00:08:53

Video #0
Codec : AVC
Codec/Family : AVC
Codec/Info : Advanced Video Codec
Codec profile : Main@L5.1
Codec settings, CABAC : Yes
Codec_Settings_RefFrames : 1
PlayTime : 2mn 18s
Bit rate mode : VBR
Bit rate : 3110 Kbps
Width : 640 pixels
Height : 360 pixels
Display Aspect ratio : 16/9
Frame rate mode : CFR
Frame rate : 23.974 fps
Chroma : 4:2:0
Interlacement : Progressive
Bits/(Pixel*Frame) : 0.563
StreamSize/String : 51.5 MiB
Encoded date : UTC 2009-03-12 00:08:53
Tagged date : UTC 2009-03-12 00:08:53

Audio #0
Codec : AAC LC
Codec/Family : AAC
Codec/Info : AAC Low Complexity
PlayTime : 2mn 18s
Bit rate mode : CBR
Bit rate : 201 Kbps
Channel(s) : 2 channels
Channel positions : L R
Sampling rate : 44.1 KHz
Resolution : 16 bits
StreamSize/String : 3.32 MiB
Encoded date : UTC 2009-03-12 00:08:53
Tagged date : UTC 2009-03-12 00:08:53



Unfortunately, the was no HQ button generated for the HQ view, however u still can watch it in HQ with adding the &fmt=18 end of the link

[Castaa]

Try using Constant Bit Rate encoding. It's not about the max video bit rate but the average bit rate I've found. Also my tests were 30 fps, this is 24. That's another difference.

[Golgota]

Try using Constant Bit Rate encoding. It's not about the max video bit rate but the average bit rate I've found. Also my tests were 30 fps, this is 24. That's another difference.

Okay, i'll try it later with a CB option. Thanks Castaa.

[Golgota]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZrHyOSbSj3s

Castaa, i've done this in CB and after several min, the HQ button suddenly appeared,
btw, here re the Spec. I used different codec, which is Xvid (just for testing purpose) and unfortunately the audio is in AC3, not AAC which i think not so good for YouTube, btw maybe u guys have another
best method. mind to share. Pls let me know. Thanks.


SPEC
General #0
Complete name : C:\Documents and Settings\GolGoTa\Desktop\dragmetohell.avi
Format : AVI
Format/Info : Audio Video Interleave
Format/Family : RIFF
File size : 33.6 MiB
PlayTime : 2mn 18s
Bit rate : 2028 Kbps
StreamSize/String : 167 KiB
Writing library : VirtualDub build 30091/release

Video #0
Codec : XviD
Codec/Family : MPEG-4V
Codec/Info : XviD project
Codec profile : Simple Profile/Level 3
Codec settings, Packet bitst : No
Codec settings, BVOP : Yes
Codec settings, QPel : No
Codec settings, GMC : 0
Codec settings, Matrix : Default
PlayTime : 2mn 18s
Bit rate : 1794 Kbps
Width : 640 pixels
Height : 360 pixels
Display Aspect ratio : 16/9
Frame rate : 23.976 fps <---remain unchanged
Resolution : 8 bits
Chroma : 4:2:0
Interlacement : Progressive
Bits/(Pixel*Frame) : 0.325
StreamSize/String : 29.7 MiB
Writing library : XviD 1.0.1
Writing library/Date : UTC 2004-06-05

Audio #0
Codec : AC3
PlayTime : 2mn 18s
Bit rate mode : CBR
Bit rate : 224 Kbps
Channel(s) : 2 channels
Channel positions : L R
Sampling rate : 48.0 KHz
StreamSize/String : 3.71 MiB

[Castaa]

Cool you got it figured out. VBR may not be HQ friendly. I always use CBR so I can't say for sure.

Good question about the audio. Most of my videos are people talking so I haven't bothered trying to figure out an optimum audio solution.

[Golgota]

i think the best audio format for YouTube is 224Kbps with AAC container. Just take a look at
frifox channel, most of his video 1000kbps for the static picture (1280x720) and 224kbps AAC audio.

frifox, do u think xvid is the best way to encode such video? i mean a video with some motion. Thanks in advance.

[frifox]

its not about which video codec is friendlier/best with youtube but its about which codec can pack more quality for a given bitrate.

i've done A LOT of testing and so far encoding in H264 codec using x264 as encoder beats everything in quality. so thats why i always recommend MeGUI (GUI for x264) for any video encodes.

[Castaa]

its not about which video codec is friendlier/best with youtube but its about which codec can pack more quality for a given bitrate.

i've done A LOT of testing and so far encoding in H264 codec using x264 as encoder beats everything in quality. so thats why i always recommend MeGUI (GUI for x264) for any video encodes.

Cool I'll check it out.

edit: Aw, it doesn't seem to support WMV as an input.

[frifox]

MeGUI supports only AVS as input (AviSynth)... with AviSynth you can pipe just about every video codec out there into MeGUI

PS: HQ button doesnt depend on audio nor does it depend if video is CBR or VBR. i uploaded a video with NO audio and 640x360@700Kbps VBR video and it got HQ button.


EDIT: somewhere above i said that the HQ button doesnt rely on the source video Kbps but rather on how much motion is in the source video. that seems to be incorrect now. after last youtube's maintenance i found out that now even videos with no motion are getting HQ button (example below)

768x432 H264@66Kbps / AAC@200Kbps
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pm5HZbgbe88

[dark_guard]

What happened to &fmt=6? It's gone. I believe that if you have a high quality video it plays &fmt=34 by default.

Also &fmt=17 is really weird. When I play &fmt=17 in the browser it's good HQ video. But when I download it it's a 3gp file that's 176x144 resolution and 90kbs bit rate. And when I embed it it doesn't play the video just the audio.

[Castaa]

Urgh! I give up. I used the same method that gave me a HQ video option in my many test cases and I got *no* HQ option with my actual video.

F- YouTube. I've wasted enough of my time trying to work around their broken system.

[Captain Satellite]

HQ is not as good quality as old HQ was. Now it's fmt=18 instead of fmt=35. I finally figured out after a lot testing, if you render an .flv file and upload it, you'll get HQ.

[Castaa]

HQ is not as good quality as old HQ was. Now it's fmt=18 instead of fmt=35. I finally figured out after a lot testing, if you render an .flv file and upload it, you'll get HQ.

Cool. It'll test it out.

[Castaa]

HQ is not as good quality as old HQ was. Now it's fmt=18 instead of fmt=35. I finally figured out after a lot testing, if you render an .flv file and upload it, you'll get HQ.

Cool. It'll test it out.

I uploaded a transcoded to Flash (H.263) video of my video and it did give me an HQ option. However it was the lesser 480x270 option. Not the highest 640x360 resolution HQ version. My uploaded source video is 640x360.

[Castaa]

Urgh! I give up. I used the same method that gave me a HQ video option in my many test cases and I got *no* HQ option with my actual video.

F- YouTube. I've wasted enough of my time trying to work around their broken system.

Ok, I take it back. It just look YouTube over 7 hours to give an HQ (640x360) option for my video but it finally did. Sorry for the false alarm. My method still works. Which is uploading 640x360 resolution using WMV9 codec and a plus 2500K-3000K bit rate.

[frifox]

i upload 768x432 with ANY bitrate and i get the HQ button

[Castaa]

i upload 768x432 with ANY bitrate and i get the HQ button

Which resolution though? There are actually 2 or 3 HQ versions that I've seen for 16:9 alone.

[frifox]

depending on the source video's motion...

with no motion - 480x270, with motion - 640x360... but that was couple weeks ago, so that may be different now

[Captain Satellite]

frifox, You videos look amazing. Would you be willing to share examples of your script? I would like to try using Avisynth.

[frifox]

all my uploads (http://tinyurl.com/cjjomq) are static pictures with no motion, so my scripts are customized for that purpose, which might not be something that you wanted... but if you insist, you can find it here: http://tinyurl.com/cdedkz

[Captain Satellite]

Thank you. It looks pretty over-whelming. Are there any good guides around?

[zoobie]

F- YouTube. I've wasted enough of my time...

ROTFLMAO

[frifox]

i'm not sure if i should be sharing this but... when you move your 1280x720 video with ANY bitrate into FLV container, youtube always makes it viewable as HD.

for example, i had an MP4 file:
Video - x264 / 1280x720@150Kbps
Audio - MP3 / 44.1Khz@192Kbps

i upload the mp4 file and it had the expected HQ button, not HD button.
then i moved audio/video streams into FLV container:
ffmpeg -i source.mp4 -acodec copy -vcodec copy output.flv

and guess what. the video went live on youtube with HD button available... no need to meet the minimum 1,000Kbps video datarate


for example: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nQMWQG2cPlg
the uploaded file was 10MB for 3:57 video, meaning it was 345Kbps for both audio AND video combined,
but i as you see youtube's player still gave the HD button

[Golgota]

frifox, i think i need ur help in script code, can u show me the script on how to encode any video format into MP4 + AAC using ffmpeg?

let say i will set the bitrate to 1500kbps, and audio 192kbps. (motion or static picture)

thanks in advance fri..