YouTube offering higher quality video / Stage6 ends services!

[rajman]

No point in converting to HQ flv anymore imo, you'd better stick to a _good_ 2 pass x264 encode if you want to reduce the size of the uploaded video (I guess size is your main concern right ? I mean... size of the uploaded vid...) or upload the vanilla video file if you don't mind the uploading time.

But if you still want to go the old custom encoded flv way, check out this thread instead.

@rajman : I believe the HQ conversion is random, I checked most of my YT bookmarks and it appears that 80% of them are converted now. It may be out of complete superstition, but I always attach the tag/title "HQ"/"HD" tag to my freshly uploaded video in order for them to be converted quickly. So far the mp4 version has only taken a couple of hours to appear.

Hmmmm I will try that and see if I get any luck...does your videos have the 'Watch this in high quality' or do you have to add &fmt=6 or 18? Also can I plz have a look at your vids

[NiuuS]

Well, my last try...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aHGyYB9Osrc&fmt=18

Samples i were uploading before were a $h1t, but i went and uploaded the 100MB file... and now it looks great. So, i can't upload little files or they'll get compressed and look even worse?

No HQ link, but at least i can post it in the description in the meantime.

[seven_deuce offsuit]

Is there a way to force the HQ all the time as a default?

[hotforwords]

Wow! No matter what I do I cannot get my audio to sound good on HQ on YouTube! I am cutting the levels before I output the audio in compressor.. so I'm not peaking in the audio! Arrggh! Any more suggestions? Do I really need to get a directional mic and cut my recording levels down dramatically?

Here is my latest video that sounds horrible yet sounds fine on Low Quality!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EvXDA5PWFqw&fmt=18

I am editing at 48Khz in Final Cut Pro.. then outputting it into aac 256 cbr at 44.1khz.. could it be a khz issue??

Thanks so much!

Marina

[benrtc]

NiuuS,

Huge improvement! I've been uploading ~100MB for a 2-4 minute vid - probably overkill for 480x360. Your YT converted h.264 vid is 43MB, so uploading 100MB isn't so much. So far it seems YT only provides 29.97fps for h.264 and doesn't follow source rate. Haven't checked other formats.

[Captain Satellite]

Wow! No matter what I do I cannot get my audio to sound good on HQ on YouTube! I am cutting the levels before I output the audio in compressor.. so I'm not peaking in the audio! Arrggh! Any more suggestions? Do I really need to get a directional mic and cut my recording levels down dramatically?

Here is my latest video that sounds horrible yet sounds fine on Low Quality!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EvXDA5PWFqw&fmt=18

I am editing at 48Khz in Final Cut Pro.. then outputting it into aac 256 cbr at 44.1khz.. could it be a khz issue??

Thanks so much!

Marina

Marina,
Any higher quality source will reveal more flaws than a lower quality source. Your HQ upload contains a lot of sibilance (in the speech), that's really the only thing I can hear that's wrong with it. The lower quality upload sounds "better" because sibilance is not as apparent in the lower frequency range.

[hotforwords]

So the sibilance would be caused by my recording levels being too high? On the mic? Causing the s sounds to be static-y.. is that what you are saying Captain Satellite?

[Captain Satellite]

Is it an external mic or built into a camcorder? It might help to turn down the levels, but if you are using an external mic you can use what is called a 'Popper-Stopper'. I should add that it will help more with Ps and Bs rather than most of what you're experiencing. Maybe some some compression and some EQing. I'll defer to the experts here...

If you notice, the music sounds fine and not distorted.

[NiuuS]

NiuuS,

Huge improvement! I've been uploading ~100MB for a 2-4 minute vid - probably overkill for 480x360. Your YT converted h.264 vid is 43MB, so uploading 100MB isn't so much. So far it seems YT only provides 29.97fps for h.264 and doesn't follow source rate. Haven't checked other formats.

Thanks, at least i know now that uploading "tiny" files won't be the same as uploading 100 MB files (even when it's exactly the same bitrate and compression, blah blah, only difference being it's only a few secs of the 100 MB file to see the results quicker... i guess YT doesn't like 'samples'...). Hope it helps someone else who wonders why uploading 3000kbps bitrate files looks like RealMedia files from the 90's (an uber-sh1t mess of course! )

I'm very pleased with the HQ result. Looks very good and has a nice resolution. The only thing i'm left wishing is the High Quality link below the video (a minor annoyance i can wait until it gets resolved), so i won't be depending on the viewer to expand the description to see the HQ link

Thanks to everyone for their help, tips, and commentaries.

[Captain Satellite]

NiuuS, The HQ link shows up for me without expanding the description.

[bayme]

So far it seems YT only provides 29.97fps for h.264 and doesn't follow source rate.

My 25 fps upload, which was x264 lossless, has a 25 fps rate on the fmt=18 version as well as on the fmt=6 version. So, to me it seems they follow source framerate. That was at the beginning of March though, but I don't expect YT/GV to do fps conversions.

[benrtc]

I uploaded 23.97 ivtc - they revert it back to 29.97? Don't have any progressive 25 or 24 to try.

[NiuuS]

NiuuS, The HQ link shows up for me without expanding the description.

Funny, it doesn't here . Maybe it's a localized thing? Thanks for telling me.

[hotforwords]

I'm using an external mic... I'll try to find one of those pop stoppers!

Thanks!

Marina

[rajman]

NiuuS,

Huge improvement! I've been uploading ~100MB for a 2-4 minute vid - probably overkill for 480x360. Your YT converted h.264 vid is 43MB, so uploading 100MB isn't so much. So far it seems YT only provides 29.97fps for h.264 and doesn't follow source rate. Haven't checked other formats.

Marina can I ask your average size for your videos (MB)? For example your newest video which is 3:21 long?

[benrtc]

You are correct bayme, I just uploaded a pan/crop image thing at 24fps and the low quality comes back 24fps - still waiting for the other versions. Also tried 36fps but the LQ tops at 30.

[Compressor]

Marina,

In When recording set your average levels to around -18db, then in FCP you can raise the levels to -12 (it's always easier to bring levels up then attempt to bring levels that have peaked down). When you export to Compressor you can use AAC. I think your problems are coming from production and making their way through post.

On another note, you all rock on this board. Encoding University bar-none.

Thank you.

[bayme]

im not "fluent" with command instructions, where is the command to resize the video? or do i need to encode the avi with the correct size already? What does "lowpassfreq=16500" mean?

You can resize by adding " -vf scale=<width>:<height> " to the command, but I don't recommend to let mencoder do that. In my taste it's always best to resize and use some unsharp mask, or sharpening afterwards, and THEN feed the result to the encoders.

Here is the entire Command Line reference of mencoder for more info.
Also, this thread has many mencoder examples, and explains how to use it here and there.

The lowpass is just a personal idea really, to be able to use real low audio bitrates. The point is this;
In encoding audio to mp3 the highest frequencies are still very hard to encode, i.e. they need a lot of room and space, lots of extra bits, which they steal away from the other parts of the audio spectrum, sort of.
Using a lowpass means you let everything lower pass to the mp3 encoder, so the mp3 encoder does not have to bother about the frequencies above that.
So, lowpass 16500 lets sound-frequencies under 16500 Hertz pass through.
For an idea how good that still sounds; FM stereo radio we remember from the eighties and nineties was lowpassed at 15000 Hz. Also, most early mp3 encoders created by FhG, Blade and Xing, back in the days of napster, used a lowpass at 16000 Hz as their standard. Not many people really noticed until other mp3 encoders started competing and raised the bar on that lowpass. Especially the LAME mp3 encoder pushed that lowpass upwards very fast in only a couple of years time. You can now safely encode mp3s with a lowpass at 21 kHz, for example. In the early days this would make the whole mp3 sound terribly swushy, full of artifacts.

[rajman]

I finally got a video that has the 'Watch this video in higher quality.' link on it...its taken 2 days for that link to appear under my video, plz anyone tell me if they can see the link to
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zgGDKqTncEk

[bayme]

I finally got a video that has the 'Watch this video in higher quality.' link on it...its taken 2 days for that link to appear under my video

yes, I see it too. Fascinating. What were the specs of the uploaded video, the source?

[rajman]

I finally got a video that has the 'Watch this video in higher quality.' link on it...its taken 2 days for that link to appear under my video

yes, I see it too. Fascinating. What were the specs of the uploaded video, the source?

I upped a MP4 at 640x480 using H.264 (3MBs) and with 128kbps AAC Music (Best)...all done using Quicktime 7

[hotforwords]

Looks great rajman! So your settings were exactly what in Quicktime? I want to try the same.

Within QuickTime you selected what? Export to MP4? Can you put the exact settings? Did you end up with a .mp4 extension?

Thanks so much! I like the way yours turned out.

Marina

[benrtc]

I don't understand why ivtc 23.97 comes back from YT as 29.97. Also just to check I tried 36fps. YT caps it at 30.

[ricardouk]

No point in converting to HQ flv anymore imo, you'd better stick to a _good_ 2 pass x264 encode if you want to reduce the size of the uploaded video (I guess size is your main concern right ? I mean... size of the uploaded vid...) or upload the vanilla video file if you don't mind the uploading time.

But if you still want to go the old custom encoded flv way, check out this thread instead.

Ive posted at that thread before . i've posted on the wrong one, the title is similar lol, my main concern is that "everyone" watches my vids without the stoping for caching, i dont want only the users with fast connections to be the only ones to watch them....thats why im still using 350 flv.

Also, this thread has many mencoder examples, and explains how to use it here and there.

yes, ive read that one and participated on it, like i said to Boulotaur2024 i posted on the wrong thread, by the way i wasnt able to run the bat you posted here using mencoder in megui, the dos windows appears and for 1 second and shuts itself after....

I finally got a video that has the 'Watch this video in higher quality.' link on it...its taken 2 days for that link to appear under my video, plz anyone tell me if they can see the link to
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zgGDKqTncEk

Dont get me wrong guys but i really cant see a difference between the low quality and highquality version, there is a bit of difference but really not that noticeble on my 16 CRT monitor, i dont understand all the fuss....


My personal opinion on this whole High quality versions is that Google getting it all wrong:

I think the limit on the bitarate (350) should stay for the reasons i stated above, since flash player supports streaming h264 time as come to change, but i dont agree taht youtube should increase the limit, i know most of you say "what?", but let me explain, h264 allows at the same bitrate more quality, why increase the bitrate if we can get better quality at same bitrate, why rush and go increase the bitrate?

i've setup an example ti show you what i mean, in the link i will provide you'll see my tipcal youtube upload with a bitrate of 350 and with a resolution of 320x240, below it you'll se a h264 file with a bitrate of 350 and a resolution of 640x368.

With the same bitrate the h264 example have more quality than the "fmt=18 or 6" links that i've been seeing here posted, the h264 video could be further optimized but i dont have time to do it, but i think it will give you a generall idea of what i mean.

heres the link:
http://ricardosantos.com.pt/mp4test/

i would like to upload a h264/350 file, that file would show up as the high quality version, youtube would then convert that same file to flv/350 to display the normal version(less quality)

Why hide the encoding details? why not release a "no brainer" encoding tool to us? and ease their servers a bit?

just my 2 cents anyway

[bayme]

But if you still want to go the old custom encoded flv way, check out this thread instead.

Also, this thread has many mencoder examples, and explains how to use it here and there.

yes, ive read that one and participated on it, like i said to Boulotaur2024 i posted on the wrong thread,

Those two are not the same threads, and from what you're doing it is quite clear you did not read much there or you wouldn't be asking what you're asking..

by the way i wasnt able to run the bat you posted here using mencoder in megui, the dos windows appears and for 1 second and shuts itself after....

I never posted a bat to use with MeGUI. Bat-files run by themselves. If the cmd window closes, Run "cmd" and then enter the bat filename to see why it closes. You've undoubtedly just typed something wrong somewhere. Post the exact content of your bat-file and we'll see what it is.

h264 allows at the same bitrate more quality, why increase the bitrate if we can get better quality at same bitrate, why rush and go increase the bitrate?

[..]

With the same bitrate the h264 example have more quality than the "fmt=18 or 6" links that i've been seeing here

You're missing a couple of crucial points;
fmt=18 *is* H.264 encoded. That's why it exists, so Google doesn't have to use a very high bitrate and still offer higher quality than before. An increase from 350 to 500-600 kbit/s is quite reasonable in today's broadband world. Plus, they've introduced a system that offers higher bitrate video only to users that actually *have* the bandwidth to view that bitrate smoothly, or those that want to view the higher bandwidth.
Mind you, in the country where I live, the average download speed available per user is around 8 Mbit/s. When I download from bittorrent networks I often get close to my maximum (which is 20 Mbit/s) speed, even. You can put 30 high quality YT videos in that at once

[rajman]

Looks great rajman! So your settings were exactly what in Quicktime? I want to try the same.

Within QuickTime you selected what? Export to MP4? Can you put the exact settings? Did you end up with a .mp4 extension?

Thanks so much! I like the way yours turned out.

Marina

Yehhh I chose 'Export to MP4', Ive never tried using Quicktime before for MP4 movies, but I tried it this time and it worked pretty well with the following settings:
VIDEO-
Video Format: H.264
Data Rate: 3000 kbits/sec
Image Size: 640x480 VGA
Frame Rate: 29.97
AUDIO-
Audio Format: AAC-LC (Music)
Data Rate: 128kbps

And yehh it resulted with a .mp4 extension, hope thats what you were after Marina

[NiuuS]

I finally got a video that has the 'Watch this video in higher quality.' link on it...its taken 2 days for that link to appear under my video, plz anyone tell me if they can see the link to
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zgGDKqTncEk

It shows up here.

[rajman]

Heres a video I uploaded couple of weeks ago...has great Stereo sound & High quality video without any bugs to the length of the video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bZqr0-rSSnk

[rajman]

Ive finally resolved the problems I had with the '&fmt=18' trick.....it never worked for me for any videos, only '&fmt=6' worked for me..............BUT just now I updated my flash player from the Macromedia website and guess what.....&fmt=18 works for me now

[benrtc]

rajman, HQ link only runs the HQ flv mono, at least on my browser. It's &fmt18 stereo we want, right? For now I still have to append that. But before I assume it's universal, perhaps there are some HQ links that do give the h.264 version?