YouTube offering higher quality video / Stage6 ends services!

[bayme]

@Marina; Hmm.. yes, it's sad that YT/Google doesn't give an option to just "leave the upload alone".
But no, I wouldn't do the FLV upload anymore.

If the size is a bit of an issue, of course you can go lower..
I'd record to 640x480 pixels, 25 frames/sec (if you can, you'll simply get higher quality frames that way),
encode with x264 (or other H.264/AVC) codec for the video part, and Nero AAC for the audio part (or mp3 at 320 kbit/s)
and mux those to mp4 or mkv.
If I were you I'd still make each upload around 100 MB, not much less. Because transcoding (compressed to compressed) is a biatch!

Regarding the audio; This is just Google/YT technicians (or wanna-be, rather..) messing it up for us. I already sent a direct request about that to one of my contacts at YouTube (I do have one at support-hq with a little influence..). It's good that I can now even use YOU as a reason for audio-improvement of their conversion-scheme, I'm sure they'll listen to me. (So, let's wait for change..)

P.S. My mother teached Russian at schools in my country and has some friends in Russia (been there a couple of times thanks to that). Ruski's are an intelligent people, is my impression. Except maybe for their leader, but hey, where isn't that the case? Bush still says "terrists" and "nucular", right?

[hotforwords]

bayme.. thanks for the advice. I have a video coming out shortly on "nucular" with a funny Bush twist to it (not what you would expect either)

So if I record at 25fps and compress at that.. and then upload to YouTube.. don't they convert it to 30fps then? Any issues with that? Or I will just end up with better quality all around?

Also.. I am on a Mac with Final Cut Pro.. it does H.264... x264 is just s free version of H.264 correct?

Also.. my Compressor does not output to mp3.. it can output AAC... can I go with AAC maybe 320kbs? Should I use vbr? Or not with aac?

Then I should mux to mp4 or mkv? Using something like ffmpeg mpeg streamclip? Or something? I've never done that before.

Thanks!

Marina

[bayme]

So if I record at 25fps and compress at that.. and then upload to YouTube.. don't they convert it to 30fps then? Any issues with that? Or I will just end up with better quality all around?

Also.. I am on a Mac with Final Cut Pro.. it does H.264... x264 is just s free version of H.264 correct?

Also.. my Compressor does not output to mp3.. it can output AAC... can I go with AAC maybe 320kbs? Should I use vbr? Or not with aac?

From my experience they leave the fps alone on the HQ versions (correct me if I'm wrong anyone). If you use 25 fps, it's still not bumpy or flickery, and the codecs have 15% more bit-reservoir for quality..

If you use a recent version of Final Cut Pro it uses very good codecs and muxes fine by itself, don't worry about that. Can it render to mp4? if it is .avi the results are a little larger than necessary, that's all.

x264 just won another video-compression test again in december, it's the best H.264 video codec out there.

To use VBR with nero digital's AAC or AAC+ is a good idea, and since audio is quite important for your vids, I'd just set it to the max quality. For 5 minutes that would not take up much of the total size anyway. With video/total size go as high as you are prepared to upload.

Looking forward to the nucular video

[dtfinch]

Is it just the stereo fmt=18 version that's bothering you? The HQ served automatically on the site is the mono fmt=6 version. I'm still pretty sure the fmt=18 videos were meant for the iphone and other portable players, where it might be desirable to normalize the volume. Hopefully they'd change it if they ever decide to make it the default.

[benrtc]

Just for the info, WMV encoded upload looses audio sync (in a 4 minuite clip) in the conversion to YT's h.264 aac and there is some judder, a YT problem. So I tried divx 6.8. No choice for vbr mp3 but the cbr 320Kbps sounds acceptable enough for me. I think I'd have to purchase quicktime pro to get h.264 with options if it will register in vegas platinum.

This was uploaded as divx ivtc 640x480 3Mbps. A small amount of blur was used.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AsNd6582208&fmt=18 < (edit:deleted)

The video source already has some audio clipping in the voice, and is not due to YT's problematic level control efforts. As for judder, I haven't verified if YT keeps the source frame rate. It looks like the cars go by smoothly. There's some fast action and the h.264 handled it quite well.

There's another shorter version as a padded flv file 480x360 with vbr mp3.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JqOp5yAx0Xc < (edit:deleted)
The bit rate wasn't high enough but wanted to reduce player pausing, so there's blocking on fast action and changes in illumination. If you append &fmt=18 it returns a mono version - just dumb (or some YT strategy??). And of course the file padding is in there.

From going over the few vids I have on my channel, if YT decides to use &fmt=18 as auto selected for clients with enough bandwidth, all the 480x360 stereo flv, whether goyomora method (TVC 3.10 and 320Kbps mp3), hexified flv or padded, are converted to monaural.

[bayme]

Just for the info, WMV encoded upload looses audio sync (in a 4 minuite clip) in the conversion to YT's h.264 aac and there is some roughness in cadence, a YT problem. So I tried divx 6.8. No choice for vbr mp3 but the cbr 320Kbps sounds acceptable enough for me. I think I'd have to purchase quicktime pro to get h.264 with options if it will register in vegas platinum.

DivX or WMV, are you crazy?
For Sony Vegas there is the x264 Video for Windows encoder that installs just fine:
http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=213809
(or install the K-lite full codec pack and then make sure the x264 encoder gets installed as well..)

If you want to Render as x264, do this:

Choose File > Render As > and under "Save As Type" pick "Video for Windows *.avi",
then click [Custom] > go to the Video tab and under "Video Format" set it to x264vfw H.264/AVC
and if you click [Configure] at the right of that, you can see the familiar x264 logo etc.

You can use "Singlepass lossless" with x264, which is my fav. storage method for archiving (compresses the file but without loss! playback has some sync-issues at times, but in reality that's just your hardware not keeping up) for the Audio tab I pick PCM wav 44.1 kHz uncompressed in that case.
I usually do that so I can save my precious final original somewhere and then later on use MeGUI to compress it to the size I need/want (for which I then can compress audio with nero digital m4a aac) and mux them to mkv or mp4 using Yamb (MeGUI's muxing is overly complex now i.m.o.).

[hotforwords]

2 questions..
1: should I move these YouTube technical questions to another forum?
2: I use video requests from other YouTubers in my videos and I download them and include them in my videos. If a person does a direct recording to YouTube using YouTube's direct recording feature.. my mac is unable to extract the audio portion of the flv.. no matter what I do. Can anyone figure out why that is? Here is an example of a direct recording where I can't extract the audio: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R5biS88E7KI

dtfinch, I didn't realize that the fmt=18 was not what is used for the default high quality playback.. you are right it appears to be the fmt=6. And in that case the audio sounds much better (though it's mono). Thanks!

[dtfinch]

The audio is encoded with the proprietary Nellymoser codec.

The latest ffmpeg can decode nellymoser audio, since late september or so.
Example command line to convert the audio to mp3, and save it to a new .flv:
ffmpeg -i nelly.flv -vcodec copy -acodec libmp3lame -ab 128k output.flv

There's this Mac frontend to ffmpeg which I've never tried:
http://www.ffmpegx.com/

[bayme]

Example command line to convert the audio to mp3, and save it to a new .flv:
ffmpeg -i nelly.flv -vcodec copy -acodec libmp3lame -ab 128k output.flv

Why would you want to transcode it again and again and again? 8)
And why to only 128k mp3? At least use 320k then.

Marina, maybe you can use vixy's tool: http://vixy.net/

[benrtc]

bayme wrote:

DivX or WMV, are you crazy?
For Sony Vegas there is the x264 Video for Windows encoder that installs just fine:
http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=213809

Thanks for the info. I installed it and is working fine. I don't know why I was unable to find the codec in the past. I'm using abr at 3Mbps and 320K mp3 just for convenience, which is about the same as set for divx so the file size is about the same to do a comparison. I can already see the improvement. No need to archive since it's either dvd clips or camcorder mpeg2 (from hard drive sony camcorder) which are about 9Mbps anyway.

[dtfinch]

Because it's only 22khz mono, ffmpeg gives errors if I try 320k. But 160k works. Anything higher fails.

[Livewire-]

What are your Youtube MeGUI config setting bayme?,.. and thanks again!,..


Livewire- :P

[dtfinch]

I didn't realize flv allowed pcm, so this ought to be lossless:
ffmpeg -i nelly.flv -vcodec copy -acodec pcm_s16le -y out.flv

If pcm_s16le doesn't work, try pcm_s16be. Both play in VLC and ffplay, but not much else.

[bayme]

What are your Youtube MeGUI config setting bayme?

Goes a bit far to name all MeGUI configuration, but I'll give some pointers.

I really like MeGUI because it is so complete and auto-updates all codecs and tools!
MeGUI is not for the beginner, but after you've encoded a few videos with it, you'll get the hang of it. I rarely if at all use avisynth to filter my video, my sources usually have been sharpened/deinterlaced etc. already before they meet MeGUI.

For YouTube I would create mp4, with x264 encoded video. Or, as written earlier, upload uncompressed video if I have the time to upload huge files. (but I don't upload much to YouTube, I use MeGUI a lot for other purposes..)

It depends on the length of the video how I would encode audio. If it's short I might consider leaving audio uncompressed 44.1 kHz wav. If it's longer, the wav would take up a lot of room, in which case I'd use Nero Digital AAC m4a, like this:
http://www.digital-digest.com/articles/MeGUI_H.264_Conversion_Guide_page6.html
and then I always use the maximum quality (VBR). Gives around 440 kbit/s audio.

For video-compression I go with "HQ-Insane" for x264 and then pick a size in MB for the result, but again, you can go as high as you want, as long as it's below the 1 GB upload limit. The bigger, the better. I use HQ-Insane because I have time to let another PC do the encoding (it's very CPU-intensive).
You can pick your favourite setting here: http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?t=101813
The creators of MeGUI hang around in doom9 forums as well, so you can best search there..

MeGUI (usually) encodes audio and video separately, so you'll end up with two separate files, that you later need to multiplex, or mux. For muxing I use Yamb because I'm real quick with that.

That said, you can also still encode your own stereo FLV1 and forget all about high bandwidth stuff.
Some good encoder settings for that are here

[anyonecancopy]

! They should create 16:9 support though.

Has anyone noticed with the Youtube Maintenance that was just completed tonight ,Youtube has automatically fixed the Interlace problem with 16:9 posted videos ..at least on my test 16:9 I posted on alexachannel, when I &fmt=18 it ..I noticed the difference,it was autofixed a few minutes ago.

about the 16:9 support , I think it's all done automatically now,look at this video ..it's also 16:9 ..

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4bIvxCLNfsM&fmt=18


Does anyone notice any other Youtube Update changes?

EDIT: wait a minute.. I noticed something else on a video I was just watching...LOOK at this, after the update...what going on here...Look at the difference....

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jlZWzB2FoDg

now, check it out after you &fmt=18 it:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jlZWzB2FoDg&fmt=18

Again..What's going on?
Is this a random error in conversion? or is this System wide ?
Someone please answer.......

BTW: Also I noticed Overall sound is much better. DID YouTube fix the Sound Compressor Bug ?



Alexa

[dissociative]

! They should create 16:9 support though.

Has anyone noticed with the Youtube Maintenance that was just completed tonight ,Youtube has automatically fixed the Interlace problem with 16:9 posted videos ..at least on my test 16:9 I posted on alexachannel, when I &fmt=18 it ..I noticed the difference,it was autofixed a few minutes ago.

about the 16:9 support , I think it's all done automatically now,look at this video ..it's also 16:9 ..

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4bIvxCLNfsM&fmt=18


Does anyone notice any other Youtube Update changes?

EDIT: wait a minute.. I noticed something else on a video I was just watching...LOOK at this, after the update...what going on here...Look at the difference....

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jlZWzB2FoDg

now, check it out after you &fmt=18 it:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jlZWzB2FoDg&fmt=18

Again..What's going on?
Is this a random error in conversion? or is this System wide ?
Someone please answer.......

BTW: Also I noticed Overall sound is much better. DID YouTube fix the Sound Compressor Bug ?



Alexa

They changed their swf player application, now it doesn't upscales vertically videos to fit the entire player box size as they did before, I thought that they were hardcoding that aspect ratio by adding black bars at the transcoding stage.

or in better words the Youtube flash video player now upscales while preserving the original aspect ratio, from now I don't have to add black bars to a video if I want to employ aspect ratio correction for the youtube flash video player

[Denizzje]

Indeed, I noticed the automatic aspect ratio change too. I got quite some 720x576 videos and it adds some small unnesecary bars to the side with the video slightly 'cramped'.

And with 16:9 support I don't mean letterbox 16:9 but real 16:9 .

[benrtc]

Is YT still fixing/breaking things. I'm going to wait and see what they end up with, 'cause if they decide to auto select the &fmt=18 version for clients with enough bandwidth, then any uploaded stereo flv's will be seen with monaural audio, or at least that's the case right now when &fmt=18 is appended.

[bayme]

Is YT still fixing/breaking things. I'm going to wait and see what they end up with

Yes, that's why I'm saying;

Best thing to do right now is upload uncompressed video up to the maximum filesize limit (or compressed to make it fit in 1 GB).
That way the resulting video will always be OK (or the best you can get on YT), no matter what YT ends up doing.

And I'd go with 25 fps, 640x480 pixels for now, still, with the x264 codec, because it offers the best size:quality ratio.

[hotforwords]

Marina, maybe you can use vixy's tool: http://vixy.net/

bayme.. download this video with that vixy.net.. do you get audio? I don't.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R5biS88E7KI

Also.. damn.. I am really screwing up on my audio... here is my latest clip at a 256k cbr aac... and the audio sounds like crap in HQ! Arggghh! Am I "clipping" as they call it? (meaning my levels are too high?).. which I would make me upset as this guy is able to have a high volume with little to no distortion!

Here is my clip: (I'm not providing the &fmt=18.. click on the "Watch this video in higher quality." as I don't know which version it uses.. 18 or 6: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IX7LHiRdnGU) notice my volume level is low in low quality.. then distorted in HQ

Whereas Whatthebuck has high volume in low quality and minimal to no distortion in HQ.. I know him... maybe I should get his settings? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IX7LHiRdnGU

Thanks!

[Boulotaur2024]

Indeed, I noticed the automatic aspect ratio change too. I got quite some 720x576 videos and it adds some small unnesecary bars to the side with the video slightly 'cramped'.

And with 16:9 support I don't mean letterbox 16:9 but real 16:9

On the other hand it conveniently fixes the aspect ratio issue I had on one of my YT HQ upload, thus displaying properly without having to click the 'view original resolution' button. Good thing !

And yea bayme, I followed your advice, the original file I uploaded was... Huffyuv avi : D... I couldn't find that 1 'single pass lossless' setting you were talking about

[benrtc]

Yeah that could be done. I have only 4 vids shot with a handycam I'd like to re-upload. The dvd clips are common stuff - don't really need it. But that would be an incredible bit rate for a 3 minute rendering from a 9Mbps mpeg2 hdd handycam!

[benrtc]

hotforwords wrote:

Here is my clip: (I'm not providing the &fmt=18.. click on the "Watch this video in higher quality." as I don't know which version it uses.. 18 or 6: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IX7LHiRdnGU notice my volume level is low in low quality.. then distorted in HQ

Marina, the basic sound quality is good. However, I hear a lot of highs in your voice, as in treble. The sibilance is, well... too hot, IMO - probably due to higher frequency response of the new YT formats. &fmt=12 is the old format where audio is of lesser fidelity and the high frequencies are less.

And yes, for YT's new formats especially &fmt=18, there's YT mal-adjusted level control. At this time I can't tell for sure if YT has attempted to fix the problem though a few have suggested it. But in a related part of the audio chain, there's also room reflections and background noise. The higher fidelity of the new formats reveals this. Can you plug in a good directional microphone (cardioid type) to get more of your voice as opposed to room sound. Just my .02

[k.]

[NiuuS]

I need some advice from the experts here (which all of you seem to be )

I'd like your recommendations for uploading material and retaining the best quality i can. Last time, i used DivX/1120kbps (since there was the 100MB limit, this was my option) to upload the last shortfilm i edited last year:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UU5VeL-8ZE4

I have seen other shortfilms in YouTube retaining more detail than my material (even a link posted here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JqOp5yAx0Xc, looks amazing). Keep in mind, i'm compressing directly from a Premiere final render (720*480 DV AVI), so i don't know what their trick is. Now that the file size is almost not a limit, i've been recently trying to upload DivX files with more bitrate (even 3000), ironically looking even worse that the original i uploaded (more blurry, more compression artifacts, terrible!).

The second recommendation is even more important: what resolution do i need to use for preserving WideScreen ratio? The resolution i used in the first link was 448*252, taken from a guide i found in the internet about widescreen videos on YouTube (http://perryv.i.ph/blogs/facesmoon/2006/12/19/how-to-upload-widescreen-videos-to-youtube-part-1/). The only problem i'm seeing now is that when using &fmt=18 it squashes the video vertically. You can see it in action here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UU5VeL-8ZE4&fmt=18 (this also happens with the recent tests i've been uploading).

So, what are your settings, tips, advice? I'd like to retain the best quality/detail possible, and of course the WideScreen format. I've also been trying using x264vfw for compression, which i discovered in this thread. Thanks in advance, i really need your wise help!

[bayme]

First, I would not use DivX. If you can, find a better H.264 codec, like x264 (which is free). I'm not just "saying" that x264 is better, it really is:
http://compression.ru/video/codec_comparison/01_subject_codec_comparison/subject_codec...ison_part4.htm
http://compression.ru/video/codec_comparison/mpeg-4_avc_h264_2007_en.html
There have been radical improvements going on very recently on x264: http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?t=134409

I don't use Premiere anymore (Sony Vegas is actually better and more stable, in my experience), so I don't know what options it offers regarding compression.

Resolutionwise, I'd still letterbox it to 4:3. I don't think YT will manage to overcome all 16:9 issues anytime soon. It will always give problems in a 4:3 world (which it is).
And if you have the option of choosing framerate at recording stage, I'd really pick 25 fps over 29.97 or 30, simply because it's waaaay sufficient.

[NiuuS]

First, I would not use DivX. If you can, find a better H.264 codec, like x264 (which is free). I'm not just "saying" that x264 is better, it really is:
http://compression.ru/video/codec_comparison/01_subject_codec_comparison/subject_codec...ison_part4.htm
http://compression.ru/video/codec_comparison/mpeg-4_avc_h264_2007_en.html
There have been radical improvements going on very recently on x264: http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?t=134409&page=2

I don't have problems to use it, but i need advice here . What would you recommended for later uploading to YouTube, retaining the best quality possible? Minutes ago i uploaded an x264 test (Single pass - bitrate-based (ABR)@2000kbps) and it looks incredibly bad when you see the final compression done by YouTube (BTW, the MP4 file, when played on standalone player, looks very good and of course superior to the same settings with DivX, so my problem it's not what's the best codec, but the codec that gets destroyed less by YT compression). YT won't offer me the HQ option either, which i get with DivX.

I don't use Premiere anymore (Sony Vegas is actually better and more stable, in my experience), so I don't know what options it offers regarding compression.

Never had any problems with Premiere, ever, and i'm very profficient with it. Although i mentioned it only for reference, since the compression stage is done with VirtualDub 1.7.8.

Resolutionwise, I'd still letterbox it to 4:3. I don't think YT will manage to overcome all 16:9 issues anytime soon. It will always give problems in a 4:3 world (which it is).
And if you have the option of choosing framerate at recording stage, I'd really pick 25 fps over 29.97 or 30, simply because it's waaaay sufficient.

Again, i need some concrete advice here. I was using the resolution recommended in the guide (448*252), but as i posted before, YT it's squashing the video vertically more if use &fmt=18, and i wanna have my videos ready for when the HQ becomes completely available. What would you use? I'm open to test settings and see if it works in my case.

[bayme]

Well, if you scale down, I recommend to always use a sharpening filter. Or actually an unsharp mask, but that's not always possible.
Since you use vdub, it has pretty good sharpen filters. Just Add the default sharpen filter below the resize filter, then set and preview.
Maybe this post helps a little: https://forum.videohelp.com/topic336882-420.html#1828026

[NiuuS]

Well, if you scale down, I recommend to always use a sharpening filter. Or actually an unsharp mask, but that's not always possible.
Since you use vdub, it has pretty good sharpen filters. Just Add the default sharpen filter below the resize filter, then set and preview.
Maybe this post helps a little: https://forum.videohelp.com/topic336882-420.html#1828026

I'm going to try the 448x336 tip you mention there, to see if i can retain the "quality" of the first upload. How is it that with more bitrate i get worse results than the first upload, is beyond my imagination. An edit will follow.

[benrtc]

NiuuS wrote:

I have seen other shortfilms in YouTube retaining more detail than my material (even a link posted here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JqOp5yAx0Xc , looks amazing). Keep in mind, i'm compressing directly from a Premiere final render (720*480 DV AVI), so i don't know what their trick is. Now that the file size is almost not a limit, i've been recently trying to upload DivX files with more bitrate (even 3000), ironically looking even worse that the original i uploaded (more blurry, more compression artifacts, terrible!).

The padded flv was rendered to divx in vegas platinum (was before bayme posted a link for x264 codec, which is more efficient & looks like a bigger colorspace!), 480x360 (4:3 YT player size), to flv in mencoder - only one resizing total. Was trying to hold the bit rate down so that it might not buffer in the player. There is also .2 quickblur (a small amount of blur in sony vegas). The scene with the headlights moving up and down where Leeloo is about to jump has blocking. If you look at this
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GMu-gHLjf1w&fmt=18 < (edit:deleted)
longer version uploaded as 640x480 3Mbps x264 there's blocking there too. It needs more bit rate in upload, but I suspect there'd still be some blocking. Varying illumination on a light background across the whole frame is tough. The frame rate is as the source 23.97 ivtc for no judder.

BTW, just u/l'd another vid. YT audio "compressor" still mucked up, although once past the initial blast, it might work for some.