DoA: Stereo Audio

[Galeo Deus]

Let me preface this question with this: I am a musician interested in getting decent video but high quality audio onto YouTube. In other words, I care far more about the audio.

But I cannot get stereo audio. Period. I tried all those tricks with converting to an flv and making it under a certain bitrate to get get stereo audio, but nothing. I've used the &fmt=18 extension with the whole new quality thing that YT is doing. With that my vids look better, but still sound like crap. It's locked in mono. Whenever I upload anything, it's mono.

I've used every conversion combination I can think of using MP3 and AAC. Low bitrate, high bitrate, different frequencies, etc. I've used programs like Super, Virtualdub and more that I've uninstalled because they are useless.

What the hell is going on here? I'm no expert, but I've read TONNES on this subject, on these forums or others, but to no avail. Besides, everyone seems hung up on video quality, while I'm stuck with low bitrate mono even with the &fmt=18 extension.

I suppose someone could give me the name of a program and the EXACT parameters to input that they know works (even though I've tried this already). Or maybe I'm a moron and overlooking something.

Any help is appreciated. Thanks in advance.

[hech54]

I just made and uploaded a test YouTube vid for you:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N8c1Z_mZrkE
Stereo.
I used two completely different .wav files in Reaper.
(one song left side - one song right side)
Rendered it then opened it in CDWave to make a small
sample portion.
Created a bitmap image in Microsoft Image Composer.
Loaded the bitmap and the sample song in TMPGEnc Plus
and created an mpeg video.
Loaded the mpeg video in Riva FLV Encoder to create
an apparent stereo .FLV file.
Uploaded to Youtube.

[Nuieve]

Ok, never mind. Just convert empty video to flv (lots of programs that do that). ffmpeg can do it too, of course. Then put mp3 file in desired format (I used 160kbps) in the same folder.

Than type this:

ffmpeg -i video.flv -i audio.mp3 -ab 160k -vb 160k output.flv

where -ab means audio bitrate at 160k (don't forget to put k after the value)
same for -vb - which is videorate

Total ab+vb should be no more than 320 (it will turn out to be 345 or so after conversion)

[brassplyer]

I just made and uploaded a test YouTube vid for you:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N8c1Z_mZrkE
Stereo.

I happened to make similar test before I found this post.

However, there's apparently something different about using a static image like that. When I apply the same settings with an actual video file, I don't get stereo.

Have you tried what you've outlined using a video file with moving images?

[brassplyer]

Let me preface this question with this: I am a musician interested in getting decent video but high quality audio onto YouTube. In other words, I care far more about the audio.

But I cannot get stereo audio. Period....
I've used every conversion combination I can think of using MP3 and AAC. Low bitrate, high bitrate, different frequencies, etc. I've used programs like Super, Virtualdub and more that I've uninstalled because they are useless.

What the hell is going on here?

Yes, it can be aggravating. Here's a thread I started on a similar subject. I've gotten limited success in creating stereo files.

https://forum.videohelp.com/topic349901.html

Btw, I can tell you that Virtualdub is an amazing tool with endless uses. If you have any interest in creating video don't let your frustration with this particular topic blind you to this.

[brassplyer]

But I cannot get stereo audio. Period. I tried all those tricks with converting to an flv and making it under a certain bitrate to get get stereo audio, but nothing. I've used the &fmt=18 extension with the whole new quality thing that YT is doing. With that my vids look better, but still sound like crap. It's locked in mono. Whenever I upload anything, it's mono.

What the hell is going on here? I'm no expert, but I've read TONNES on this subject, on these forums or others, but to no avail. Besides, everyone seems hung up on video quality, while I'm stuck with low bitrate mono even with the &fmt=18 extension.

I suppose someone could give me the name of a program and the EXACT parameters to input that they know works (even though I've tried this already). Or maybe I'm a moron and overlooking something.

Any help is appreciated. Thanks in advance.

Here's what seems to yield consistent results.

Download Any Video Converter. There's a free version on this page.

http://www.any-video-converter.com/download/

Create your video. I've been doing mine in DV format. I can't say for sure if other avi formats will work. I've been deinterlacing mine before converting to flv. May not be necessary.

Set AVC to create flv files. AVC gives you various parameters which you can adjust - you're going to have to cut the video bitrate, and size way down. Cut it to the lowest bit rate 192. Cut the size to 176 x 144. Set the frame rate to 15.

As far as the audio, you'll have to experiment. Probably at either 96 or 128. And then go into the Options > audio tab and under mp3 set it to VBR1 and experiment with various settings. I find that 7 seems to be the highest I can go and still have the desired bitrate, ie. under 345 which seems to be the magic number.

Download MediaInfo and verify that the flv is under 345kbps.

Make a short segment of maybe 10 secs. Upload to YouTube as "private" video to satisfy yourself that you've targeted the right formula. You can do this with Virtualdub, make a copy of your AVI file calling it "youtube experiment" or something, make sure you've selected the appropriate compression and using "direct stream copy"

Here's a couple I did.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hjY2pG7uf7c

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kU3gUZxQrLo

Further experimentation with other parameters say under the video tab of AVC may allow better quality levels of the video or audio. But you're always going to have to sacrifice some video quality to get the best audio on YouTube, but you indicated this isn't an issue.