What is the magic formula for getting YouTube to accept a video?

[Asterra]

After hours and hours of trying to get this to work, I am stumped. About a week ago, I made a video using MeGUI, encoding with x264 and LAME MP3. The video command line was this:

program --level 5.1 --preset veryslow --pass 3 --bitrate 24000 --stats ".stats" --output "output" "input"

The LAME MP3 config was VBR with quality at 100. This gave the following result:



YouTube liked this. Good enough.

Now I'm trying to help a friend upload a video with the same exact settings. His command line is identical to mine above, except he changes the --pass to 2 and adjusts the bitrate down a bit. It results in the following:



YouTube chokes on this. "Failed to convert". It's reporting the video to be in "MOV" format, despite the fact that it is not. The extension is MP4, just like the video I uploaded a week ago, and the internal workings of the video are, evidently, identical to my video from a week ago which YouTube did handle properly.

In a mild fit of desperation, my friend made an Adobe Media Encoder (H264) version of the video. The resulting quality of said version was really just awful. But! YouTube liked it just fine. And here's how that looked in GSpot:



So I don't know. I've tried everything I can to narrow down the problem, and it really seems to me that I've narrowed it down so small that there's no room left for an actual problem to exist. Yet YouTube thinks there is a problem. So please help. ;/

[poisondeathray]

youtube has problems with some types of mp4 muxed files, incl. some versions of mp4box.

rewrap in mkv and upload

do some small tests first, instead of wasting time uploading 1-2GB files

[aedipuss]

try mediainfo on the files and see if it gives any more info.

you could try using mediacoder handbrake xmediarecode or any number of other gui type program to convert. xmedia recode has a 1920x1080 youtube preset you can adjust to your liking.

[Asterra]

rewrap in mkv and upload

You know of a way to force MeGUI to spit out a MKV by default rather than MP4?

do some small tests first, instead of wasting time uploading 1-2GB files

He actually did upload a couple of small test files and YouTube didn't complain. Plus there's my original ~1GB video using the same settings which YouTube didn't choke on. This hit & miss is confounding and it doesn't look like there is actually any way to detect ahead of time whether YouTube is going to fail on a given video.

[poisondeathray]

Presumably you're encoding 1 or 2 files at a time , so just select mkv for output. Not sure how to make mkv "default" for megui.

If you have a bunch to do, use batch scripts and x264.exe and you can specify mkv

DS (one of the x264 dev's) has stated Youtube's mp4 demuxer is broken, and this is a known issue (along with other issues like decoding and sync problems).

I did a bunch of tests, and it's hit or miss when you use mp4. L-Smash works better than Mp4box. The difference is the wrapper or muxing. All files that failed for me or had problems (like decoding or sync isses) were fixed when wrapped in mkv and re-uploaded. Others have reported similar experiences if you search

[Asterra]

Okay, thanks. I can actually breathe a sigh of relief that it was in fact YouTube's fault and not something I was stupidly overlooking.

[poisondeathray]

Well if it STILL fails after re-wrapping in mkv , then it might be something you did

But mp4 container is known to be problematic for youtube, and not very consistent

[Asterra]

Well if it STILL fails after re-wrapping in mkv , then it might be something you did

Looks like it may well be. MKV also fails. A fresh new encode straight from MeGUI using the command line stipulated above. Here is what we get from Mediainfo:

General

Unique ID : 189418523186023902970827652432314450718 (0x8E80AE3AA891209ABE09ADB5F93F431E)
Complete name : L:\1.mkv
Format : Matroska
File size : 1.70 GiB
Duration : 12mn 48s
Overall bit rate : 19.0 Mbps
Encoded date : UTC 2011-05-04 01:41:54
Writing application : mkvmerge v4.6.0 ('Still Crazy After All These Years') built on Mar 10 2011 02:50:32
Writing library : libebml v1.2.0 + libmatroska v1.1.0

Video

ID : 1 Format : AVC
Format/Info : Advanced Video Codec
Format profile : High@L5.1
Format settings, CABAC : Yes
Format settings, ReFrames : 16 frames
Codec ID : V_MPEG4/ISO/AVC
Duration : 12mn 48s
Bit rate : 18.8 Mbps
Width : 1 920 pixels
Height : 1 080 pixels
Display aspect ratio : 16:9
Frame rate : 30.000 fps
Color space : YUV
Chroma subsampling : 4:2:0
Bit depth : 8 bits
Scan type : Progressive
Bits/(Pixel*Frame) : 0.301
Stream size : 1.64 GiB (97%)
Writing library : x264 core 114 r1924 08d04a4
Encoding settings : cabac=1 / ref=16 / deblock=1:0:0 / analyse=0x3:0x133 / me=umh / subme=10 / psy=1 / psy_rd=1.00:0.00 / mixed_ref=1 / me_range=24 / chroma_me=1 / trellis=2 / 8x8dct=1 / cqm=0 / deadzone=21,11 / fast_pskip=1 / chroma_qp_offset=-2 / threads=6 / sliced_threads=0 / nr=0 / decimate=1 / interlaced=0 / constrained_intra=0 / bframes=8 / b_pyramid=2 / b_adapt=2 / b_bias=0 / direct=3 / weightb=1 / open_gop=0 / weightp=2 / keyint=250 / keyint_min=25 / scenecut=40 / intra_refresh=0 / rc_lookahead=60 / rc=2pass / mbtree=1 / bitrate=18755 / ratetol=1.0 / qcomp=0.60 / qpmin=0 / qpmax=69 / qpstep=4 / cplxblur=20.0 / qblur=0.5 / ip_ratio=1.40 / aq=1:1.00

Audio

ID : 2
Format : MPEG Audio
Format version : Version 1
Format profile : Layer 3
Mode : Joint stereo
Mode extension : MS Stereo
Codec ID : A_MPEG/L3
Codec ID/Hint : MP3
Duration : 12mn 48s
Bit rate mode : Variable
Bit rate : 244 Kbps
Minimum bit rate : 32.0 Kbps
Channel(s) : 2 channels
Sampling rate : 44.1 KHz
Compression mode : Lossy
Stream size : 22.4 MiB (1%)
Writing library : LAME3.98r
Encoding settings : -m j -V 0 -q 0 -lowpass 19.5 --vbr-new -b 32

There's always a chance somebody will be able to spot something in the above mess. Some culprit that Youtube is known to choke on, which, for whatever reason, MeGUI+x264 is implementing in its encode but Adobe Media Encoder is not. (Keeping in mind the facts that 1) I already uploaded a video with the same settings which YouTube did like, 2) tiny test videos also seem to work without issue, and 3) the MKV detailed above plays just fine in a media player.)

[poisondeathray]

Encoding settings probably won't have an effect on the error you're getting (they may have an effect on other types of errors like decoding errors - you get pixellated frames, and at one point an issue with mb-tree, but not "failed to convert" error )

Some of the settings are probably overkill but they won't affect youtube's ability to process . For example, I'll bet money your actual encode doesn't utilize 16 reference frames (have a look at your encode logs), you're probably just wasting time

Was header compression enabled for mkv ? That causes problems with some hardware players. I haven't used megui in a while, so I don't know if its on or off by default with it's muxer

The only common culprit I'm aware of is certain mp4 muxers are known to give problems with YT. It seems from your tests that large filesize might play a role

[Asterra]

Was header compression enabled for mkv ? That causes problems with some hardware players. I haven't used megui in a while, so I don't know if its on or off by default with it's muxer

Looks like they recognized the problem generated by MKV header compression a while ago and have it turned off for all tracks.

The only common culprit I'm aware of is certain mp4 muxers are known to give problems with YT. It seems from your tests that large filesize might play a role

It's a variable. And yet Adobe Media Encoder definitely spat out a big (1.6GB) file which YouTube liked. It seems like even though the quality of AME's encodes is about as poor as it gets, they at least did solve any possible issues of compatibility with popular video resources.

[poisondeathray]

Well the problem is youtube. I think they lowered their bitrate again recently. There are better hosting sites

[Asterra]

For what it's worth (for anyone else who encounters YouTube headaches), my friend finally got a successful encode by skipping MeGUI and creating it via VirtualDub (still with x264). This is not to lay any sort of blame on MeGUI since what it generates certainly plays fine locally. YouTube has issues. All I'm pointing out is that these issues can apparently be avoided by using VirtualDub rather than MeGUI.

[poisondeathray]

Was this the VFW version of x264 , or through vdub external encoder feature using x264 cli?

Was it AVI wrapped or did he specify a different container?

[Asterra]

Was this the VFW version of x264 , or through vdub external encoder feature using x264 cli?

Must be the latest, though he says he had to grab the codec specifically for VirtualDub, so it looks like there are significant differences between MeGUI's (and AME's) output and VirtualDub's.

Was it AVI wrapped or did he specify a different container?

Just an AVI.

[poisondeathray]

I would hesitate to draw any conclusions from such a small sample size

You said some of your larger megui encoded and wrapped files were accepted, even the larger ones

It depends on which version of x264 vfw as well, there are different branches, and what settings were used. For example the generic sourceforge version is different than komisar's version which have different patches and functions

[TSJNachos]

Perhaps you could try other containers/formats (like FLV)? During my many encoding adventures, I've noticed that there is an awesome tool that comes with Xvid4PSP 5.x (I'm usre it can be found as an individual download, as well). It's called "FF Rebuilder". Basically, it takes almost any media file, and uses ffmpeg to (lossessly) convert it to almost any other format. It can do this by remuxing, or by converting into a lossless format (FFV1, for example). Maybe you should try using that, if all else fails.

Or, perhaps you should try another website, like megavideo, veoh, daily motion, ect. Here, have a list.