Video streaming

[thorsak]

Can anyone advise me how to improve the quality of downloading video clips from YouTube...? It seems that the quality varies quite significantly: some of the clips are quite sharp but others are pretty blur (out-of-focus). Is that MAINLY caused by poorly recorded clips OR is that MAINLY caused by quality loss during the downloading process...? What is the most effective way of improving the quality of downloaded video/audio clips...? Based on the 'HD'- level of quality, this quality variation should allow us to keep this quality variation at minimum - UNLESS, of course, the people making these video clips are poorly qualified.
NOTE: In determining & comparing the quality level I'm ONLY referring to professionally NOT
amateurs-made videos.

Any advice would be greatly appreciated...!

[pspvid]

YouTube uses the term "Quality" to identify what is actually a "frame-size". Since YouTube streams are not adaptive once you selected one of the options the file you get is Exactily as it is stored by YouTube (there is no thing such as "quality loss during the downloading process" ).

A blurry video may be caused by two factors:
1) a poorly compressed original content
2) over-compression by the YouTube encoder when converting to multiple formats.

In any case, you can't do much to improve the quality (intended as the "visual appearance") of the video files.

-tom- (tvruler.com)

[thorsak]

Thanks for your advice, pspvid!

I was just wondering if there is not a possibility to do some 'de-compressing' editing of such downloaded 'blurred' video-clips using a video converter...?!? Does anyone have tried such a 'compression-editing' or have some suggestion what could be experiment with?

I greatly appreciate any further advice or suggestion.

[Hoser Rob]

I don't quite see how 'decompressing' ... which I would assume is encoding at a higher bit rate ... would do anything. The information was lost when it was compressed. You can't put it back in. It's not there.

If I download youtube stuff I just use the Video Download Helper plugin for firefox and pick the highest available resolution from the drop down menu. Sometimes there's a better option, sometimes not.

With lower bit rate video in general I use the smplayer filters when I'm watching it. It really has the best and most intuitive set of filters for this kind of thing. But a lot of that really low bit rate youtube stuff, which is meant for their small viewing window, is unsalvageable.

[thorsak]

Many thanks for your advice Hoser Rob - I'll try your suggestions.