Fake upscaling for Youtube?

[lonrot]

Hi,

Is there a way to make Youtube believe that an mp4 video has higher resolution than it actually has, instead of manually upscaling the video?

Youtube noticeably decreases the image quality, and upscaling helps to retain that quality at the cost of higher render time.

Take for example rendering a 720p video and fake it as 1080p.

[manono]

Is there a way to make Youtube believe that an mp4 video has higher resolution than it actually has, instead of manually upscaling the video?

Why?

Youtube noticeably decreases the image quality...

It does that for all resolutions.

...upscaling helps to retain a decent quality at the cost of higher render time.

You believe taking a 720p source and upscaling it to 1080p for upload results in a better image on YouTube than just uploading a 720p video? Not sure I believe that. I've read that the relative bitrates are slightly higher the higher the resolution, but I'm not sure it's noticeable, particularly for something upscaled.

But, to answer the question, no, I know of no way to have YouTube think a 720p video is really 1080p. Maybe someone else knows of a way. If I were you and wanted to test the theory, I'd upscale it, upload both the original 720p version and the new 1080p upscaled version and compare. I wouldn't think it's worth the effort.

[lonrot]

You believe taking a 720p source and upscaling it to 1080p for upload results in a better image on YouTube than just uploading a 720p video? Not sure I believe that.

It does make a difference specially for fast motion scenes.

And the difference is greater when upscaling 720p videos to 2k or 4k. It can be dull to watch a web video at 2k or 4k but you get the idea.

A fake resolution method would be great to reach a specific resolution without sacrificing rendering time. No matter the reason behind it.

If it's possible that is.

[manono]

It does make a difference specially for fast motion scenes.

Do you have any evidence to support that claim? A native 720p video and a native 720p video upscaled to 1080p? You could prepare short 10-15 second samples without much time and effort. How are you upscaling anyway? What program or upscaler/resizer?

[lonrot]

Yes, this comes from pure observation. Soon you will see a sample upscaled in different resolutions to support the claim.

[mike20021969]

Youtube noticeably decreases the image quality, and upscaling helps to retain that quality at the cost of higher render time.

Try using the High Quality Upload settings:



Source: https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/1722171

[lonrot]

As promised, here's the comparison:



From left to right each image brings more detail, especially in the eyes area.

The videos at 1920p and 2K are upscaled in Sony Vegas with default settings, rendered Ripbot at 16 CQ (default preset), uploaded and ripped from Youtube and compared back in the original resolution (1280p)



Here's the comparison gallery.

You can download the original video samples here.


And watch in Youtube: 1280p, upscaled 1920p, upscaled 2k.

[manono]

Thank you, as I guess all that took a lot of time and effort.

I think by 1280p you mean to say 720p, and by 1920p, 1080p

I see very little to no difference at all, and certainly not enough to make it worthwhile upscaling 720p to 1080p. But to each his own. I think you'll have to do the full upscaling yourself, though, without fooling YouTube as you had hoped.

[Brad]

You could prepare short 10-15 second samples without much time and effort.

Here's a 720p video game source. Captured as Ut Video, but for upload to YouTube I removed every other frame and recompressed with ffdshow's Huffyuv since I know it can process that. Initially I used nnedi3_rpow2 to upscale, but then I noticed that confounds the results for a source like this: it straightens lines that are aliased in the original, making the downscale too smooth. So I went with Spline36Resize for upscale & downscale. MP4s were saved using Complete YouTube Saver. For 720p, there are two streams so I grabbed the one with the slightly higher video bitrate.

I think the benefits of upscaling to 1080p are questionable, but for 1440p it's obvious. Certain very fine details are better reproduced in the 720p version than either of the upscale-compress-downscale versions, for example the microphone in the second image row and the bass guitar strings in the bottom row. But even if your video has those tiny details, it's worth losing them for the sake of the rest of picture.









P.S. My graphics driver inexplicably BSOD'd when Flash started playing back the native 720p YouTube page the second time. Upon reboot, the 50+ Firefox tabs I'd hoarded over the past months were gone: no crash session restore page, just my browser homepage. The best I managed to recover is a session from a month back. You've made me a sad puppy, manono.

[manono]

You've made me a sad puppy, manono.

I was enjoying reading until that last sentence. What, you got interested in the subject of the thread and decided to run your own tests which eventually resulted in the loss of your favorite links (or something like that)? Don't blame me; it's all lonrot's fault.

It seems to me that the results of YouTube's reencoding are so destructive to the source video that it's pointless to upscale and then think it's worth it because a forehead wrinkle or an eyelid crease is retained at the higher resolution, when so much detail gets destroyed at any resolution. But who am I to talk when so many of my sources for YouTube are VHS tapes? I'm happy to keep any forehead wrinkles.

[Brad]

I didn't mean that seriously, of course.

Pre-upscaling SD content is actually more worthwhile, though I don't tend to noise-reduce my VHS captures so if I provided an example of that it probably wouldn't be applicable to most people.

[lonrot]

Try using the High Quality Upload settings:



Source: https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/1722171

I did quite a few tests with 30,000 kbps (720p) and 50,000 kbps (1080p). The results are virtually the same compared to any other bitrate being CQ or VBR. Youtube will always downgrade the quality back to 3,000 kps for 720p and 4,000 for 1080p.

Maybe this feature is only available for certain channels?

I think the benefits of upscaling to 1080p are questionable, but for 1440p it's obvious

Yes, the difference between 720p to 1080 is roughly 1000 kbps. I think it's worth it, the image will always look smoother and less blocky.

As for 2k, the difference is huge (10,000 kbps), but that frame size is impractical. It's such a shame that Youtube doesn't offer better options in terms of bit rate compression.

I think by 1280p you mean to say 720p, and by 1920p, 1080p

Yup.

[manono]

Yes, the difference between 720p to 1080 is roughly 1000 kbps.

1080p has over twice the pixel count as compared to 720p (2073600 .vs 921600), yet only a third greater bitrate? How does that make for a higher quality encode?

I think it's worth it, the image will always look smoother and less blocky.

Now you're arguing the lower relative bitrate makes for a better-looking encode because more detail is lost? Usually one argues that the better looking encode is the one more true to the source. Your sample video was quite complex, with the trees moving in the background, and the tree movement was blocky at both resolutions (maybe in the source, too, dunno).

[lonrot]

Your sample video was quite complex, with the trees moving in the background, and the tree movement was blocky at both resolutions (maybe in the source, too, dunno).

You can download the source here.

1080p has over twice the pixel count as compared to 720p (2073600 .vs 921600), yet only a third greater bitrate?

The original frame size is 720p and is upscaled to 1080p, the higher bitrate will be beneficial for the upscaled video once you display it as the original width and height (720p), the same happens with 2K, the bitrate might be too low for that pixelcount but when resized it looks closer to the original source.

[mike20021969]

download the source here

Your source is AVC/MPEG-4 format. YouTube is re-encoding that to AVC/MPEG4 again.
That's probably why your losing quality (not to mention to exceptionally low bit-rate they use).

It's like tape-to-tape. Or re-encoding an mp3 at 320kbps to mp3 at 128kbps.
You lose quality each time.

[manono]

The original frame size is 720p and is upscaled to 1080p, the higher bitrate will be beneficial for the upscaled video once you display it as the original width and height (720p)

Simply not true. Now you're arguing a 1080p video at 4000 downsized to 720p when viewed through the YouTube player is better-looking than the original 720p video at 3000. You're not taking into account the extra encode at your end to upsize it, nor the resizing done at YouTube's end, nor the fact that it's a 1080p/4000 video that's being resized. Any of the problems/artifacts in the 1080p YouTube version will also be in the downsized 720p version of it. But, since you apparently like the softer/smoother version of it, maybe that's the result you're going for. But, again, this isn't most people's idea of higher quality.

[lonrot]

download the source here

Your source is AVC/MPEG-4 format. YouTube is re-encoding that to AVC/MPEG4 again.
That's probably why your losing quality.

Yes, that's a fact. However that source wasn't used to test Youtube's High quality settings as you suggested.

Here's the 720p source encoded at 300000 kbps / 384kbps aac which didn't make a visible difference in terms of quality or recompression when encoded by Youtube.

Same happened with a 50000 kbps 1080p sample that matches the recommended settings, Youtube treated the video equally as any CQ or VBR encoding.

[manono]

Here's the 720p source encoded at 300000 kbps / 384kbps aac which didn't make a visible difference in terms of quality or recompression when encoded by Youtube.

I agree with you there. Although it's usually said the better quality (=higher bitrate) the upload, the better quality the YouTube version, the difference will be minimal at best.

Since you prefer the softer versions of your uploads, I don't think it necessary to jump through hoops to get them. I wouldn't submit an upscaled and detailed 1080p version and then play the 720p version of it expecting to get the better smooth quality. I'd filter it properly myself before ever uploading it, and then upload just the 720p version. I still have no idea what you're using for this, but AviSynth and the x264 encoder (with a GUI, if you like) can do that easily. The result may not look the best when compared to the source when played on the computer, but on YouTube it can look significantly better compared to YouTube's reencode of the unfiltered version..

[lonrot]

mamono why would Youtube compress 1080p videos to 4000 kbps if that's lower than 3000 kbps in 720p?

Here's another thread where the poster had the same results with high quality settings. Perhaps Youtube had this feature enabled for some time, or they might save the original video upload for the future, similar to what happened to 480p videos when Youtube only displayed 360p, they eventually enabled that resolution for those old clips.

Checked to see how YouTube is encoding the 1080p files.
Looks to be about 4000kbps High Profile CABAC. That data rate seems low for this kind of action.

It seems to be universal.

[Brad]

The 1080p encodes have lower Bits/(Pixel*Frame), but better encoder settings: 2 ReFrames vs 1 (B-frames instead of IP only), longer GOPs with scene change detection instead of every 60 frames, etc.

[manono]

mamono why would Youtube compress 1080p videos to 4000 kbps if that's lower than 3000 kbps in 720p?

Obviously, 4000 isn't lower than 3000. It's lower per compressed pixel (the B/(P*F) mentioned by vaporeon800 above)). It looks to me like the overall quality is lower for 1080p. But what do I know? I have no interest in Hi-Def videos since all mine for YouTube come from Standard-Def sources, and often very low quality and low resolution Standard-Def sources.

Here's another thread where the poster had the same results with high quality settings.

When you upload complex videos (lots of movement/action), at the bitrates YouTube uses use you'll get nothing but a mess of blocks, no matter how high the quality of the original upload. On the other hand, a man reading the news at 1080p looks great. I have no idea why people expect motocross races to look good on YouTube. They don't use quality-based encoding, but the same average bitrates for all videos of the same resolution. Once again, filter it before uploading.

[lonrot]

Once again, filter it before uploading.

What do you mean by filtering? It would be great if you uploaded a filtered version of the video sample to compare.

I still have no idea what you're using for this, but AviSynth and the x264 encoder (with a GUI, if you like) can do that easily.

I use Ripbot with CQ. Can the x264 plugin on Vegas do the job?

[manono]

What do you mean by filtering?

If the smooth effect is what you like, do it yourself before uploading. Anything you do to change the appearance of the source video involves filtering.

It would be great if you uploaded a filtered version of the video sample to compare.

No thanks. I have enough of my own projects to keep me busy without taking on someone else's.

I use Ripbot with CQ.

Me too, for my YouTube stuff.

Can the x264 plugin on Vegas do the job?

I don't know. I don't use Vegas. However, the 5.0 versions of XviD4PSP have built in AviSynth filters you can use without really understanding how they work. So does MeGUI, I believe, but it has a greater learning curve.

[lonrot]

Thanks for the info manono, Ripbot can load .avs scripts via frameserver from vegas, but vegas can also do gausian blur or denoise to get some sort of smoothing. I prefer the source as it is upscaled at 1080p. Probably an unsharp mask would help to keep the details instead of watering them up.