YouTube offering higher quality video / Stage6 ends services!

[reez]

so you're just gonna let Igian get away with it? ahhh you guys suck

By the way, did you guys know about http://66stage.com/ already?

what's so special about them..they just host veoh vids. there's another website that does this and actually does it better. but since you say that many people are watching the forum then i rather not say the name.

[bayme]

Anyway... back to YouTube.. I noticed that 128k AAC gives me audio that seems to vary in volume when played back via the YouTube HQ setting... I wonder why that is...
Here is the video.. it has a static-y sound and the volume seems to vary quite a bit.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8O8rWViCixQ

Hi Marina, nice to see you here Never expected that to happen.

If you want maximum quality and you have the time to upload huge files to YT, leave (or resample) the audio to uncompressed PCM WAV 44.1 kHz / 16 bit (or 24 bit if available) and interleave audio per frame. And while recording audio leave a little empty headroom in the red, don't let it peak above -0.5 dB or thereabouts.
And for video I'd use x264 singlepass lossless which gives you about 3 and a half minutes (video duration) to max out the 1 GB upload filesize maximum with YouTube's upload tool. I'd use 25 frames/sec, not 30 or 29.970, especially if you're using 640x480 resolution.

If your video is longer than 3.5 minutes, try use any H.264 compression that you like which would max out the 1 GB limit. If you're able to use the x264 codec on a Mac (I've never seen a decent GUI for Mac to do that, but maybe there is one), use a twopass encode with an "insane quality" profile, and set it to encode to size (which would of course then be about 900 MB, not counting audio..). But hey, rendering that way might take an hour just for 5 minutes of video

First let us know; is there a decent Mac software/GUI for encoding to avi/mp4/mkv using the x264 codec?

so you're just gonna let Igian get away with it? ahhh you guys suck

Well, he has already blocked me from his user-profiles on YouTube! The only thing I could do is post a video about it and SAY it to him. Maybe Marina can help us out, her power on the Tube is much bigger than mine :P

By the way, did you guys know about http://66stage.com/ already?

what's so special about them..they just host veoh vids. there's another website that does this and actually does it better. but since you say that many people are watching the forum then i rather not say the name.

What I think is special is their domainname, color-scheme, font-choice. Seems they thrive on stage6 fame, or try to. Their pre-selections for Google/Veoh are pretty good though, in my opinion.

[dtfinch]

Hey dtfinch, that's a bit silly too, because clearly it was a group effort by yawoo, me, you, and the feedback from all users in this thread:

My comment credited you and yawoo for finding fmt=6 before I found fmt=18

[drwho]

No disrespect intended to people that discovered and contributed here but.
Looks like what youtube is implementing is lagging behind other similar sites that began to compete like http://www.crunchyroll.com/ It offers readily low, high and larger resolutions buttons

[45tripp]

wow, trying to be secretive about youtube's own beta upgrade testing...

wow, worrying about taking credit...

wow, wishing people dead...


Personally I feel most of all this is chasing about youtube's skirts.

but all play and technical info, is still all around here.
and there's no theft of 'glory' (wow) unless there's admission that the culmination of this thread is:
take X url and slap '&fmt=18' at the end of it.

I also bet when they get this finalized, they will add a force HQ option in the user settings.

for credit seekers,
I credit the above statement.

If your video is longer than 3.5 minutes, try use any H.264 compression that you like which would max out the 1 GB limit. If you're able to use the x264 codec on a Mac (I've never seen a decent GUI for Mac to do that, but maybe there is one), use a twopass encode with an "insane quality" profile, and set it to encode to size (which would of course then be about 900 MB, not counting audio..). But hey, rendering that way might take an hour just for 5 minutes of video

what an incredible waste of resources.

[reez]

No disrespect intended to people that discovered and contributed here but.
Looks like what youtube is implementing is lagging behind other similar sites that began to compete like http://www.crunchyroll.com/ It offers readily low, high and larger resolutions buttons

never heard of crunchyroll, dailymotion is a better example. they now have an HD option

[bayme]

My comment credited you and yawoo for finding fmt=6 before I found fmt=18

OK, what reez wrote made me think something else.

@45tripp; The crediting is not that important. What really bothered me is seeing this Gian guy trying to censor the truth. Every time I post(ed) a comment politely explaining to him (and the readers on YouTube) who wrote what where on this 'find', he carefully deletes those comments. It's like when a wikipedia page keeps getting reverted to something that is clearly not true; Nobody likes that.

what an incredible waste of resources.

Well, she did ask what would invoke maximum quality, which is what this does. You can say "yeah but half the size would be fine too", but that makes no sense if all you have is the upload filesize maximum (and time). I'd always max that out if you want to make full use of YT quality..
They're still converting your uploaded material, meaning the least compressed file you upload will give the best results..

Looks like what youtube is implementing is lagging behind other similar sites that began to compete like http://www.crunchyroll.com/ It offers readily low, high and larger resolutions buttons

Speed: Very Slow (84% of sites are faster), Avg Load Time: 5.2 Seconds
according to alexa. I still think the best option is hosting your own flashplayer and videofiles. That way the video will not be taken down so easily if somebody happens to not like it. What I feel is dangerous about sites like YouTube and dailymotion is their immense power. Usage like this should be a community-paid service. It's still about profits and commercial gain and such, while it shouldn't be. I think users should "own" their channels/profiles, not Google.

[reez]

Every time I post(ed) a comment politely explaining to him (and the readers on YouTube) who wrote what where on this 'find', he carefully deletes those comments. It's like when a wikipedia page keeps getting reverted to something that is clearly not true; Nobody likes that.

I can't believe other people would do the same thing. It's soooo stoopid to leave comments on his page when he clearly wants to be known as "hq hacker". COME ON PPL where is ye COMMON SENSE.

oh and i no longer care much about YT now that hulu.com has movies, i spend most time there now lol

[bayme]

oh and i no longer care much about YT now that hulu.com has movies, i spend most time there now lol

Unfortunately its content is country-blocked for all outside the US. I'm telling you, sites doing that will all fail at that. Territorial distribution does not work on the internet. As long as the entertainment industrials don't get that, there will be sites like Releaselog, tvtorrents, piratebay etc.

[reez]

Unfortunately its content is country-blocked for all outside the US. I'm telling you, sites doing that will all fail at that. Territorial distribution does not work on the internet. As long as the entertainment industrials don't get that, there will be sites like Releaselog, tvtorrents, piratebay etc.

i'm sure they know that. Alot of hulu is based on how much the companys want to share...some episode get taken down because for some reason fox no longer wants it up. I'm just saying that YT has fallen. It's not like thought it was that big anyway.

--tune out here if you don't like babbling--

The only reason i got addicted to the net is cuz i was KICKING ASS in atari play's battleship(for those who know what i'm talking about, i was sumbody3...YES the INFAMOUS SUMBODY3!). But after they shut down i got stuck with YT. I spent hours watching simpsons and movies. But after everything started to get removed i felt obligated to start posting copyright infringement on there and stage6. The no#1 complaint i get right now is that YT is BORING..which is kinda funny since it is the same people who say yt needs more "amateur skits cuz that's what made yt" LAWL. But now i do my timeshifting on hulu and everything is back to the way it was like in the beginning of 2007....except for battleship..damn i'm willing to PAY to play that thing..and I PAY FOR NOTHING.

--tune back in--

check out igian's answer to my question on how he figured out this AMAZING LIFE ALTERING HACK
http://image.bayimg.com/fajcdaabd.jpg

happy early st.patrick


[/img]

[dtfinch]

The greasemonkey part cracked me up last night.

YouTube prefers to be a vlog / home video site. So if you just want to find hundreds of thousands of amatuer bedroom dance videos, you're at the right place. I've been downloading mostly from veoh since stage6 ended.

[reez]

YouTube prefers to be a vlog / home video site.

that's INSANELY false.
--CAUTION: RANT BELOW--
They Don't WANT the vloggers..but they have no choice because the companies doesn't want to give them permission to host their content. They give them their own ad surrounded channel and they end up posting commercials. YT tried to do too many things at a time. So now what the companies do is use YT as a Huge bulletin board where they allow content to reach the top viewed and create enough buzz then PULL IT. Like the time Fox let people post whole segments of American Idol because the ratings were low. The fisrt time i saw "the dark knight prologue" was on YT... after they pulled it, i went on a witch hunt for it across the net..now imagine if WB themselves hosted it..i would have definitely watched it there causing the post on YT to be no more than a commercial.

YAAAA

[benrtc]

Does anyone notice amplitude compression of audio with YT's HQ?

This clip;

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TMmS5DZXTaQ&fmt=18 < (edit:deleted)


you can hear once the music starts playing, it's too loud and distorts, and then the audio level drops. It sounds like slow attack time on a compressor.

I have no audio effects in vegas and am using 44.1K quality 98 vbr, while not 2pass, seems like high enough audio quality. YT is trying to do level control but needs some tweaking.

[dissociative]

I think that should be better to search for another possible flash based video sharing site that allows H.264 + AAC .mp4 uploads without transcoding/downgrading, because I don't have the time or resources to upload almost lossless quality audio & video material of videogame captures to obtain the best quality possible, aside that the youtube H.264 implementation just sucks in around 50% of the cases or even more and I'm not sure from now If I have the control that I had before over the A/V quality of my own videos in Youtube.

[bayme]

I think that should be better to search for another possible flash based video sharing site that allows H.264 + AAC .mp4 uploads without transcoding/downgrading, because I don't have the time or resources to upload almost lossless quality audio & video material

Exactly. Either that or we should find out how to bypass YT's converters (like before with the 349 kbit/s limit for FLV). Or YT should offer the option to use/download the upload in its original format.

Why can't Google/YouTube just give us the EXACT specs their site/player requires, then we will gladly use that. Give us the resolution, codec, and max bitrate values and we're all happy campers. (I don't understand the secrecy here. They're just making it harder on themselves.) They can easily write a check for certain values in each upload, and leave the upload alone if the user did it right.

you can hear once the music starts playing, it's too loud and distorts, and then the audio level drops. It sounds like slow attack time on a compressor.

I have no audio effects in vegas and am using 44.1K quality 98 vbr, while not 2pass, seems like high enough audio quality. YT is trying to do level control but needs some tweaking.

Do you mean quality 98 vbr with Windows Media 9 ?
And yes, I did notice strange level-normalizing crap after uploads. They should really stop doing that, it's pretty harsh and unpolished.
Check the start and ending of this example: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1tbklnLBlUU&fmt=18 You hear a strongly amped very low level digital sound (beepy). The source has this, but at -60 dB. Clearly, the tech people at YouTube aren't familiar with work on audio. Very un-professional for the second most visited website in the world..

[benrtc]

bayme wrote:

Do you mean quality 98 vbr with Windows Media 9 ?
And yes, I did notice strange level-normalizing crap after uploads. They should really stop doing that, it's pretty harsh and unpolished.
Check the start and ending of this example: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1tbklnLBlUU&fmt=18 You hear a strongly amped very low level digital sound (beepy). The source has this, but at -60 dB. Clearly, the tech people at YouTube aren't familiar with work on audio. Very un-professional for the second most visited website in the world..

Windows media 9.2 "quality 98" (quality vbr) was used. I could try losses or pro 10 but it won't solve the problem. The Jackie deShannon clip has a small burst of distortion in the clapping at the beginning as the audio is brought up and sounds like the same kind of problem but haven't heard the original. YT will probably get feedback and adjust whatever software they're using as a level control. Their processing sounds like a compressor that trys to make everything sound loud.


In this clip; http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i6t564idBvA&fmt=18 < (edit:deleted)


near the beginning where the old man says "Hi." "how are you son?" The "how" (-2.5dB in the editor) is distorted. It's clean off the dvd. Overall YT's audio is a little too hot.

[bayme]

Windows media 9.2 "quality 98" (quality vbr) was used. I could try losses or pro 10 but it won't solve the problem. The Jackie deShannon clip has a small burst of distortion in the clapping at the beginning as the audio is brought up and sounds like the same kind of problem

Yes, this can be solved by lowering attack and release times. If they really want to process audio by compressing or leveling it, they should use a short attack time, like 11 ms (or faster), and a short release time, like 18 ms (or faster) with regards to amplitude altering settings, otherwise it will be manipulating the originals too much, or you'll get those clipping issues.

[rajman]

Hey guys...damn I havent posted here in a while, Ive been watching all these videos about the so called HD hack and that guy iGianMC who claims to have found it is a right idiot...I also explained to him hes not the finder but this forum is and than he ranted crap on to me, than he saw my HD vids on my page and wondered how I done it lol and now wants to know how I do it...but obviously Im not gonna help that thief! My page is http://www.youtube.com/RajmanHD
I encode all my vids at FLV and alot higher bitrate than normal Yotube settings and all my videos (except the first 3 I think) are all in Stereo sound, heres some links to prove the High quality video and stereo sound:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bZqr0-rSSnk
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FAI6PFYnA4Y
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cR_8gachV9Q
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HjfK20K4ze4

My page will consist of all HD stuff...if you guys saw an earlier post of mine (on page 5) I had a previous Youtube account http://www.youtube.com/RajmanReturns, I had about 160 vids and many in HD (HQ) using the FLV and &fmt=6 trick and was mentioned on the description that this is the forum for all my help and check it out....than Youtube closed my account last week beacuse I uploaded The Hulk and Speed Racer trailers and said 'Its copyright of NBC Universal, and I broke the rules' I was like WTFFFFFFF..theres soooo many versions of these trailers on Youtube and they chose to ban me? I could have used my old vids to prove to guys on youtube that iGianMC is a fraud and he did not find this out and it was this forum

[dissociative]

by the way at the beginning there was another value for the "&fmt=" tag that gives another format different from H.264 mp4 and flv but I can't remember which was the value, anyone can remember it?

[dtfinch]

17 gives you an ultra low quality 3gp video.

[reez]

but obviously Im not gonna help that thief!

O_o? ..but you DID ..if you watch his "hack" vid i see you explaining how it's done in the comments section. But idk why anyone is complaining about it. I've brought the info to you guys and The finders themselves don't want to take action..they instead want to talk and argue with the liar. It doesn't bother me cuz i'm not the "finder"..but i'll back anyone who's willing...cuz boy do i like me some YT drama

[bayme]

Youtube closed my account last week because I uploaded The Hulk and Speed Racer trailers and said 'Its copyright of NBC Universal, and I broke the rules' I was like WTFFFFFFF..theres soooo many versions of these trailers on Youtube and they chose to ban me? I could have used my old vids to prove to guys on youtube that iGianMC is a fraud and he did not find this out and it was this forum

Here's one of my older ones at 723 kbit/s and 448x336 resolution:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QPJNwfL09M8 (posted in november 2007, are you getting that, iGian?!)
Here's one from October at 800 kbit/s (not mine): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vf2MjxPXr8Y

YT took down 2 earlier videos of mine as well, which are all over YouTube, except mine were stereo and higher bandwidth, so they probably gained extra attention at Viacom thanks to that. BayTSP, Fox, Universal, NBC and their copyright infringement police-men aren't fair. I've been in a long-winded email-discussion with Nicole from BayTSP (Viacom's agent for infringement cases) because they leave the shitty ones of the exact same content be, and BayTSP refuses to admit to that. They keep writing me they did not pick me out, and I keep replying with links to other vids with the same content proving they did single me out. This has been going on for a month now. It's ridiculous, they seem partial to the positive pushing of YT-technology.

Hey reez; fighting against a mainstream idea is terribly hard. It's similar to fighting Fox News. You can try, but I just don't have the time for that. Those who are curious and would like to know the truth will find it here and here.

Here's one Gian could never come up with, the way to embed the fmt=18 version: http://paste2.org/p/14864

[doctordrew]

I don't see the fascination about &fmt=18 when &fmt=6 is clearly superior in terms of video quality in nearly every video I've gone through.

The only good thing about 18 is that it's in stereo, but I don't know if that's even certain yet.

[bayme]

I don't see the fascination about &fmt=18 when &fmt=6 is clearly superior in terms of video quality in nearly every video I've gone through.

For most videos I see it's the other way around! In fact, many old videos don't even have a format 6 version available.
And yes, fmt=18 turned stereo, ever since ~March 9th. (Read back a few pages in this thread. Oh and the Fox News link I just posted misses the R channel..)

Let's analyze Marina's latest upload;

Format 18 ( http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PhuExBHFjhs&fmt=18 )

Complete name        : E:\2E8BB8B4d01.mp4
Format               : MPEG-4
Format/Info          : ISO 14496-1 version 2
Format/Family        : MPEG-4
File size            : 16.3 MiB
PlayTime             : 4mn 976ms
Bit rate             : 568 Kbps
StreamSize           : 74.6 KiB

Video #0
Codec                : H.264
Codec/Info           : H.264 (3GPP)
PlayTime             : 4mn 473ms
Bit rate             : 440 Kbps
Nominal bit rate     : 430 Kbps
Width                : 480 pixels
Height               : 360 pixels
Display Aspect ratio : 4/3
Frame rate           : 29.970 fps
StreamSize           : 12.6 MiB
Title                : (C) 2007 Google Inc. v06.24.2007.

Audio #0
Codec                : AAC LC
Codec/Info           : AAC Low Complexity
PlayTime             : 4mn 976ms
Bit rate             : 127 Kbps
Bit rate mode        : VBR
Channel(s)           : 2 channels
Channel positions    : L R
Sampling rate        : 44.1 KHz
Resolution           : 16 bits
StreamSize           : 3.64 MiB
Title                : (C) 2007 Google Inc. v06.24.2007.

Format 6 ( http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PhuExBHFjhs&fmt=6 )

Complete name        : E:\76FC20C8d01.flv
Format               : Flash Video
File size            : 19.4 MiB
PlayTime             : 4mn 500ms
Bit rate             : 675 Kbps
starttime            : 0.000
totalduration        : 240.500
totaldatarate        : 675.051
bytelength           : 20293715.000
canseekontime        : Yes

Video #0
Codec                : Sorenson H263
PlayTime             : 4mn 466ms
Bit rate             : 571 Kbps
Width                : 480 pixels
Height               : 360 pixels
Display Aspect ratio : 4/3
Frame rate           : 29.996 fps
Bits/(Pixel*Frame)   : 0.110

Audio #0
Codec                : MPEG-1 Audio layer 3
Bit rate             : 96 Kbps
Bit rate mode        : CBR
Channel(s)           : 1 channel
Sampling rate        : 44.1 KHz
Resolution           : 16 bits
Writing library      : Xing (new)

Now what's this rumour about fmt=6 being of higher quality? I don't see it. I'll take the H.264 over the H.263 anytime. The only thing that might cause lower quality NOW is the fact that Google/YT needs to finetune their encode settings a little for the fmt=18 version.

On H.264:
Backers claim improved compression means a dramatic improvement in compression over the older H.263 standard at no loss of video quality - a viewer of an H.264 video at 384K bit/sec should see the same sort of picture as somebody viewing a video at 768K bit/sec sent via H.263.

In the above example, the H.263 video is 571 kbit/s and the H.264 video is 440 kbit/s. In theory this means the H.264 version should even be the equivalent of ~880 Kbit/s videoquality of H.263..

[doctordrew]

If you compare this video with &fmt=6 and &fmt=18, the 6 version looks a lot better and the 18 version has a lot of blocking/smearing (especially the first several seconds):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=27mb_AyzGyQ&fmt=18
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=27mb_AyzGyQ&fmt=6

[bayme]

That might be a coincidence because the source is so sharp. Remember, the FLV H.263 does smoothing to hide compression artifacts, while the mp4 does not and hopes to maintain the sharpness of the source. Good example of that is this one:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WQxFcUq7LrI&fmt=18
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WQxFcUq7LrI&fmt=6
Clearly the fmt 18 version is better here. (because there is no 6 version)

And also, the H.264 codec is new for Google/YT (the FLV1 codec isn't), so it needs more finetuning at their end still..

[reez]

BayTSP, Fox, Universal, NBC and their copyright infringement police-men aren't fair. I've been in a long-winded email-discussion with Nicole from BayTSP (Viacom's agent for infringement cases) because they leave the shitty ones of the exact same content be, and BayTSP refuses to admit to that. They keep writing me they did not pick me out, and I keep replying with links to other vids with the same content proving they did single me out.

i've been having the same problem, except it's by the parent company only not baytsp. It's this girl who brags about taking down your vids before she reports you, but for some reason(probably cuz i keep coming back) she's OBSESSED with me..i can't do ANYTHING i keep having to abandon my channel and upload under a different alias. .and despite having called her EVERY degrading name in the book, she just HAS to argue back when i comment...i feel special

Hey reez; fighting against a mainstream idea is terribly hard. It's similar to fighting Fox News. You can try, but I just don't have the time for that.

haha you're comparing gian with FOX!?...all i will say is that he is easy and small..i've brought down bigger people before..if only you knew..if only

[Boulotaur2024]

Either that or we should find out how to bypass YT's converters (like before with the 349 kbit/s limit for FLV). Or YT should offer the option to use/download the upload in its original format.

Yup, I was asking myself the same thing, there should be a way to do one's own encoding just like before, just imagine the amazing quality one could achieve with perfect h264 encoding !

Just did an upload test on YT with a 1080p HD demo vid originally from Microsoft but resized to 480x360 (I've been uploading for over 1h now lol...). Curious to see the result, that could be a good test video should Youtube finetunes their encoder settings (sorry I'm French I realize my wording isn't perfect).

edit : its up on Youtube :
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cmHdkdiPtb8&fmt=18

[bayme]

but resized to 480x360

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cmHdkdiPtb8

The &fmt=18 is there, but how did you "resize"? You did not letterbox it, meaning you need to add black top and bottom bars.

[hotforwords]

So bayme... you're saying go all out? Hmm.. maybe I'll try that.. though it will take me forever to upload a GB! I wonder how long it will take them to compress on their end? And I'm doing almost 5 video uploads a week now.. so it might be too intensive for me. Hmm.. so maybe I won't go all out....

rajman's stuff looks amazing! But I guess they will never convert his stuff to the new "hq" stuff, right? So uploading flv is probably a step backwards now, right?

If you guys help me get the best quality video.. I will MORE than make sure the YouTube community knows it was you who helped me. I got 2.5 million views last week alone.. so I can easily get the message out there if you want!

My audio is def. sucking right now on my last couple videos.. even my last one where I brought the levels down.. still sounds horrible in HQ mode.

Here is the latest video: Audio is all over the place! Arggh! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dpp9ByYqRGk&fmt=18