YouTube offering higher quality video / Stage6 ends services!

[bayme]

That's interesting if it is actually stereo; however, the loss of 250+ kbps hurts the look of some of my converted vids quite badly. Since I believe video quality is more important than sound quality

I haven't seen any loss. This is avc/H264, it can do with 1/3 of the bitrate what other codecs can't even do with double that. Also, I don't see what audio has to do with the loss, they went from 96 to 118 kbit on that. Besides; Better audio quality gives the viewer the idea that video looks better too.

By the way, did you all know Stage6 is shutting down in 2 days?
http://www.stage6.com/blog/108/
I think this is simply DivX losing from AVC/x264. They know they can't beat google.

[tmh]

but still, I think this is really bad, selectively censoring countries to take part in rating, commenting, responding to videos on YouTube. WTH? Do we live in communist Europe now? Is this the result of some type of internet control? All the more reason to vote for net neutrality over there in the US, y'all!

We in the U.S. do not need voting advice from a euro. If you'd read our constitution you would know that and not have made this stupid. lazy comment.

[bayme]

We in the U.S. do not need voting advice from a euro.

Oooh poor edgy american you. Hurts to see your economy drowning, doesn't it? That's what you get from voting religious lunatics living in the dark ages into office. Still doesn't sink in that you're breathing the same air everybody else does?
And by the way: http://www.x-rates.com/d/USD/EUR/graph120.html (you might want to listen to Europeans..)

And your constitution? It's working alright: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IMaMYL_shxc&fmt=18

P.S. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7f01IBDoZGg&fmt=18

[reez]

Another thing they seem to be testing with is the new notice:
This video is not available in your country.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kzDB5gki3i4
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S6itXaHpiTE

didnt you guys know this? it's part of the new sponsoring thing. Which ever company sponsored the zep video does not want it to be shown in other countries. When they find your copyright infringing video, the company has a chance to make money off of it(by surrounding it with ads) instead of just pulling it down like they use to. And of coarse when teh largent gets involved they then need to follow certain rools...but this way it stays up. Basically if they couldn't do this, then the vid would have been pulled just like old times. i know the channel belongs to zep co but this happens to other vids.
e.g. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZKSxHYK_wfs
the user is not a partner

[bayme]

didnt you guys know this? it's part of the new sponsoring thing. Which ever company sponsored the zep video does not want it to be shown in other countries.

I don't see that option when I upload/share videos. Or is it only available to big companies?
Also, it doesn't only apply to music videos or copyrighted material (so it seems). There are even some plain video-logs that give the notice.
It's a ridiculously old-fashioned concept: Trying to impose territorial distribution on internet. Most people gave up on that in the late nineties already (because it will not work)!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZKSxHYK_wfs&fmt=18 works fine here (no country limit..) funny video btw, had not seen that

I was trying to get the HQ also forced in the embed code. So far I have only found this to work:

Add &ap=%2526fmt%3D18 after the two occurances of "&rel=1", so after the video-urls.
But the video sometimes gets only played in part, and/or the embedded player behaves very strange

[reez]

I don't see that option when I upload/share videos. Or is it only available to big companies?
Also, it doesn't only apply to music videos or copyrighted material (so it seems). There are even some plain video-logs that give the notice.
It's a ridiculously old-fashioned concept: Trying to impose territorial distribution on internet. Most people gave up on that in the late nineties already (because it will not work)!

read here
http://www.google.com/support/youtube/bin/answer.py?answer=83766&hl=en-uk

under "What kinds of usage policies are there?"

so far none of my (recently uped) vids have the HQ. even with the fmt

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZKSxHYK_wfs&fmt=18 works fine here (no country limit..) funny video btw, had not seen that smile.gif

that was just an example of the "monetizing" not the "not available in your country" crap[/quote]

[diddyman4real]

ok, i know the whole process of doing the duration cheat was explained by 45tripp in the other thread, but since i cant use avisynth, since it refuses to open.... i want to know if i can a pad a file using windows movie maker, and if so what is the process of doing it in move maker? do i just take a black picture and extended it past the 11 minute mark to be able to do the duration cheat? and do i still have to convert the video into flash after padding? i'm real new to doing this so be nice about whatever you say to this post please, and dumb it down as much as possible.

[DereX888]

...and why is this lame subject in the LATEST NEWS ? :O

[bayme]

...and why is this lame subject in the LATEST NEWS ? :O

Because it is Latest Video News ?
P.S. Why is your signature so annoyingly lame and HUGE?

[Denizzje]

Quite a good ammount of my videos start to work with &fmt=18... and I am happy that they finally decided to upgrade their codecs!

[wonderpierrot]

That's interesting if it is actually stereo; however, the loss of 250+ kbps hurts the look of some of my converted vids quite badly. Since I believe video quality is more important than sound quality

I haven't seen any loss. This is avc/H264, it can do with 1/3 of the bitrate what other codecs can't even do with double that. Also, I don't see what audio has to do with the loss, they went from 96 to 118 kbit on that. Besides; Better audio quality gives the viewer the idea that video looks better too.

Personally I am noticing a bit more blocks when I use 18 than if I use 6 on some of my videos, but maybe that's only because the bitrate for the HQ FLV is so high.

Not tempted to try using 18 again, as the Flash 9 r115 update causes all sorts of YouTube issues with FireFox 3 Beta.

[Denizzje]

That's interesting if it is actually stereo; however, the loss of 250+ kbps hurts the look of some of my converted vids quite badly. Since I believe video quality is more important than sound quality

I haven't seen any loss. This is avc/H264, it can do with 1/3 of the bitrate what other codecs can't even do with double that. Also, I don't see what audio has to do with the loss, they went from 96 to 118 kbit on that. Besides; Better audio quality gives the viewer the idea that video looks better too.

Personally I am noticing a bit more blocks when I use 18 than if I use 6 on some of my videos, but maybe that's only because the bitrate for the HQ FLV is so high.

Not tempted to try using 18 again, as the Flash 9 v115 update causes all sorts of YouTube issues with FireFox 3 Beta.

18 works much better than 6 here. But yes, on some videos you see much more blocks and the audio sounds a bit 'sharp' then. This mostly happens with videos where you can see alot of blocks already on the old youtube quality, and the h264 version only worsens it. But for some videos 18 is a HUGE improvement and I hope they start using it as soon as possible.

[tmh]

We in the U.S. do not need voting advice from a euro.

Oooh poor edgy american you. It hurts to see your economy drowning, doesn't it? That's what you get from voting religious lunatics living in the dark ages into office. Still doesn't sink in that you're breathing the same air everybody else does? You're pathetic.
And by the way: http://www.x-rates.com/d/USD/EUR/graph120.html (you might want to listen to Europeans..)

And your constitution? It's working alright: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IMaMYL_shxc&fmt=18

P.S. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7f01IBDoZGg&fmt=18

um.....uh.....yeah, I guess I was right that you have no life outside YT video format discussions! If there was some point to the videos you linked I guess it was a bit over my head. Oh, I guess the nut rambling about jesus made sone sense - oh wait a minute, this is a video forum.

Dude, you need to get out from behind your computer screen once in a while. I know that as a euro you ain't like hooking with chicks and the like, but do SOMETHING!

[bayme]

18 works much better than 6 here. But yes, on some videos you see much more blocks and the audio sounds a bit 'sharp' then. This mostly happens with videos where you can see alot of blocks already on the old youtube quality, and the h264 version only worsens it.

None of the videos I try have the 6 version available, but the 18 works for all of them. Plus it's served a lot faster too (new servers, less congested cables?).

I'm surprised H.264 would even show blocks at a 500+ kbit/s bitrate and 480x360 resolution. They can improve on the commands they fire at video now to get rid of them. I've seen some blockiness, but not much, and indeed quality is wonderful this way. Audio is great with AAC LC at ~119 kbit/s, if only they could allow stereo.

[yawoo]

18 works much better than 6 here. But yes, on some videos you see much more blocks and the audio sounds a bit 'sharp' then. This mostly happens with videos where you can see alot of blocks already on the old youtube quality, and the h264 version only worsens it. But for some videos 18 is a HUGE improvement and I hope they start using it as soon as possible.

I have downloaded both fm18 and fmt6 version, fmt18 is more blocks than fmt6.
Since total datarate of fmt6 is higher (fmt6 is around 700-800kbps, fmt18 around 600kbps). In addition, audio datarate of fmt18 is higher (around 110kbps, while fmt6 is just 96kbps), that means the video datarate of fmt18 will become smaller.

I find that fmt6 is no longer worked for my youtube video. But fmt18 is worked for all my video now. It seems that youtube is finalized the video format as fmt18 (H264+AAC).

[stsin]

YT didn't convert any of mine to high bitrate FLV (no &fmt=6). But just tried this test file uploaded awhile ago, and indeed it has been converted to H264.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Xz3Zi9Drh0&fmt=18

Original (purposely made it large (high bitrate) in trying to get it converted):
Video: DivX4 @ 5933 Kbps, 640x480, 23.976 fps
Audio: MP3 at 192 Kbps, 2 channels, 44.1 KHz

YT conversion:
Video: H.264 @ 507 Kbps, 480x360, 24 fps
Audio: AAC LC @ 125Kbps, VBR, 2 channels, 44.1 KHz

And looks like I was wrong about YT not adding stereo

edit: All the files I uploaded, even over 6 months ago can be viewed with &fmt=18. Even those I converted to flv @ 320x240. Kept the same size, but of course doesn't look as good, more blurry.

[wonderpierrot]

I find that fmt6 is no longer worked for my youtube video. But fmt18 is worked for all my video now. It seems that youtube is finalized the video format as fmt18 (H264+AAC).

I doubt that, otherwise YouTube would've automatically serve up the H264 version instead of the HQ FLV version. Also this H264 format requires the latest version of Flash, which still many people don't have. All my converted videos works at 6 and YouTube serves the video in this format automatically, I have yet to see the H264 version being served automatically.

[Denizzje]

18 works much better than 6 here. But yes, on some videos you see much more blocks and the audio sounds a bit 'sharp' then. This mostly happens with videos where you can see alot of blocks already on the old youtube quality, and the h264 version only worsens it.

None of the videos I try have the 6 version available, but the 18 works for all of them. Plus it's served a lot faster too (new servers, less congested cables?).

I'm surprised H.264 would even show blocks at a 500+ kbit/s bitrate and 480x360 resolution. They can improve on the commands they fire at video now to get rid of them. I've seen some blockiness, but not much, and indeed quality is wonderful this way. Audio is great with AAC LC at ~119 kbit/s, if only they could allow stereo.

Do you have by chance (or somebody else) videos longer than 20 minutes? If so, are these converted too? Some of my long videos do not work yet ... I hope they will get converted to H.264 too!

[bayme]

Do you have by chance (or somebody else) videos longer than 20 minutes? If so, are these converted too? Some of my long videos do not work yet ... I hope they will get converted to H.264 too!

Yes. As far as I can tell, Google has pretty much converted close to 95% of all videos. Here are a lot of hour-long H.264 videos, here's a recent one of 23 minutes.

audio datarate of fmt18 is higher (around 110kbps, while fmt6 is just 96kbps), that means the video datarate of fmt18 will become smaller.

I'm sorry, but ~116 minus 96 kbit/s is only 20 kbit/s. Plus it's a variable bitrate with AAC LC m4a. That would hardly yield a difference for the video quality.

I think they just need to change/improve their encoding configuration/filters. They can do a lot better with Flash9/H.264 and AAC+ audio. I mean, check this example, the video in that is 268 kbit/s, the (stereo) audio is 81 kbit/s. It has some blocking and artifacts (though few), but those are gone if I'd have 500+ kbit/s for the same source. And that's just H.263 and vbr mp3!

[DereX888]

...and why is this lame subject in the LATEST NEWS ? :O

Because it is Latest Video News ?
P.S. Why is your signature so annoyingly lame and HUGE?

dude, flash "video" has as much in common with digital video as animated GIFs do (and even less with analog video...)
So let me ask you again:
how does it fit in latest VIDEO news?



oh, my signature is that huge so you won't miss it, why else

[mohnitor]

"dude, flash "video" has as much in common with digital video as animated GIFs do "

dude, maybe it is, because computers can ONLY show digital video?

Everything that travels on a Hard-disk, or a silver plate is Digital Video.
Video, yeah. Before these small Handy Cams for the use of everyone they called this Film...

I saw a lot of stunning digital videos (even HD, excellent quality) - but only for a few minutes, then I felt asleep. As the others did. The only one getting a digital orgasm was the editor....

YouTube is entertainment. Could be good quality - but most important: content.
A few of my Vidz have more than 2 million watchers... and I like the oportunity to compare my stuff this way.
Boring Supereditions in HQ: 2 watchers (editor - and maybe his wife - because rest of the family left the house when he started the screen...)

Digital: YES - VIDEO: of course....
And if you don´t like the YouTube Video: just change the page - you don´t have to leave the house....

[DereX888]

"dude, flash "video" has as much in common with digital video as animated GIFs do "

dude, maybe it is, because computers can ONLY show digital video?

Everything that travels on a Hard-disk, or a silver plate is Digital Video.
Video, yeah. Before these small Handy Cams for the use of everyone they called this Film...

I saw a lot of stunning digital videos (even HD, excellent quality) - but only for a few minutes, then I felt asleep. As the others did. The only one getting a digital orgasm was the editor....

YouTube is entertainment. Could be good quality - but most important: content.
A few of my Vidz have more than 2 million watchers... and I like the oportunity to compare my stuff this way.
Boring Supereditions in HQ: 2 watchers (editor - and maybe his wife - because rest of the family left the house when he started the screen...)

Digital: YES - VIDEO: of course....
And if you don´t like the YouTube Video: just change the page - you don´t have to leave the house....

so?
because few of your flash animations were watched, it belongs to latest VIDEO news?
There are sections here that may suit you better, or maybe ask Baldrick and he'll even designate some new subforum for your youtube flash animation hobby, why not - but don't tell me it belong to latest video news, dude!
And what it has to do with what I like or I don't? I don't give a flyin' f*ck about whether you like it or not, and certainly I don't want you to be interested in what I do and don't like either. Just because you like it, it doesn't make it "latest video news" material LOL
Sometimes it pays to use the bigger head, ya know?

[dtfinch]

fmt_map takes a comma delimited list of formats, so I expect that when they're ready they'll change it from "6/720000/7/0/0" to something like "18/500000/9/0/115,6/720000/7/0/0" or the reverse.

That's a lot of money just to support people who don't want the latest Flash.

[bayme]

because few of your flash animations were watched, it belongs to latest VIDEO news?

Flash 9 videos aren't "animations", it can show full-fledged HD video. I suggest you inform yourself some more before making such silly statements: http://labs.adobe.com/wiki/index.php/Flash_Player:9:Update:H.264#Q:_Why_is_H.264.2FHE-..._9_Update_3.3F
Your type of talk is typical for your kind (linux zealot). Sure, it's unfortunate that Flash 9 isn't Open Source or FSF stuff, but Flash 9 gives A LOT of extra (free/open) options we've never seen before, so stop complaining.

As much as you enjoy stepping on YouTube, you might want to wake up to reality:
According to these numbers: http://www.alexa.com/data/details/traffic_details/youtube.com
20% of the internet using world is generating 16 unique pageviews each day there. If you roughly calculate what that implies, it means 264 million people watch about 10 times 10 megabytes of video from YouTube. Ooh, I'm sorry for thinking that heavy updates on a website serving 24 petabytes of VIDEO each day might be considered news to some!

I bet you watch at least 2 YouTube videos daily, you just won't admit to it. Be consequent: localhost resolve all DNS queries for youtube.com and video.l.google.com and stop whining if you miss things.

[Captain Satellite]

Where does it offer the viewer a choice? My latest video shows up as higher quality if I add '&fmt=18'. However, my original upload was 16:9 and the HQ version isn't. What's up with that?


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JTicWbp1MLQ

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JTicWbp1MLQ&fmt=18

[bayme]

Where does it offer the viewer a choice? My latest video shows up as higher quality if I add '&fmt=18'. However, my original upload was 16:9 and the HQ version isn't. What's up with that?


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JTicWbp1MLQ

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JTicWbp1MLQ&fmt=18

Yes I noticed that problem on some videos already. Let's hope they're reading here.
You can switch it to 16:9 by clicking the button on the bottom right (left from the fullscreen one), but fullscreen should of course show it 16:9 as well, which it doesn't. If you want 16:9 displayed in a 4:3 world, upload it with black bars (I always would). Letterbox the thing before uploading.

[Captain Satellite]

Where does it offer the viewer a choice? My latest video shows up as higher quality if I add '&fmt=18'. However, my original upload was 16:9 and the HQ version isn't. What's up with that?


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JTicWbp1MLQ

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JTicWbp1MLQ&fmt=18

Yes I noticed that problem on some videos already. Let's hope they're reading here.
You can switch it to 16:9 by clicking the button on the bottom right (left from the fullscreen one), but fullscreen should of course show it 16:9 as well, which it doesn't. If you want 16:9 displayed in a 4:3 world, upload it with black bars (I always would). Letterbox the thing before uploading.

bayme, It's obvious that I did that because the original is in 16:9, my friend...

[Denizzje]

Do you have by chance (or somebody else) videos longer than 20 minutes? If so, are these converted too? Some of my long videos do not work yet ... I hope they will get converted to H.264 too!

Yes. As far as I can tell, Google has pretty much converted close to 95% of all videos. Here are a lot of hour-long H.264 videos, here's a recent one of 23 minutes.

Now that's really strange. I got quite alot of videos longer than 20 minutes, and those that work with fmt=18 are all from the era I pressed those 20-30 minutes in 100mb (320x240 +/- 300kb/s H.264 with 48kb/s HE-AAC). Later I could upload files as large as 1000mb, so I uploaded them all in 640x480 XviD with around 1000 to 1800kb/s and 128-192kb/s mp3. And exactly those movies won't work.

[bayme]

bayme, It's obvious that I did that because the original is in 16:9, my friend...

Which is why I wrote:
If you want 16:9 displayed in a 4:3 world, upload it with black bars. Letterbox the thing before uploading.
(You can do this with the resizing filter in virtualdub for example, which also gives you the opportunity to upload it as 640x480, resize with Lanczos, and maybe even add a sharpen filter below the resize)

Later I could upload files as large as 1000mb, so I uploaded them all in 640x480 XviD with around 1000 to 1800kb/s and 128-192kb/s mp3. And exactly those movies won't work.

Maybe not so strange if you think about it. Those were probably uploaded to the newer google servers already. The ones they've converted are all from the 'old' youtube servers (plus the newly uploaded ones). I'm sure as soon as they're done testing, they'll convert them all over time..
Interesting article: http://www.readwriteweb.com/cgi-bin/mt/mt-comments.cgi?entry_id=5678

[DereX888]

because few of your flash animations were watched, it belongs to latest VIDEO news?

Flash 9 videos aren't "animations", it can show full-fledged HD video. I suggest you inform yourself some more before making such silly statements: http://www.adobe.com/devnet/flashplayer/articles/hd_video_flash_player.html
Your type of talk is typical for your kind (linux zealot). Sure, it's unfortunate that Flash 9 isn't Open Source or FSF stuff, but Flash 9 gives A LOT of extra (free/open) options we've never seen before, so stop complaining.

As much as you enjoy stepping on YouTube, you might want to wake up to reality:
According to these numbers: http://www.alexa.com/data/details/traffic_details/youtube.com
20% of the internet using world is generating 16 unique pageviews each day there. If you roughly calculate what that implies, it means 264 million people watch about 10 times 10 megabytes of video from YouTube. Ooh, I'm sorry for thinking that heavy updates on a website serving 24 petabytes of VIDEO each day might be considered news to some!

I bet you watch at least 2 YouTube videos daily, you just won't admit to it. Be consequent: localhost resolve all DNS queries for youtube.com and video.l.google.com and stop whining if you miss things.

I am not linux zealot and never have been LOL If anything I could have been Microsoft's zealot since I have some investments there - if not for the fact that I loathe almost all Windows OSes (as I wrote here many times)

You on the other hand seems exactly like typical "zealot" of anything (in particular youtube zealot at this moment), judging from your constant personal attacks rather than any merit in your replies, but thats also typical for people who have no arguments at all and I get used to ignore your kind

Anyways, since you didn't get it before you won't get it no matter what, thus obviously any further discussion with you is just waste of my time.