I reached the top! Video quality on YouTube

[Giroud Francois]

in my opinion take two is still favorable to codec.
walls are big white space with few details, the more you dezoom, the more we see them.
zoom and dezoom are not giving hard time to codec since it is easily predictable.
Panos are more difficult,rotation is the hardest.

[Karel Bata]

Ervin, what were your settings? Was it Quicktime? Which codec? Keyframes? How big was the file? etc etc.

Cheers!

[Richard Gooderick]

Never was much good at reading the instructions ;-)

[Warren Kawamoto]

Ervin,
That was a good test for only 20 seconds. Now try a 5 minute video at the same quality. Can you do it?

[Karel Bata]

Check this out: YouTube - Misty

[Ervin Farkas]

... is no secret at all. I am happy to publish it for anyone who would like to use it.

Those familiar with my posts probably know that I am experimenting a lot; I did the same with this conversion. Youtube accepts all of the major formats, and as we all know, at least as of 2008, in my opinion, there is no better delivery format than MPEG4, the QT variety H.264 codec.

I tried several encoding programs capable of encoding to MPEG4/H.264, with more or less dissapointment. I tried encoding from different formats, both interlaced and progressive, I have even tried resizing, deinterlacing, and sharpening in VirtualDub - and nothing worked to my satisfaction. Not even software that sells for thousands of dollars!!!

Then I tried a FREE software, MPEG Streamclip. See the result for yourself. Now, let me just mention that at this point I do not claim total victory, as posters mentioned above, the footage might be favorable, but I think there are a LOT of resourses left in Streamclip, because I used a relatively low bitrate. I don't have the time to do a longer clip, or one with more motion, but then again, I am not trying to test the limits or to break the codec. What I tried, and I think I have accomplished, is very decent footage on the web, that delivers - I know this is subjective - at least SD DVD quality for the internet masses.

This description is for the PC, but as far as I know, it should work just about the same on the Mac.

Use the latest version of Streamclip (1.2 as of December 2008), download it from http://www.squared5.com/svideo/mpeg-...clip-win.html; you will not even have to install this little program, just unzip it and save it some place on your PC. You will also need QuickTime Alternative version 1.8.1 for reasons mentioned on the website (MPEG2 support etc). Contrary to what I read on squared5.com, the official QT and QT Alternative can live peacefully on the same computer with no issues at all.

I shot the source footage for the clip listed in the original post with a Sony Z1U as 1080/60i. Absolutely no editing, no corrections, nothing, I imported the original file into Streamclip, marked in/out points, then:

Go to File > Export to MPEG4. In the pop-up window (if not already selected) select H.264 for compression.
Click on iTunes, then select > Apple TV 1280x760 (HD), click OK.
Click and drag the quality slider to 100%.
Select Multipass and B-Frames
Limit data rate to 5Mbps is the default; I will do further testing, but I suspect that raising the data rate will allow for good picture even with faster scene changes and pans/tilts, moving subjects. Immediately to the right Streamclip will give you the expected file size, so you can go as high as you wish; Youtube set the limit to 1GB and 10 minutes play time.
Leave sound settings at the default; it should be decent even for symphonic music, definitely more than you need for rock.
Frame rate - leave blank.
Check Frame Blending and Better downscaling.
Check Deinterlace Video (deactivates Interlaced Scaling and Reinterlace Chroma).
If needed, set rotation, zoom, cropping. Under Adjustments you can manipulate brightness, contrast, chroma saturation, audio volume, or apply a watermark.
If you wish, save your settings under "Presets".
Hit Make MP4.

As far as I can tell, the software will go over your video 3 times; I speculate that the first time analises the video, it encodes it the second time, then the third time compares the resulting file with the original and makes corrections. The fourth time is very short, that's probably when the temp file is written to the location you chose.

Please DO comment, let's help each other improving internet video even further!

Thanks,

[Ken Diewert]

I'd take that level of quality any day.

Ervin, thanks for doing so much legwork for us on this. I'm going to try it out.

Karel, that's also very nice quality on the Misty footage.

Personally, I am trying to increase the quality of my Youtube videos to exploit the commercial aspect. Shoot a spot for a client and upload to Youtube as well as their site. Increased exposure, but if their product looks like crap because of compression artifacts, then it doesn't work real well. Vimeo doesn't allow commercial videos on their site.

[Brendan Donohue]

Why must you have to click the "watch in HD" link at bottom of video to see in full quality?? it also does this with the standard def vids I have posted but it says "watch in higher quality." it's just kind of a pain cuz your videos don't play at there highest quality by default, you have to take an extra step, most people probably overlook this option. do you think youtube will change this anytime soon??

[Robert Martens]

Brendan, if you go to your account settings on Youtube and click Playback Setup, you can choose to have the high quality video load by default. It doesn't load HD clips automatically, for some reason, and I seem to have trouble getting the damn option to stick anyway, but it's there and might work better for you than it does for me.

Seeing all that crisp, genuine HD footage makes me want to participate in this thread, but I don't own an HD camera. It just so happens, however, that over the past weeks I've been toying around with my own Youtube tests, and after much trial and error can heartily recommend uploading even SD footage that's been scaled (scaled well, at least) to HD. I can give Youtube's system the highest quality standard def footage I want, but they knock the bitrate down on the final FLV quite a bit. Looks all right, certainly better than it was way back when, but not as good as it could, especially full screen. A little AviSynth twiddling on the other hand, using a good deinterlacing script topped off with a Lanczos4Resize (with builtin crop options) gave me this: YouTube - upscaleadjustedMT.avi

I've been using that twenty seconds of footage (tested out my DV MultiRig Pro the day I got it back in early 2007) to test all sorts of deinterlacing, resizing and compression, and wouldn't you know it, the upconverted shot looks nicer on YT than a 640x360 SD version scaled to full screen in the site's flash player. It sure won't fool anyone who's seen real HD, shot with HD lenses by someone who knows what they're doing, and it takes forever to render--the deinterlacing script in question is quite intense, motion compensated bob that it is--but a careful upscale may let those of us in the DV world squeeze a smidge more quality out of the big Y.

[Travis Hart]

Originally Posted by Ervin Farkas

... is no secret at all. I am happy to publish it for anyone who would like to use it.

Those familiar with my posts probably know that I am experimenting a lot; I did the same with this conversion. Youtube accepts all of the major formats, and as we all know, at least as of 2008, in my opinion, there is no better delivery format than MPEG4, the QT variety H.264 codec.

I tried several encoding programs capable of encoding to MPEG4/H.264, with more or less dissapointment. I tried encoding from different formats, both interlaced and progressive, I have even tried resizing, deinterlacing, and sharpening in VirtualDub - and nothing worked to my satisfaction. Not even software that sells for thousands of dollars!!!

Then I tried a FREE software, MPEG Streamclip. See the result for yourself. Now, let me just mention that at this point I do not claim total victory, as posters mentioned above, the footage might be favorable, but I think there are a LOT of resourses left in Streamclip, because I used a relatively low bitrate. I don't have the time to do a longer clip, or one with more motion, but then again, I am not trying to test the limits or to break the codec. What I tried, and I think I have accomplished, is very decent footage on the web, that delivers - I know this is subjective - at least SD DVD quality for the internet masses.

This description is for the PC, but as far as I know, it should work just about the same on the Mac.

Use the latest version of Streamclip (1.2 as of December 2008), download it from http://www.squared5.com/svideo/mpeg-...clip-win.html; you will not even have to install this little program, just unzip it and save it some place on your PC. You will also need QuickTime Alternative version 1.8.1 for reasons mentioned on the website (MPEG2 support etc). Contrary to what I read on squared5.com, the official QT and QT Alternative can live peacefully on the same computer with no issues at all.

I shot the source footage for the clip listed in the original post with a Sony Z1U as 1080/60i. Absolutely no editing, no corrections, nothing, I imported the original file into Streamclip, marked in/out points, then:

Go to File > Export to MPEG4. In the pop-up window (if not already selected) select H.264 for compression.
Click on iTunes, then select > Apple TV 1280x760 (HD), click OK.
Click and drag the quality slider to 100%.
Select Multipass and B-Frames
Limit data rate to 5Mbps is the default; I will do further testing, but I suspect that raising the data rate will allow for good picture even with faster scene changes and pans/tilts, moving subjects. Immediately to the right Streamclip will give you the expected file size, so you can go as high as you wish; Youtube set the limit to 1GB and 10 minutes play time.
Leave sound settings at the default; it should be decent even for symphonic music, definitely more than you need for rock.
Frame rate - leave blank.
Check Frame Blending and Better downscaling.
Check Deinterlace Video (deactivates Interlaced Scaling and Reinterlace Chroma).
If needed, set rotation, zoom, cropping. Under Adjustments you can manipulate brightness, contrast, chroma saturation, audio volume, or apply a watermark.
If you wish, save your settings under "Presets".
Hit Make MP4.

As far as I can tell, the software will go over your video 3 times; I speculate that the first time analises the video, it encodes it the second time, then the third time compares the resulting file with the original and makes corrections. The fourth time is very short, that's probably when the temp file is written to the location you chose.

Please DO comment, let's help each other improving internet video even further!

Thanks,

for some reason, no matter how i try to convert my .mov footage to .mp4, the quality depreciates significantly -- even by this method. i use a Canon XH-A1 and record HDV1080p24 QuickTime via FireStore device (FS-C), but can't see to get a quality end result after editing in FCP or iMovie HD.

any suggestions? i just intend to output to YouTube.

[Ervin Farkas]

Travis,

first please do NOT quote long passages - there's absolutely no point, and we do care about this stuff on the forum.

Second, your post is somewhat unclear; where does your problem occur? Is it within your editor (that's not the topic of this post) or encoding for the web, AFTER you outputted your high quality edited file?

And third, please take your signature (Guiseppe Palumbo is a talentless scam artist -- avoid him at all cost) off; we don't call people names!

Thanks,

[Jeromy Barber]

Hey Ervin,

So, I tried out your settings with a SD project I was working on, and I'm mostly pleased with the output on You Tube.

YouTube - Real Results with Ryan Episode 6
Watch in High Quality

[Karel Bata]

That is really good! I've been struggling here with Sorenson Squeeze with very disappointing results. Nothing so far that beats a regular QT H264 upload. I'll give Streamclip a go. :-)

What I'd like to know is how get YT to default to HQ, like some users manage to do.

[Mike Watkins]

Karel,

See my website for a couple of videos embedded and set to play in HQ/HD. I shot these on an XHA1 and exported as h.264 1280x720.

Videography



I used the following tutorial page for instructions on how to embed and force to play in HQ(without the user having to select HQ):

How to Embed High Quality and Higher Resolution YouTube Videos on Blog or Website My Digital Life

Let me know what you think.

Mike Watkins

[Karel Bata]

Thanks Mike, but maybe I wasn't clear enough - I meant defaulting to HQ on the YouTube page itself, like these people have done: YouTube - Jojo In The Stars (take 12 mins out to watch this, it's brilliant). My guess is that it's an option available to paying YouTube users, but I wondered if there's any way for us to do it...?

BTW I've put up a YouTube HD & HQ Embed Code Generator to save folks the trouble of tweaking the embed code themselves.

Happy coding!