YouTube now determines what max resolution your stream will be

[Andrew Smith]

I was streaming out yesterday at 5Mbits/sec via a cellular data connection.

As per previous events, the data bitrate didn't fall in to YouTube's preferred range for a HD1080 stream, but I elected to send at HD1080 anyway knowing that YouTube would still process it through and that the results would be acceptable.

This time YouTube didn't.

During the stream I saw that the maximum resolution available was HD720. Even in the "stream status" box YouTube considered that we were doing a HD720 stream despite receiving HD1080 from the encoder. Status was also merely "ok" instead of "good" (indeed, data was flowing) with the friendly YouTube alert telling me that the stream resolution was not "optimal".

It's as if YouTube is now setting quality standards for what it is prepared to stream forth when it comes to particular resolutions.

After the event there was a HD1080 version available, but it is a clearly up-scaled version of the HD720 version with obvious pixel stepping visible for all to see.

Andrew

[Andrew Smith]

And our nomination for "worst up-res of the year" goes to .... YouTube.

(click to enlarge images)

Andrew

[Josh Chesarek]

Interesting, I still stream my self for total control but I. Push more and more to secondary streams like Facebook and YouTube. Have not seen this yet however.

[Chris Harding]

Sometimes we do try You Tube or Facebook but I have heard of streams on FB even being dumped mid way because their robot detects background music that might be copyright .... Unless you are in a sound proof studio it's pretty tough to be guaranteed that a car isn't going to drive past with the radio on so that's my initial issue.

I understood that YouTube selected your play rate based on your connection speed so even if you do stream at 1080 there is a pretty good chance that viewers might even be watching it at 360P in some areas so there is little point in pushing out an awesome 1080 feed if no-one has the connection to watch it at 1080. If I watch a "claimed" UHD YouTube video on my ADSL2 it defaults to 360 or 480 anyway and I really cannot see users carefully trying to change the resolution..they will just watch it (and probably on a phone too nowdays ) so might as well push it out at 720 surely??

[Jack Zhang]

Originally Posted by Andrew Smith

And our nomination for "worst up-res of the year" goes to .... YouTube.

(click to enlarge images)

Andrew

Looks like they aren't de-interlacing. They're usually good with that cause the major networks for live news on YT pipe their direct 1080i TS feeds with embedded closed captioning just fine...

[Andrew Smith]

I was shooting in 25P and the feed to the encoder was coming from the camera via SDI to the Matrox Monarch encoder (which will intelligently deinterlace if needed). Not an interlacing / deinterlacing issue.

Andrew

[Jack Zhang]

It could be 100% possible your 1080i output from your SDI port is not sending PsF but rather 1 field from progressive frame 1, then 1 field from the next frame. The sawtoothing looks too clean to be Youtube's fault.

[Andrew Smith]

If it was that then I reckon it would show up at the other resolutions.

Andrew