Higher-Resolution YouTube Videos Currently In Testing 214
jason writes "YouTube has never really been known for streaming videos at a high resolution, but it appears that they are taking early steps at providing higher quality videos. The project was announced last year by the site's co-founder Steve Chen, and now appears to be in the earliest stages of deployment. By adding a parameter onto the end of a video's URL you're able to watch it in a higher quality (in terms of audio and video) that is actually quite noticeable. Not all videos have been converted at this point, but they do have millions upon millions of videos that they need to do."
How will they handle the higher bandwidth needs??? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:How will they handle the higher bandwidth needs (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:How will they handle the higher bandwidth needs (Score:5, Funny)
Re:How will they handle the higher bandwidth needs (Score:5, Funny)
Re:How will they handle the higher bandwidth needs (Score:5, Funny)
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Mod parent "-1 whoosh" (Score:5, Informative)
Re:How will they handle the higher bandwidth needs (Score:4, Informative)
Re:How will they handle the higher bandwidth needs (Score:5, Informative)
Re:How will they handle the higher bandwidth needs (Score:5, Informative)
Some guy in the comments on the blog downloaded both formats and they came out in exactly the same size. People here are also commenting that they only changed to support H.264. This means that they do not have higher bandwidth needs, but higher processing needs due to a smarter codec (H.264).
Personally I've played around with x264 and the improvements in quality are pretty impressive with enough encoding time and the right encoding parameters thrown at the encoding process.
Re:How will they handle the higher bandwidth needs (Score:4, Insightful)
of course, to get DVD resolution videos to display you need to upload dvd resolution in the first place.
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Re:How will they handle the higher bandwidth needs (Score:4, Interesting)
But I tried a few different things, viewing the video WITHOUT the &fmt=6 first:
- FF3 on XP - Same with/without the &fmt=6
- FF2 on XP - Same with/without the &fmt=6
- IE6 on XP - Same
- FF3 on Mac 10.4 - Same with/without
- Safari 3 on Mac - DIFFERENT with/without the &fmt=6
- Opera on Mac 10.4 - DIFFERENT with/without
- Opera on XP - DIFFERENT with/without
Re:How will they handle the higher bandwidth needs (Score:5, Funny)
Re:How will they handle the higher bandwidth needs (Score:5, Insightful)
One other interesting thing is that I haven't been able to find another high-quality video on youtube. I tried the &fmt=6 parameter on several videos, both popular and new. Two of these videos (a Fall Out Boy video [youtube.com] and an NBA recap [youtube.com]) loaded with the parameter, but didn't look any better. A quick check showed that the same
Re:How will they handle the higher bandwidth needs (Score:5, Informative)
Touhou 8 - Final Boss (Japanese video game): http://youtube.com/watch?v=UOWR1_uMdW8&fmt=6 [youtube.com]
CNN/Univision Debate: http://youtube.com/watch?v=_BGyWYtee18&fmt=6 [youtube.com]
These are the only ones I found (the skate dog shows up too) in a google search for site:youtube.com "fmt=6"
http://www.google.com/search?q=+site:youtube.com+%22fmt%3D6%22&num=100&hl=en&safe=off&filter=0 [google.com]
My guess at this point is they are reencoding the original uploads iff they are higher bitrate than the old codec youtube was using.
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Stone age sound (Score:3, Insightful)
And still monaural sound.
I don't get it. What is it that made people accept this abysmal stone age technique? We have two ears, they give sound a spacial dimension and there is nothing better enhancing the video experience than giving it a great sound.
Monaural. How ultra retro - AM broadcast quality of the 60s.
Painful for those with ears, alas.
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The bottom line for Youtube is that keeping monaural sound is an easy way to cut th
Re:How will they handle the higher bandwidth needs (Score:3, Informative)
I use noscript, and instead of giving youtube permanent permissions, I always give it temporary permissions. Well, in recent weeks, I've needed to grant permissions to both youtube.com and ytimg.com to get videos to play, so they seem to be farming out their bandwidth to a caching service.
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At the client end, as people have said... using H.264 means they can increase the resolution/quality with modest bandwidth increase.
At the server end... well, do you KNOW who owns YouTube now??
Re:How will they handle the higher bandwidth needs (Score:5, Funny)
What
Sweet (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Sweet (Score:5, Funny)
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Converting (Score:5, Insightful)
Really? I would argue that of the millions of videos on the net that I think need to be at a higher quality, very few of them are on YouTube.
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they do have millions upon millions of videos that they need to do.
Really? I would argue that of the millions of videos on the net that I think need to be at a higher quality, very few of them are on YouTube.
I have uploaded to Google Video and seen noticeable quality degradation. My original filming was done with a Sony HDR-HD3, and my movies are in 3 formats. (a) HD, (b) DVD, and (c) GoogleVideo. But I can't complain because Google does me a wonderful service by letting me post streaming videos on their services for free. But in terms of quality... some of the scene that I filmed are qualitatively better with HD. I wish this was around 2 years ago. I would have had no reason to burn DVDs for my friends
Re:Converting (Score:5, Funny)
iPhone quality? (Score:5, Interesting)
AppleTV also makes use of this higher level of quality I believe.
Re:iPhone quality? (Score:5, Interesting)
Just goes to show you that sometimes, lower quality is better.
Re:iPhone quality? (Score:4, Informative)
I would imagine this initiative is related to that.
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It doesn't matter how many pixels there are. The combined content of those 40 pixels will look exactly the same as the equivalent 4 pixels on the smaller screen.
Your TV may look "better" because it's set for lower contrast/saturation/sharpness/etc. You can do the same
Nope (Score:4, Interesting)
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Re:iPhone quality? (Score:5, Informative)
&fmt=6 gives you the comparable quality but higher bitrate Flash video which works on older Flash players.
And &fmt=17 gives you a crappy low bitrate very low resolution mpeg4 video for older/cheaper phones, but it isn't playable in Flash.
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Confirmed! Specs, Screenshots and links galore! (Score:5, Informative)
Presumably anything that's available on the iphone will be available in fmt 18 and/or fmt 17. 18 looks good
Here's a screenshot that compares the formats: http://g.appleguru.org/youtubeformats.png [appleguru.org]
And here are download links and details on each of them
No format tag (standard):
320x240 @ 29.97 fps
Flash video (Sorenson h.263)
MP3 Audio (22.05KHz, mono)
FLV container
3.28MB
http://g.appleguru.org/nofmt.flv [appleguru.org]
Format 6 tag:
448x298 @ 29.98fps
Flash video (Sorenson h.263)
MP3 Audio (44.1KHz, mono)
FLV Conatiner
9.44MB
http://g.appleguru.org/fmt6.flv [appleguru.org]
Format 17 tag:
176x144 @ 12fps
MPEG-4 Video (simple profile)
MPEG-4 (AAC) audio (22.05KHz, mono)
3gp container
832KB
http://g.appleguru.org/fmt17.3gp [appleguru.org]
Format 18 tag:
480x320 @ 29.97fps
MPEG-4 Video (H.264)
MPEG-4 (AAC) audio (44.1KHz, STEREO!)
mp4 container
6.28MB
http://g.appleguru.org/fmt18.mp4 [appleguru.org]
Coolness
Re:Confirmed! Specs, Screenshots and links galore! (Score:4, Informative)
Format 13 tag:
176x144 @ 15fps
H.263 Video
AMR Narrowband Audio (8KHz, mono)
3gp container
700KB
http://g.appleguru.org/fmt13.3gp [appleguru.org]
Lawyers will love this (Score:5, Interesting)
Once it approaches DVD quality the lawyers will argue it's like DVD on demand.
H.264 on iPhone already (Score:5, Informative)
To be frank, I've not been on YouTube.com ever since I've gotten the iPhone. The video quality is SO much better on H.264 than crap^H^H^H^H flash players that it's worth wasting time with it. Plus, you can actually pause, fast-forward, rewind and skip to any point without it failing like flash players always do.
Technically.. (Score:3, Informative)
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Apparently, recently, they've added the ability for video decoding to be hardware-accelerated, but only when the video is fullscreen. I'm still amazed that the vector graphics aren't accelerated, even if it's when Flash is a plugin -- at this rate, we'll have hardware-accelerated SVG in Firefox before we'll have properly hardware-accelerated Flash.
Now, when YouTube has the option to also serve the video in a straight mp4 container (or similar)...
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Not only does FlashPlayer 10 have 2D/3D acceleration, but also supports gpu's. Search youtube for Flash Player Astro for videos of it in action - its pretty cool.
Re:H.264 on iPhone already (Score:5, Informative)
Also Apple's Quicktime MPEG4 library has some significant deficiencies; they don't implement the entire standard.
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Youtube is as-free on the iPhone. And the 400$ NON-plastic thing actually lets me avoid dragging a 1000$+ laptop around, a phone and a music player all at once. So, what's your point?
My point was that YouTube has been converting their videos to H.264 for MONTHS. In fact, they've even mentioned months ago that every new videos uploaded to YouTube was being simultaneously H.264 -encoded on-the-fly. Initially, iPhone users have seen the benefits before other viewers
To state the obvious (Score:2)
Secondly- If they've got millions of videos that still need converting- I'm assuming that doesn't mean upscaling horrid quality videos- does that mean they've been keeping the originals this entire time?
Re:To state the obvious (Score:4, Informative)
Re:To state the obvious (Score:5, Interesting)
If I delete a video from YouTube, do they delete the source file?
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Re:To state the obvious (Score:5, Informative)
http://www.youtube.com/t/terms [youtube.com]
6. Your User Submissions and Conduct
C.
And Google video? (Score:4, Interesting)
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Google Video is a markedly lower quality than what we get on Veoh; but for folks who don't want to be forced to sign up (or who have old
Quality problem (Score:2, Insightful)
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It makes sense from their perspective to test with what they have already.
Wow, like what they have been doing all this time? (Score:5, Informative)
What do you think they are converting you lamebrain? They kept the originals, so no upsampling needed (doesn't really work anyway), they just RE-encode the original.
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The point is that the originals are already poor quality. Re-encoding crap will give you crap, period.
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And those originals are still limited to something like 50 or 100 megs.
You are correct that videos uploaded directly via web browser are limited to 100 megabytes [youtube.com]. However, using the (Windows-only) multi-file uploader client allows videos of up to 1GB in size [youtube.com].
I certainly wish I had known about this before I spent a decent amount of time re-encoding motion jpegs to get them under 100MB.
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Umm, what were we talking about again?
Re:Wow, like what they have been doing all this ti (Score:2)
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High Quality? I think Not. (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:High Quality? I think Not. (Score:4, Informative)
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Can you provide a link to a video on YouTube that is not copyrighted?
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I can! http://uk.youtube.com/view_play_list?p=4806B1FAAC9C7DE1 [youtube.com]
Re:High Quality? I think Not. (Score:5, Insightful)
If you browse YouTube a bit, and subscribe to the channels that are actually worthwhile, you will quickly build up a feed of interesting stuff with new videos every day. You can use featured videos to get some ideas of new channels to consider. On the other hand, using "most viewed" and "currently watching" to find good stuff is a waste of time. As a random example of something "worthwhile" (in my opinion), consider Wallstrip [youtube.com]--a show that does profiles on companies and stock trends, and is infused with sarcasm and wit. There are also channels that discuss science, that do decent original comedy, there is a national geographic channel, etc.
Frankly I think YouTube is dropping the ball a bit by not providing a more useful method of finding the best content. An Amazon-like "people who subscribe/rate like you also like..." would help alot. Just as Slashdot uses various tricks (moderation, friends/foes, etc.) to bring attention to the quality material, YouTube should work harder to bring the good material to the top. The current star-ratings, comment-ratings, and ranking-by-viewing are not working very well. Frankly I don't care about the ratings of YouTube at large; I care about the ratings of a finite subset of like-minded users.
Same great pixels, more bits please (Score:5, Interesting)
YouTube has never really been known for streaming videos at a high resolution,
The problem isn't necessarily resolution- it's the unbelievably low bitrates, and the fact that they insist on re-encoding everything that's uploaded to them. It's apparently possible to upload FLV in a very precise way such that they don't re-encode, but they could make it a lot easier (and it's to their advantage- every video given to them ready-to-go is a video they don't have to waste incoming bandwidth, temporary disk storage, and bandwidth on.)
What youtube *should* be doing is offering paid accounts which allow for higher bitrate videos; say, a low-end for the camwhores who want better pixels for their whining, a mid-level for guys like Will It Blend, and a top-end account for big companies that want to push their ads out on Youtube. Will It Blend, for example, would probably plunk down $20/month to get better videos.
Sadly, though- companies like blip.tv have already filled the niche of high-quality videos, and they're getting attacked left and right by other sites like metafilter which already does revenue sharing...and there are a billion and one embedded FLV hosting sites...
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I think you meant metacafe [metacafe.com] the video site, and not metafilter [metafilter.com] the community weblog.
That aside, I once read somewhere that web 2.0 companies don't want paying customers. They want eyeballs, they're easier to get than cash, and much less of a hassle
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Conversion (Score:3, Insightful)
CPU Loading (Score:3, Insightful)
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*VLC* of all things plays FLVs considerably more efficiently than Adobe's official Flash Player.
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<voice age=old disposition=grumpy politics=conservative>
They should take a shower and get a job! Damn hippies: GET OFF MY LAWN!
</voice>
Eh? Maybe it's just me. (Score:2, Informative)
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Nice (Score:2)
Wonder if other sites like flickr, myspace, and facebook keep the original pictures around that are uploaded or if they're just converted (resized) once and thrown away.
Now if only they could get the audio and video in sync.
I already mourn the loss of stage6 (Score:5, Interesting)
Obviously, when I say market, I mean enormous money hole...
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Funny thing is that I would gladly pay $40/month for a site like Stage6. I pay around $60/month currently for cable television but rarely watch it because the shows I like are inconvenient to watch. Yeah, there's MythTV and Tivo, but there's rarely a time when I'll sit down and plan what I'm going to watch. I'd much rather browse and get that instant gratification. It would be great if the producers of these shows could come to some advertising/subscription agreement. I have looked at iTunes,
Re:I already mourn the loss of stage6 (Score:5, Funny)
Google: Good news! By increasing video quality and duration we've managed to double YouTube's profits over the last quarter.
Investor: Wait, didn't YouTube have negative profits last quarter?
Google: Ah yes, that would be the bad news.
They used to have more than 10 minutes. (Score:2)
Already done (Score:2)
Oh, that kind of quality... (Score:2)
Damn, and I thought that parameter would make the videos funnier.
Aw man! (Score:2)
Video quality means very little to me. I mean, how high-resolution does anybody really need John Stewart's head?
-FL
If there's any difference... (Score:2)
But it looks like the Skateboarding Dog video is pretty poor quality [imageshack.us] to begin with. Big blurred deinterlaced frames are still blurred deinterlaced frames, regardless of the number of bits you throw at it.
Already Done Via Clever Users? (Score:5, Interesting)
Here's an example: http://youtube.com/watch?v=2Vtrmpol390 [youtube.com]
Notice that the "clock" on the player says its 9:59 long. Note that the streaming hiccups and stutters because the actual video is only 1:30 long -- just like any other anime OP. The time-code computation appears to be totally off for this video, but the quality is fantastic. Listen with good headphones -- the audio and video quality are both fantastic in this video.
Now compare to a "normal" youtube version: http://youtube.com/watch?v=B5PoF34qM0o [youtube.com]
This person's other movies are all other anime OP/ED sections that all say they are around 10 minutes long, but in reality are all 1:30 or so.
So it seems this person has figured out how to exploit something in youtubes video analysis/recoder to get ultra-high quality audio/video, at the expense of breaking the media-length calculations.
Still looks like crap (Score:2)
1) Poor interlacing. This may be a result of the source video, but the skateboarding dog video suffers from heavy interlacing artifacts - ghosting and double images.
2) Still looks like crap full-screen. This has little to do with hardware acceleration and scaling support, and a lot to do with me having a 30" 2560x
Higher Resolution (Score:2)
Oh great... (Score:5, Funny)
Brilliant, now... (Score:2)
BTW, my ISP is Virgin. 20 meg, my arse.
Competition (Score:3, Informative)
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It's probably best to deinterlace video yourself prior to uploading to YouTube, if you care about quality.