YouTube; Best Compression tips
 

Hi everyone.
I was wondering if anyone figured out the best approach to video compression for YouTube. I use Sorenson Squeeze 4.3 with 320X240 MPEG4 Sorenson AVC Pro 2-pass VBR with 1000kbps video and 192kbps audio at 29.97 fps, and the video quality sucks on youtube making the audio sound somewhat metallic. Here is an example...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0R3U9oeYdgY

Any input is appreciated

Thanks

With YouTube and other similar websites (ie. Google Video, etc) I've found the more resolution you give it the better. That's probably the main reason why your video is coming out mediocre, you should try to bump up the resolution to 640x480.

With the audio, I've found the most amount of success with sticking with MP3 audio if you can - the websites seem to convert that a bit better, but I've still had success with the AAC audio codec as well at times.

The best success I've had with the video is actually using DIVX 640x480 with one of the standard "Home Theater" modes with the 128 kbps stereo MP3 audio. There is free version of Dr. Divx that can be found at http://labs.divx.com/DrDivX that I've used to encode the videos in the past with great success.

Sometimes YouTube and other hosting Flash video sites seem to handle AVC well, and some don't. It's a bit more picky I guess. I know I've had problems with Sorenson AVC's always working well on those sites, but those were in more previous versions - I think around 4.1, so you should be alright in that regard. (and Sorenson's AVC encoding is still the best in my opinion).

Here is what Google Video Recommends in their Help page :
"Quality Recommendations:

If possible, we suggest uploading the original source file. However, we recommend the specifications below for maximum quality and reasonable file size:

- MPEG4 (mp3 or mp4 audio) at 2 mbps
- MPEG2 (mp3 or mp4 audio) at 5 mbps
- 30 frames per second
- 640x480 resolution
- 4:3 frame
- de-interlace"

And if you're still not happy with the results after all of this, maybe switch to another video hosting company? I think that Revver.com's encoding looks a lot better than YouTube's personally, and the fact that they pay you half of the ad revenue isn't too shabby either. And of course Google Video lets people download the high quality MP4 or GVC (which is really just DIVX4) of your video and has video smoothing on the Flash version.

Hope this helps.
- Zack

Thanks a lot Zack I will look into the DIVX approach.
All the best in the New Year!

Renat,

I thought your video and audio quality were fine there. Certainly head and shoulders above what you usually see, but that has a lot to do with the source material.

I would look at some of the CBS clips - Craig Furgeson has a lot up there - as the benchmark for quality. I'm certain they are getting as much out of the pipes as they can.

Do you think UTube treats everyone the same, I'm just wondering.

Yeah, interesting question. It is entirely possible that YouTube is allowing them more bandwidth than they allow other clips... or that they are even hosting from a different server. What I'm sure of, though, is that nothing is going to look or sound better than those CBS clips...

It might not be just the bandwidth. They might be allowing them to encode the video themselves. That would help.

This is what I consider to be the holy grail. If I have a nice quality mini-dv, couldn't I do my own encoding and then submit it?

If not for U-Tube, what other online sources like U-Tube are out there that would allow one to do their own encoding first?

I know that using other people's bandwidth for free is a great idea, but I sure am happy I can afford $7 or so per month to have my own domain and web site. I can put up as good a quality as I want.

When I want to send out really large files, I use YouSendIt.com for $4.95 per month. It really helps with files almost 1GB in size. And with HDV, that can easily happen.

My guess is that someone will figure out how to properly encode what we give them and they will have an advantage over everyone - for a while at least.

Has anyone looked into http://stage6.divx.com ?
This site allows for DIVX encoded videos in unlimited length/size. They have people uploading HDTV videos encoded with Dr. DIVX and when viewed on full screen it's as if your computer monitor is an HDTV plasma screen. Don't miss a chance to check that site out. On the other hand Brightcove.com and Revver.com are two alternatives using which you cam make some cash from your videos. Brightcove uses Flash video format for good quality video, although not too big 480X360 in 4X3 and 480X270 in 16X9 aspect ratio. Brightcove's standalone encoder/uploader, called Publishpod, is a great little tool to import all your uncompressed DV AVI and compress/upload the files automatically. I had files exceeding 3.5GB or longer than 16 minutes in length give me a an upload timed out errors, so I recompressed long DV AVI's using Dr. DIVX (specifying for the resulting DIVX file not to exceed 3.5GB size). So right now I am uploading a 1hour DIVX file using Publishpod hoping that it will not give me an upload time out error.

The problem I have is now that Premiere Pro will be available on the Mac, I probably need to post Flash version of my videos or tutorials instead of DivX or WM9. I want the Mac folks to be happy, now don't I? If I am going to be teaching them how to use the software.

I believe that DivX is available for the Mac, but I think I will stick with Flash.

Brightcove is still Flash video (and it encodes it automatically with the free software) or you can encode it yourself with Sorenson, Flash, etc. And you can choose the settings and quality to upload.

Also a note on the DivX's Stage 6 - it's really great to have large, high quality back-up versions or "DVD Quality" versions that are supplimental to your Flash video.

For an example of both, I used it in a recent college production - where the main site is using Brightcove (www.brightcove.com) and I have a link to the DVD Quality version for the episode "The Terrible Young Couple" which takes you to the Stage 6 site. The example is here. http://www.negativezerofilms.com/beyond/

I'm getting dropped frames, is that because I have an older 450 mac?

I know cross posting is prohibitied but please forgive me as this might be helpful.

Here a video that I uploaded to youtube and I am satisfied with considering how poor quality youtube generally is . It is about 40mb for 5 minutes.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mEE7ORJCS9c

I think I could eek out a little more quality if I had to. Setting were as follows in Quicktime Pro.

Compression H264
Quality - high
Key Frame rate - 24
Encoding pass -2
Dimension 320x240
Audio AAC
Sample rate 48,000
Bitrate 128 kbs

Hope this helps.....

The video quality is superb!!!!! And the video is very soothing and peaceful, very good job! You say you used Quicktime Pro? Your video was shot mostly from a tripod. Can you please you do me a favor? If I sent you an AVI file could you compress it with the above settings and upload it to yousendit.com I would love to see if my video, which was shot handheld, will yield the same results on youtube. If this is a chore, is there a way Quicktime Pro lets you export presets, so I would get the program and import the preset compressing it myself.
Thank you very much!

Sure, go ahead and send it to me via private email. The smaller the file the better and I'll encode it with the suggested settings.

What I found most intriguing was it seems that the sound stayed in sync, although I wasn't totally sure because there were no talking heads.

Quality was very good. On my old Imac (with maxed out ram), It looked like I was seeing about 6-8 frames per second. The fuel guage that shows how quickly the image is loading seemed to be moving perfectly along, actually ever so slightly moving faster than the elapsed running time of the video.

-----------------------------------

I had a question about the fallen tree. I assume it was a fallen tree, no? It definitely adds an interesting visual element to the video, but it made me wonder what it took to make the tree fall, which for me slightly contradicted the serene mood you otherwise effectively created.

Good question. When most people think of Florida beaches they think of lots of sand, sea oats and sand dunes. Cape San Blas is a very unusual place in that half of the peninsula is dunes and on the other half the tree line (mostly pines) goes right down to the high water line. As the tree roots erode and the trees fall into the ocean it makes for an unusual sight with the twisted, weather worn and polished wood. Also, this area has been hit with 3 huricanes in the past 3 years. When framing that shot I tried to show how the forest was intertwined with the ocean and how it was on the loosing side of the battle between land and water.

Regards,

Before springing for QuickTime Pro, you might want to give MPEG Streamclip a shot. It's completely free, and should give you just as good or better quality H.264 encodes than QuickTime Pro. Just make sure you have the (free) QuickTime 7 Player installed so that MPEG Streamclip has access to the QuickTime H.264 codec. MPEG Streamclip does support creating your own presets.

Thanks a lot for sharing that video, Mark. I kind of forgot about the quality although it seemed very good. You really took me there and I like the pace of the edit and music.

Some great close-ups of the water fowl. What did you shoot this on, if I may ask?

regards,

-gb-

Thanks Greg,

It was shot with a pany DVC-30 all on a tripod. This shoot was one of those occurances when I felt I was in the "zone". Of course it helps when no matter which way you turn there is something photogenic.

Regards,

the quality looks great.

My material is SD avi and I am using Vegas 6.
Any suggestion which settings could result in similar quality?

That footage indeed looks superb!

I've been messing with different codecs and settings the last few days now to get my footage as clear as possible to put in on youtube, but it just isn't right yet.
I export my movies from final cut pro with Quicktime Conversion, with the MPEG-4 codec, at 30 fps (all my movies are shot on 25fps), and 'Keyframe' and 'Data Rate' settings set to 'automatic'. I try to keep the quality set at 'Best', except for the movies that are 6minutes or longer, because then I have to set it to 'High' to stay within their 100Mb limit. Doing so I feel that I just don't do justice to my films, as there is way too much artifacts and quality loss going on!

At least the sound sounds good (settings: apple lossless, 48kHz, Best Quality).

...But I'll try to compress them with the H.264 codec now!
I also heard that Sorenson 3 is an interresting compression to yield high quality with small files..!?

Any suggestions on the audio settings? (Maybe this takes up way too much space?)

Also, is it normal that with a 6minute (or longer) movie file, at those settings, I'm getting over the 100MB??

If you want to have a look at the quality: the link is in the sig...


Thanks in advance!

Have a look at: http://www.dvinfo.net/conf/showthread.php?t=95625

YouTube accepts .avi, .wmv, .mpg, .mov
File size limit is 100 MB
Time limit is 10 min

for cobverting, compressing & stuff have alook at VidCrop
http://www.geovid.com/VidCrop/

Just make sure to not compress your already compressed video files when exporting to a different file format.

Look what I found...
http://forum.videohelp.com/topic346256.html

That's a VERY interesting link! Thanks for sharing!