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Higher-Resolution YouTube Videos Currently In Testing
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???
as the media moves toward hi-def, streaming will have to get better. still, it is good to see them taking the first steps
If people can get past, can they get future? Best way to confuse a stoner
Cause dammit, I want crisp, clear flames when I'm watching a 15 year old set himself on fire!
What are we going to do tonight Brain?
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'd noticed that using the iPhone to view videos on WiFi, gave a notable better picture than the web version. I think the flag is accessing the same video the iPhone makes use of.
AppleTV also makes use of this higher level of quality I believe.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
The cable to Japan could help!
At the moment the quality is ropey at times, you can say that it's no substitute for a real DVD (When there's a copyrighted file on the site, not that that's allowed).
Once it approaches DVD quality the lawyers will argue it's like DVD on demand.
Now there's a distributed project idea! Forget cancer, re-encode video chunks!
iPhone users have been enjoying H.264-encoded YouTube for many months already.
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.
I have a plenty fast internet connection with Verizon. Every site works great. But whether a YouTube video will cache fast enough for flawless playback- that's always up for grabs. I'd say they should take care of their own bandwidth issues before upgrading.
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?
Belief? Hope? Preference?The Existential Vortex
What about Google Video? Would that work too?
Note to YouTube: forcing your users to upload a crappy resolution compressed/downsized video, and then upsampling it to a higher resolution, does NOT produce a high-quality video. How about allowing people to upload decent quality videos in the first place??
They just have to add more Tubes!
Flash 9 supports h264 video codec.
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
By piggy backing on the networks of those poor, overworked ISP's that aren't getting paid by youtube. It's like youtube is stealing that bandwidth by exploiting this loophole.
I hope H.264 will be available in flash soon. Stage6 had to close because of the expenses in delivering HQ videos, which is bad news.
I'm not insane! My mother had me tested.
You can't just put a dump truck on it you insensitive clod!
When Youtube upgrades the quality of their VIDEOS and not the quality of the video FILES ... then I'll be interested. For now, as so many others have said ... Youtube is adequate for watching 15 year olds set themselves on fire ;)
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...
Please help metamoderate.
I must say, it looks nice for the most part. Though I would prefer my videos be higher resolution to begin with, not "converted" down then back up -- it would prevent those little slight things you see in the video.
Windows has detected an undetectable error.
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.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
And those originals are still limited to something like 50 or 100 megs.
The point is that the originals are already poor quality. Re-encoding crap will give you crap, period.
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
It already is.
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.
High-resolution is great and wonderful, but what about the unwashed masses with older systems? I'd rather see a video play smoothly in medium resolution, rather than see it stutter in high resolution. The newer codecs seem to choke on older systems. My Mac can handle MPEG-2 without problems, but it has difficulty with some of the newer videos.
Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
Size doesn't determine quality. Size + length determines quality.
I couldn't see any difference in quality between the regular version and the "fmt=6" version of the skating dog.
It is nice to see that they kept the originals around.
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.
Obviously, when I say market, I mean enormous money hole...
"Physics is to math as sex is to masturbation." -R. Feynman
Seen this?
lossless YouTube
hand typed link, if it doesn't work, google:
HOWTO: upload lossless youtube
The Admin and the Engineer
vimeo.com has had hi-def for a long time, in fact I don't think you can even upload lo-def there.
Umm, what were we talking about again?
you're able to watch it in a higher quality (in terms of audio and video)
Damn, and I thought that parameter would make the videos funnier.
sic transit gloria mundi
I suspect this is already taken care of.
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.
At imeem.com we added h264 support earlier in the year - we pretty much just changed the codec when, but our old video bitrate was already > 768kbit/sec so we had plenty of room to up the resolution and support DVD resolutions.
of course, to get DVD resolution videos to display you need to upload dvd resolution in the first place.
Are you talking at the server end or client end?
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??
That's high quality? The frame rate is still to low to be acceptable. What's wrong with all the blended frames? Is it a problem in their deinterlacing processing?
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.
I hope that porntube and youporn will follow their example as well!
I've watched the linked-to video several times both with and without the fmt=6 parameter, and they both look identical to me. Same in terms of blurriness, artifacting, and resolution. I've been watching in full-screen and looked at a couple of same-frame examples. In fact, neither one looks as blurry as the "low-quality" example in the guy's blog. At least in this case, is there actually any difference??
ASCII art needs to make a comeback. Big time.
Video quality means very little to me. I mean, how high-resolution does anybody really need John Stewart's head?
-FL
I carefully compared screen and iPhone versions side by side with the same video, some northern lights over the north pole. Some stars in the sky and other details were clearly visible on the iPhone that were not apparent in the web version. The resolution in terms of number of pixels, I think is actually about the same. A lot of that could just come down to compression artifacts but I thought it was interesting there was a noticeable difference.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
That's exactly what I was wondering, if fmt=6 was giving you the same h.264 encoded video that Flash was playing for you. I see now that's really 18... thanks for the info!
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I don't see it.
But it looks like the Skateboarding Dog video is pretty poor quality to begin with. Big blurred deinterlaced frames are still blurred deinterlaced frames, regardless of the number of bits you throw at it.
At the end of the day, it looks like most people don't know what they're talking about - as is par for the course around here.
That's just egregious. This is the statement of someone who knows a little but doesn't have the skills to put it together. Knowledge doesn't lead to intellect. He knows there's a size limit but he thinks this means users were forced to meet the size limit by compressing their video; unable to make the leap from that bit of knowledge to realizing that users could have limited the length of the crappy home movies they were uploading. In conclusion, this guy is dumb.I have brightness knob for U-Tube. I keep trying to turn it up, yet there is no effect.
Actually, flash player now supports H.264. You can actually play .mp4 and quicktime .mov H.264 containers within flash now. Likely this is just a format upgrade - same bitrate, better codec.
Yes. I can at least see the difference, if not hear it.
I was checking out anime OP/ED videos a while back for a series I had started watching and came across someone that has somehow tricked youtube into letting ultra-high resolution videos on the site.
Here's an example: http://youtube.com/watch?v=2Vtrmpol390
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
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.
My opinions are my own, and do not necessarily represent those of my employer.
I watched the linked video and was not impressed. Yes, it looked slightly better than most YouTube vids, but that is like saying TacoBell tastes slightly better than dog poop. My complaints:
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" 2560x1600 display. Full-screen on my laptop would probably be OK. Full-screen on an iPhone is probably the current quality target.
3) No resizable viewer. Higher quality video in small viewer is still quite unsatisfying. Because full-screen is "too big" (see above), the YouTube video player needs a "x2" and maybe an "x4" button that allows the player to enlarge.
Youtube needs something for better framerate for some videos. Twitch game replays do terrible on YouTube.
It's a noticeable difference to me. Specifically, edges are substantially less noisy in the high quality version, whereas in the low quality version there are some pretty obvious compression artifacts around edges.
Actually - I would be more supportive if youtube came up with a way to make the comments section in a lower definition.
That guy was using a third party downloader, which doesn't account for the high quality video. He unknowingly downloaded the same video twice. While the regular youtube video is indeed 3.4 MB, the high quality one is 9.5 MB. Here's a picture showing the filesize
.flv files were being loaded no matter what parameter I set. Does anyone have any examples of high quality videos besides the dog?
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 and an NBA recap) loaded with the parameter, but didn't look any better. A quick check showed that the same
Etiquette is etiquette. He kills his mother but he can't wear grey trousers.
What
GAAH! MY PRINTER IS ON FIRE!!! PUT IT OUT! PUT IT OUT!
I took &fmt=6 from the dog video and it was lower rezzed.
"Piggy backing"? Your ISP probably hasn't provided much content lately, have they?
"A language that doesn't affect the way you think about programming, is not worth knowing" - Alan Perlis
Now I can get rickrolled with more pixels than before.
This was sorely needed. As convenient as youtube is, the quality is just atrocious. And thank God for firefox builtin spellcheck to help me get atrocious spelled correctly (despite getting three words in this sentence spelling wrong). Laziness wins sometimes.
... all my ISP needs to do is upgrade their network enough to stream the low quality videos at peek times and we will be getting somewhere!
BTW, my ISP is Virgin. 20 meg, my arse.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
Perfume - Polyrhythm (Japanese music video): http://youtube.com/watch?v=qjL_FM23FzU&fmt=6
Touhou 8 - Final Boss (Japanese video game): http://youtube.com/watch?v=UOWR1_uMdW8&fmt=6
CNN/Univision Debate: http://youtube.com/watch?v=_BGyWYtee18&fmt=6
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
My guess at this point is they are reencoding the original uploads iff they are higher bitrate than the old codec youtube was using.
-HobophobE
Nothing laughs forever.
There's a comment like this in the blog as well, responded to by the author. I'm pretty sure I see no the difference. I wonder if there's any chance that it's browser-related, or something is getting cached? On my system (running FF3 Beta 3 with no particular cookie blockers or special extensions) the two videos (with and without the &fmt=6) are the same. Maybe since I viewed the "high-quality" one first, I'm getting served up the same video with and without the &fmt=6 at this point. Or maybe FF3 gets higher res for some reason?
But I believe you guys when you say there's a definite difference for you. I just wonder if some of us ALWAYS see the higher-quality videos =)
I think he's talking about the size limit for uploads, not the quality of downloads. Certainly in the past you were limited to 100MB for 10 minutes of video. So there's already compression needed before the file even gets to YouTube.
Thanks. Someone else linked to their own video of a DOOM hack demo here. The quality is pretty bad but is horrendous without the parameter. I've also found a video of Grace Potter and the Nocturnals here.
Etiquette is etiquette. He kills his mother but he can't wear grey trousers.
Will not release anymore until people on you tube stop posting high quality "Bleach" episodes.
You have to be a paying subscriber on it, but it looked like they got rid of it according to this.
Ant(Dude) @ Quality Foraged Links (AQFL.net) & The Ant Farm (antfarm.ma.cx / antfarm.home.dhs.org).
I'm not THAT interested in this quirk, just a little bit. =)
...So it looks to me like Firefox and IE users get the high-quality video by default, whereas Safari and Opera (and maybe other browsers) get the low-quality one? That's weird.
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
Install this Greasemonkey script. You don't need Javascript at all to watch Youtube clips.
d'oh
Would that be YourTubes, MyTubes, or TheirTubes?
figuring this would come sooner rather than later i upped my last few videos in pretty good quality via the youtube uploader (allows for files up to 1gb)
I'm on XP with FF3 and I get different quality, noticeably so, with the &fmt=6 appended.
[Examples of HQ youtube video]
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.
Good timing what with Stage6 kicking the bucket. They were brilliant...
You feel sleepy. Close your eyes. The opinions stated above are yours. You cannot imagine why you ever felt otherwise.
... who knew Steve Ballmer could skateboard?
My little Linux and tech blog
I've got an ipod touch and I've a-b ed a couple of videos. Though youtube is probably converting from the original source (i remember them mentioning they keep the original videos in addition to the converted flv format), it looks like they ran most videos through a very rapid compression setting in order to quickly provide service to the tons of new iphone users. Consequently, they all have seemed to suffer from some terrible quality (encoding errors, huge blocking issues, etc) whereas the flv videos are often much smoother. Color saturation seems to be better on the ipod though, I admit.
On a related note, I wasn't sure if the newer 'high' quality videos are actually higher res or just encoded with smaller blocksize or whatnot. When I click the "make original size" button on the newer videos, they're still larger than the originals. Does that suggest the new videos are higher-resolution in addition to being encoded with higher quality?
h.264 does some fantastic things at low bitrates. higher processing power requirements aren't much of a concern if the video can be offloaded to an IC decoder chip on the gpu, moreover.
that being said, i'm not sure if I want to see the same rick astley video for the hundredth time in high definition....
Please make it so that maximizing the videos doesn't delete the buffer I spent all evening loading.
Ignore all the other speculators. If you just watch the movie, you'll notice they they interlaced it so they could double the resolution without really doubling the amount of data. Every other line of pixels is in every other frame so it basically looks like crap. This isn't going to go over very well. I HATE interlaced videos! Because of interlaced videos, there have been whole shows about mysterious creatures called rods that fly at like 800 MPH and come from another dimension wooooo. Turns out they're just interlaced video camera artifacts of moths and stuff. Plus did I mention it looks like blurry crap?
Google's Super Secret Search Algorithm: SELECT @search_results FROM internet WHERE @search_results = 'good'
Cheers! Verified.. I downloaded the video files for each format from youtube.. they are as follows:
;)
:)
:-)
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
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
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
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
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
Coolness
appleguru.org
shows how much youtube has stagnated under google ownership. In the mean time sites like stage6, veoh, and daily motion have popped up with much higher video quality, and sometimes better organization of videos.
Youtube seems increasingly irrelevant compared to the multitude of competitors out there doing a better job.
I did some HD-DVD work. Typically, these would cram it right up to the 30 gig limit. Being generous, and assuming the movie is two and a half hours long, that still means 5 minutes per gig.
Which means to reach that level of quality, you get 30 seconds of video.
I'd suggest that for the things on YouTube where I'd want quality, I'd probably also want 5 minutes or so of video, at least.
You say this after quoting me on "re-encoding crap will give you crap", yet you seem to agree that they are crappy home movies. And you know what, I think most of us seem to agree that they are crappy. So why quote that bit?
Well, I did get one fact wrong, but so did you. In conclusion, this guy is the only one among us who knows what he's talking about.
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
In my XP install, on FF2, I noticed a big difference in quality between the two videos, especially in fullscreen.
H.264+flash is already done:
http://www.streamingmedia.com/article.asp?id=9681 (from last summer).
Original video:
- Total Datarate: 310kbps
- Width: 320 px
- Height: 240px
- Video: Sorenson H.263
- Audio: Mp3 Mono - 22kHz sampling
- Total Datasize: 3.28MB
The New Video:So they're still aiming for older Flash compatibility. As they haven't moved over to the newer .264 codecs.
-Steve http://www.stevennicholson.com
Pakistan will take care of that by reducing demand. After all, how can you watch videos on Youtube if you can't even get to youtube.com? Don't start with me about embedded videos on 3rd party websites, you smartasses
What the fuck are you talking about? That video is not interlaced, in fact it's been deinterlaced via blending, which looks like MORE shit than just leaving the mice teeth in.
FC Closer
This is blowing my irony-meter.
I am trolling
I watch the skating dog video, and the 3 ones you linked to. Is it me or am I the only one to not notice a single difference between the normal-quality and the supposedly high-quality version (&fmt=6) of these videos ? Seriously I wonder... Do you need a special version of the Flash plugin or something ?
Dailymotion announced HD support some weeks ago, so I guess Youtube wants to have that too.
McCartney fans pay bus tickets. [...] Lennon fans too, with discretion.
For me, it was hard to notice a difference in the dog videos. However, I could really see a difference on the CNN Univision debate video.
I'm on Konq + nspluginviewer, and the difference is dramatic. But, honestly, now my bandwidth isn't enough. They could have moved to x264 and gotten this quality just fine, instead of upping the bitrate. Not to mention the costs.
Rudd-O - http://rudd-o.com/
You got me.
Rudd-O - http://rudd-o.com/
Very strange. I wonder what the difference is. I know I'm not the only person seeing no difference in some cases, and weird that it's consistent for me across browsers and platforms.
Did you know that Barack Obama is a big fan of Che Guevara? See http://littlegreenfootballs.com/weblog/?entry=28915&only
That that is is that that that that is not is not.
How about the "Tubes to Nowhere"?
"Can of worms? The can is open... the worms are everywhere."
- IE6 on XP - Same Really? Viewing the video (with/without the &fmt=6 first), I found a quite noticeable difference using IE6/XP and SeaMonkey/XP (which should have the same engine as FF2).
In particular, note the pixelation on the dog's rear as it passes the camera at 0:03-0:04.
- RG>
Hey pal, this isn't a pleasantforest, so don't waste my time with pleasantries!
I was very curious why the parameter is "fmt=6" and my mind raced to deduce that Youtube is using the On2 VP6 video codec and not H.264 (or 263 or AVC or whatever).
I examined the raw data download from a "fmt=6" URL and according to the meta data the format is actually On2's VP6 codec.
Furthermore, the data *inside* the downloaded data indicates that it is created from one "vp.video.google.com" domain. I wonder what "vp" stands for.
The "fmt=18" is not the same data, either.
Let the Youtube hype assumption wars begin.
Kriston
The first time you visit the "fmt=6" video the copy on your computer's cache, and the copy in the cache of the edge server you're visiting, is using the higher-quality transcoded version of the video.
You'd have to erase your browser and Adobe Flash's cache directories and then visit the video's URL that is not the one you already visited.
When they say that old videos are being "converted" they're being a little coy about it. These videos are transcoded from youtube over onto the local "edge" servers using the requested format. From their point of view you should be able to see the higher-quality video instead of the lower-quality one as long as your Adobe Flash player supports the new format.
That format appears to be On2's VP6 at a much more aggressive quality/bandwidth setting. That coded is somewhat more efficient than H.264 and is much cheaper to license.
You did know that using H.264 requires licensing even though they are standards, right?
Kriston