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render for YouTube
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[Scott Bush] “If this is true, that youtube uses flash 8, either that is new, or the cow magazine has some bad info in it. In the march/april 2007 issue, on page 25, Aharon Rabinowitz writes in his article “How to Preserve Detail in Mini-Media Movies”, “What youtube doesn’t tell you is that if you upload flv files under 100MB as well, they don’t recompress them… I should mention that this only works with Flash 7’s Sorenson Spark Codec, not the newer Flash 8 VP6 codec…” Granted this article is several months old, so they may have changed to flash 8 by now (as they should!) but I found this confusing to say the least.”
The article was right at the time it was printed. YouTube shortly after changed their methodology.
Sorry for the confusion.
Best regards,
Ron Lindeboom
creativecow.net
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No problem, guess I should get to reading the magazines faster, eh? Haha – thanks for clearing it up.
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Raymond,
[Raymond Motion Pictures] “YouTube is very vague about video specs – other than frame size – So start high in your flv file’s bit rate – YouTube’s owner, Google, accepts my rightly sized flv video ads as is – 400 bit rate – they don’t appear to me to be re-encoded – neither sound nor picture – my clients love it – we have the best Google video ads out there and the click-throughs to prove it.”
I’m not sure that it’s reasonable to expect YouTube to accept the same bit rate for a free video upload as Google accepts for a paid ad even with YouTube being owned by Google. If you get away with it, great, but if you send YouTube a 400 kbps Flash8 flv video and they re-encode it to 200 kbps it’s gonna look like crap.
I’ve done some encoding for Web but not for YouTube. Could someone tell me whether there’s some way to do a re-do if the video comes out badly when you upload to YouTube, or…, can you ask them to remove it and then try again with different perameters? That would give you a chance to try and push the envelope and try again if it doesn’t work out.
Ron Shook
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Ron,
[Ron Lindeboom] “The article was right at the time it was printed. YouTube shortly after changed their methodology.”
It’s too much to hope that the target will hold still in any significant way. Oh My! (g)
Ron Shook
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Ron,
[Ron Lindeboom] “The article was right at the time it was printed. YouTube shortly after changed their methodology.”
It’s too much to hope that the target will hold still in any significant way. Oh My! (g)
Ron Shook
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[Ron Shook] “I’m not sure that it’s reasonable to expect YouTube to accept the same bit rate for a free video upload as Google accepts for a paid ad even with YouTube being owned by Google. If you get away with it, great, but if you send YouTube a 400 kbps Flash8 flv video and they re-encode it to 200 kbps it’s gonna look like crap.”
As usual, Ron, you raise a good point. YouTube is for video dummies – they may re-encode automatically considering the myriad of formats they recieve. My point, which I didn’t express all that clearly, is to start high and tweak down in uploading Flash 8 complaint files to YouTube.
24p creates even smaller file sizes in Flash 8 than 30fps files – but YouTube specs 30fps – does that mean a re-encode is automatic? I haven’t done the testing because my market is not there and I don’t have the time. My gut tells me that if they got specific about their video specs, they would be, effectively, salespeople for their licenser.
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John, I’ve seen some very clean YouTube stuff done using the iPod templates in Vegas.
Try the 640×480 one first.
If that’s too large, use the 320×240 one. -
Immediately following my article on YouTube Compression, YouTube changed how they do things. No matter what you upload, it automatically gets re-encoded.
To my knowledge, YouTube still uses Flash 7. It does not use Flash 8 (VP6) as is evident in the quality of their videos. I’ve read nothing reliable to indicate that they have upgraded.
Since YouTube’s alliance with Apple the word out was that all videos were being re-encoded as H.264, but it’s unclear as to exactly when and if this will happen. It may only be related to Apple TV and mobile devices, but that the site will continue as Flash 7.
Just for comparison, here is a flash video I have encoded with VP6:
https://www.allbetsareoff.com/video/vid_Zsquad.html
And here is what it looks like after I upload that flash VP6 video to YouTube:
https://youtube.com/watch?v=OFyrrgfroyY
In my experience, the only thing that will keep a YouTube video looking good is if it has low motion. In fact, a long video with low motion can look quite crisp – almost uncompressed – because during the compression process, more data can be allocated to the places that need it (so a few high-motion areas vs. the rest of it with low motion).
But the short of it is – YouTube is not a good place to be uploading your video if you want to keep the quality up. Period. Despite what anyone says, YouTube ALWAYS re-encodes your video. They don’t want you using your own settings.
[Raymond Motion Pictures] “320×240 – 30fps – start with 400bps – the flv file should then be served up as is.”
Where did you hear this? 400Bps is Extremely low. maybe you mean Kbps? Either way, to my knowledge they are still encoding anything uploaded to their servers.
Look, I’m the first person to admit when I’m wrong, so if anyone knows differently I;d love to hear it. I spent 1.5 months fully researching video for the web (I did nothing but reading tech documents and talking to people at On2 and Sorenson and Adobe) while preparing my DVD “Internet Killed the Video Star: A Guide to Creating Video for the Web.”
As far as superiority of format (not to be confused with codec) it’s arguable. Flash 8 video vs. MP4 vs. WMV is iffy. The one thing that Flash 8 has is that virtually every computer connected to the web can see them, and that flash player updates within SECONDS – not so for Quicktime or WMV. But each format has pluses and minuses. Personally, everything that I encode these days is Flash – this way I know I’m reaching my audience.
As far as what format to upload, best to start with the highest quality video under 100 MB – WMV performs decently in creating lower file sizes at good quality, but in the end, it all uploads to youtube looking bad.
FYI – MOV’s uploaded to youtube often lose A/V synch. At least that’s been my experience.
Hope this helps clarify some things.
Aharon Rabinowitz
Email: arabinowitz (AT) yahoo (DOT) com
All Bets Are Off Productions, Inc.
Creative Cow After Effect Podcast
Internet Killed the Video Star: A Guide to Creating Video for the WebSome contents or functionalities here are not available due to your cookie preferences!This happens because the functionality/content marked as “Google Youtube” uses cookies that you choosed to keep disabled. In order to view this content or use this functionality, please enable cookies: click here to open your cookie preferences.
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I have moved away from using YouTube because I was never satisfied with the video quality. I now use Blip.TV at https://blip.tv. You can upload your videos as MWV, MOV or Flash 8. They will re-encode the WMV and MOV videos to Flash 8 as the default first play video but also list your original format video available as a second choice for viewing. You can also designate that your original format video is the default first play video. When you upload in Flash 8 format they do not re-encode it so it looks really great. They have no file size limit but recommend 100MB. So far I’m much happier with Blip.TV for my purposes, It may be a disadvantage for commercial advertising since it’s lesser known than YouTube but you can copy the link code to your website. If anyone else has tried Blip.TV I’d love to hear your comments.
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Raymond MP –
I take back what I said about the $40 On2 flash encoder. I realized I’d begun with an .mp2 on the timeline instead of an .avi. So of course it would come out bad. I’m going to try the .mov thing you suggested.
Thanks[Ron Shook] “Could someone tell me whether there’s some way to do a re-do if the video comes out badly when you upload to YouTube, or…, can you ask them to remove it and then try again with different perameters? That would give you a chance to try and push the envelope and try again if it doesn’t work out.”
Ron – I always upload a small clip named TEST. You simply go to your “account” and hit “remove”. It’s easy.
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