Upscaling video to trigger higher bit rate youtube delivery

john_dennis wrote on 5/5/2017, 1:32 AM

In response to these two recent threads,

Youtube Tricks for higher quality

Swapped to Vegas Pro 14 but won't allow me to upscale videos!

I created two test files and posted them on youtube for peer review.

I rendered a 1920 x 1080 - 29.970p video from a 305 Mbps 3840 x 2160 - 29.970p source. I then upscaled the 1080p video to 2048 x 1152 per the discussion in the first thread. (I had the option of going straight to 2048 x 1152 from the UHD source but, presumably, the folks that are interested in this practice may not have that option.)

The 1920 x 1080 video on youtube:

The 2048 x 1152 video on youtube:

I'm interested in data about the bit rate and pixel dimensions that youtube returns for each file.

Mediainfo report for the two files:

Render templates for the two files:

1920 x1080 - 29.970p

2048 x 1152 - 29.970p

Comments

SphinxRa40 wrote on 5/5/2017, 1:44 AM

Links are not working...probably because you linked 'edit' video's

john_dennis wrote on 5/5/2017, 1:47 AM

Thank you.

NickHope wrote on 5/5/2017, 2:38 AM

Here in Bangkok they both started playing the 1080 stream and they look pretty much the same to me.

Anyone know a download method that will download the 1080p versions? Keepvid etc. have stopped offering that one free now.

Musicvid wrote on 5/5/2017, 8:29 AM

4k Video Downloader is working here.

NickHope wrote on 5/5/2017, 9:40 AM

Thanks Musicvid. That works.

  1. 1920 x 1080 uploaded 1920 x 1080 downloaded.mp4 - 3 684 kb/s
  2. 2048 x 1152 uploaded 1920 x 1080 downloaded.mp4 - 3 489 kb/s
  3. 2048 x 1152 uploaded 2048 x 1152 downloaded.mp4 - 5 918 kb/s


I wasn't offered stream #3 here in Bangkok on Firefox. 1080p HD is the highest. So I can't tell you if it looked better.

Musicvid wrote on 5/5/2017, 3:08 PM

So YouTube is downsampling 1152 slightly more severely than native 1080, in this single test.

My curiosity is satisfied, but seeing some histograms comparing shadow noise might seal the coffin.

NickHope wrote on 5/6/2017, 1:05 AM

Difficult to draw conclusions from comparing the histograms but I can say that the non-downscaled version is slightly clearer in the details when viewed 1:1 on a big monitor.

john_dennis wrote on 5/6/2017, 9:22 AM

Here are the properties for the files that I received using 4K Video Downloader.