Youtube Tricks for higher quality

OoDex wrote on 4/26/2017, 2:12 AM

Hello together!

Today I stumbled across something very interesting regarding Youtube. This might only interest someone that uploads often (1-x videos a day).

I will only try to give back what I read, so it's not based on my own knowledge/experience, but was proven with video links to show the difference.

To get a good quality on Youtube there are 3 factors (pretty much):
-Resolution
-FPS
-Bitrate
Problem with Youtube is that the Bitrate is limited, to achieve better quality a higher bitrate is needed. A simple trick allows you to do this (remember, this is only useful if you don't upload above 1080p).

Rendering a video in 1152p and 41 FPS unlocks 1440p and 60 FPS on Youtube. The useful sideeffect is, that is also allows you a higher bitrate for your video. Let's say you uploaded in 1080p and 60 FPS, if you just increase the 1080p to 1152p, the resolution will look the same on 1080p, but the quality will be better due to higher bitrate. The 41 FPS are only useful if you normally upload in 30 FPS.

This is only useful to use the most out of your time. Rendering in 1440p will have a better quality if someone watches in 1440p, but most don't. Now you could say "I just render in 1440p, because 1440p will look better compared to 1152p". True, but that's only useful if the person looking at your video can benefit from/use it.

I only posted this because it was very useful for me. I have to render in 1080p and 30 FPS since my Computer can't handle more (mostly regarding the 30 FPS, my computer slows down a lot while recording).
I went for 30 because I was always around 40-45 FPS ingame and didn't want to render this to 60 FPS.

With aboves knowledge, I can scale it up to 1152p and 41 FPS, purely to unlock higher bitrates and get a ~4x higher bitrate (370%) with around 60% more effort (rendering time).

Comments

john_dennis wrote on 4/26/2017, 2:53 AM

[profound skepticism]

This sounds like the argument for not wanting to increase your income because it would put you into a higher tax bracket.

[/profound skepticism]

Here's an old thread where different encoders were compared.

A discussion of download bit rate and its effects on certain types of media.

OoDex wrote on 4/26/2017, 3:14 AM

[profound skepticism]

This sounds like the argument for not wanting to increase your income because it would put you into a higher tax bracket.

[/profound skepticism]

Here's an old thread where different encoders were compared.

I am honestly not really sure what your comment has to do with the topic. The idea or the goal behind this is to get a better output with minimal extra effort. No matter on which encoder it's run.

john_dennis wrote on 4/26/2017, 3:36 AM

My skepticism centers around my doubts that youtube will send a higher bit rate downstream to a particular device at a particular pixel dimension just because a higher pixel dimension source file was uploaded. Do you have any way to measure the bit rate of what you're receiving at various pixel dimensions. My TV displays the bit rate for Netflix but not youtube.  

Chummy wrote on 4/26/2017, 4:27 PM

John_dennis the way to do that is downloading your footage from Youtube to check out the bitrates Youtube apply for each resolution/codec they have. With appropriate software you can download every file version Youtube generates to display in every device, so you can check bitrate values of each one.

For OP i dont get the point of modifying framerate. Resize is nice because of Youtube higher bitrate but i only consider resize for complex footage which really cannot look good at 1080p 4-5mbit/s H264 from Youtube.

I see your point in 41fps, it release VP9 only for 1152p41. I never tested 41fps in Youtube but i dont like increasing video framerate which only will duplicate frames. Yet 41fps is not a standard value and make no sense to me using it.

After some tests and experience i noticed the average peak bitrate from Youtube, it has a peak bitrate value for each combination of resolution/framerate/codec. Videos with lower complexity can receive less bitrate than the peak value, but the hardest ones will reach the peak values always.

Peak values from Youtube reencoding for 1080p and higher resolutions in H264:
1080p24/25/30 H264 = 4.3mbit/s
1080p48/50/60 H264 = 5.7mbit/s

2048x1152 and higher resolutions Youtube only applies H264 up to 30fps. 48fps+ is only VP9.
1152p30 H264 = 6.5mbit/s
1440p30 H264 = 10mbit/s
2160p30 H264 = 23mbit/s


Now some values for VP9:

1080p24,25,30 VP9 = 3.5mbit/s
1080p48,50,60 VP9 = 4.5mbit/s

1152p30 VP9 = 5.5mbit/s
1152p48+ VP9 = 8mbit/s

1440p30fps VP9= 9mbit/s
1440p48+ VP9= 12mbit/s

4k30fps VP9 = 17mbit/s
4k48+ VP9 = 26mbit/s

Just to clarify, Youtube classify 24,25,30fps for same bitrate value. Then for 41,48,50,60fps they apply an higher value which would be same for all of them too.

john_dennis wrote on 4/26/2017, 6:03 PM

Thank you chummy for bringing data to the discussion.

OoDex wrote on 5/2/2017, 1:59 AM

I see your point in 41fps, it release VP9 only for 1152p41. I never tested 41fps in Youtube but i dont like increasing video framerate which only will duplicate frames. Yet 41fps is not a standard value and make no sense to me using it.

The reason for the 41 FPS is that it unlocks the 48FPS in Youtube, while it seems to be the lowest value that it has to have. As I said, this is just a method to put in the least effort and get the best result, uploading in 1440p and 60FPS would be way better, but 1080p + 30 FPS would be fine for my viewership. But especially while moving, the video got blurry and I can't stand that, so I searched for ways to increase the bitrate and this way 1152p41 is by far the easiest one for still using 1080p, but minimal extra effort. Footage is recorded in 60 FPS since I used to upload in 60 FPS and just if needed I want to have it available. I am not dupilcating frames in this case, I am just removing some. But I might go back to 60 FPS because it looks way smoother.

dxdy wrote on 5/2/2017, 9:29 AM

And then there is Handbrake. I know Marco's excellent workflow for Vegas2Handbrake is "more work", but the results are outstanding.

OoDex wrote on 5/2/2017, 9:31 AM

I agree, even though I have now the perfect results I wanted. My problem is that I have to render and upload frequently, so I do it while I am at work, which means each extra step is an extra day of work.

Chummy wrote on 5/2/2017, 7:43 PM

Bitrate is not only thing for Youtube, their H264 settings are crappy while the VP9 settings is way better. More than that, VP9 like H265 works better for high motion with too much details against H264 in low bitrates, since these new codecs blurry out details in motion for better compression and this avoid too much pixelation, H264 even at low bitrates try to keep more details in motion. Youtube 1080p VP9 at 4.5mbit/s looks way better than their H264 1080p at 5.7mbit/s in high motion, same goes for every resolution match when compare Youtube H264 vs Youtube VP9. Like some people already say, when in motion eyes dont pay attention to fine details, so blurryng it out to compress better and avoid "pixelation" in low bitrate is the way new codecs are doing.

astar wrote on 5/2/2017, 10:37 PM

Like most video, you need to provide Youtube a high quality intermediate format to maximize the encode to the other formats. If you up load compressed garbage, youtube will give you garbage in return.

There is not just file that YouTube encodes to playback, there are like 10. So you want to optimize each format conversion.

I try and upload at least double, triple the best playback bit rate, or some broadcast intermediate format.