Guide: YouTube HD 720P Videos

[ViciousXUSMC]

So I read the news about youtube going widescreen & HD and had to give it a shot.

I just got off work and made a super fast video of fallout 3 to see if it works.

The Verdict?

It does! - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DTXkHq8AYQ4&fmt=22

Edit: a few more shot clips I made
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jYYxSsKnuZ0&fmt=22
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gbv109HCIK4&fmt=22

Ultra short clip just for testing, bad angle but its a guy getting his head blow off with a dinner plate :P

So how to do this?

First recording was done with FRAPS. (http://www.fraps.com/)

I just did the full resolution in my case 1920x1080 and set it for 30fps since I know YouTube scales down to 30fps and also because the files from FRAPS at this size are HUGE.

For Fallout 3 I found F4 works great as the video start/stop key.

Get your videos together via FRAPS or if you already have stuff you want to use.

Next. I had to recode the video from the massive file size that FRAPS gives you to something more normal. Also the resolution needs to be changed (YouTube probably will do this on its own but I bet the quality will be worse and take longer)

I use Avidemux to do all my encoding and use the x264 codec its by far the best, however I just found the hard way that FRAPS uses its own special codec that is not compatible with Avidemux. So I will have a separate guide on Avidemux at a later time incase you have other video sources you want to use that do work (or if other capture programs work with it, I need to try Xfire's capture)

For now download & use AutoGK (http://www.autogk.me.uk/)

Its free and works so great for about everything.

The program is super easy to use.

1.) Click on the input file selection tab and navigate to your movie file

2.) You can change the output file now if you like, it will default to the same location with AGK as the end part of the file name.

3.) Select output size - Use Custom Size and put ether your target size there or just a large number. If the target size is larger than the codec needs for max quality then it will just end up being a smaller size file so you cant go wrong here with a larger size target for max quality purposes.

I left mine at 700mb the default for this 10 second long clip

4.) Go to advanced settings and select Fixed Width because we want to make this 720p my original file was 1080p. I know 1920x1080 scales down to 1280x720 so for the width I put 1280.

For the Codec use Xvid

For Audio Auto is ok.

5.) Select Add Job

6.) Select Start

7.) Wait! depending on how large your file is and your computer speed it could take awhile.

My original clip from FRAPS was 196MB and the file I got out of AutoGK was 6.37MB so its a very big difference.

I then uploaded this video like normal to YouTube.

You will notice with the default link here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DTXkHq8AYQ4

Even if you click the "watch high quality" it does not look that great. The main secret to sharing your great 720P videos is adding the &fmt=22 tag to the end of the URL

So the new link would be the one I posted at the top. Now it looks very nice and you can actually read the text and see small details witch was previously impossible in youtube videos.

Now that I have the process laid out feel free to share your videos. I am about to dive back into Fallout 3 as we speak and pay put together a nice collage of clips for your enjoyment later.

[ViciousXUSMC]

Update: Looks like the &fmt=22 is no longer needed. I just noticed tonight that the "watch in high quality" link has been replaced with "watch in HD" for my videos.

[DaFox]

Update: Looks like the &fmt=22 is no longer needed. I just noticed tonight that the "watch in high quality" link has been replaced with "watch in HD" for my videos.

For me it has not been, Huge difference

HD: http://img503.imageshack.us/img503/9351/12042008014949yr2.png
non: http://img503.imageshack.us/img503/2290/12042008015015bc3.png

[ViciousXUSMC]

did you click the "watch in HD" link? it seems the same to me or atleast very close. I can tell its not the same as the old "watch in high quality" link thats for sure.

Im about to re roll a unarmed combat guy instead of finishing the game i think. Should make for some great videos.

[[PC Gamer]]

thanks ViciousXUSMC, great tutorial...
using it now...
well done oldboy... well done.

can i please get you or somebody that knows to list (or link to) what the conversion to some other native resolutions are. what i mean is this:

if i want to upload a hd clip to youtube, who at the moment use 1280x720 and my source is 1600x1200 what should i use in the settings of auto gordian knot ? i know i can put whatever i want but it may not look the best. i'm sure that if i used 1600x1200 as original source then what the best number to keep the ration for youtube would be something like 1174x720 (this is a guess). do you know what i mean ? ...or does it really not matter ?

thanks,

ps: also is there a way to force youtube to ONLY use the hd clips ? or is youtube set up in such a way that no matter what, they always have 2 versions for people - a crappy one and a hd one (assuming you have a hd one) ? i'd like to only ever let people see my hd ones.

[ViciousXUSMC]

Youtube always defaults to the "crappy" version depending on its size and bitrate it will have a 2nd version for "Watch in high quality" or "Watch in HD" I am not sure what the exact specifications are to make it considered HD, but just upload the highest quality you can and it should work.

The longer your clip the harder it is to get "HD" because it takes the file length and gets the average bit rate or something like that.

I just did like a 9 min Dead Space vid and even though my original was perfect quality the YouTube HD version is pretty cut down.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4V3GeDfd-dc

As for your resolution converter, I do not know off the top of my head. Id find something that has a fixed aspect ratio change like even photoshop could do it. Create an image 1600x1200 and go to resize image and change it to 720 and it will tell you the vert horizontal pixel count for you.

[[PC Gamer]]

ok thanks,
i've uploaded some hd ones and they work just fine. i wish that it wouldn't 1st load the crappy one and THEN people have to click watch in HD, because most people are noobs and never do that.


also do you have a good program that can convert the avi's created with auto gordian knot to flv ??? a nice small and freeware one ?

thanks,

ps: your dead space hd vid looks hd, how much better is the source ? there's nothing wrong with it. youtube only supports 720 atm....

[ViciousXUSMC]

"]ok thanks,
i've uploaded some hd ones and they work just fine. i wish that it wouldn't 1st load the crappy one and THEN people have to click watch in HD, because most people are noobs and never do that.


also do you have a good program that can convert the avi's created with auto gordian knot to flv ??? a nice small and freeware one ?

thanks,

ps: your dead space hd vid looks hd, how much better is the source ? there's nothing wrong with it. youtube only supports 720 atm....

The source is much better even the 720 video after I convert it. Its sharper and more detailed.

[[PC Gamer]]

The source is much better even the 720 video after I convert it. Its sharper and more detailed.

so then youtube still downgrades 720 source ?? but you *think* it's due to the length of the clip??
what you should to to test this theory is only upload like 2 minutes of the SAME source and check the results. then you'll know for sure....

[DaFox]

"][quote]
The source is much better even the 720 video after I convert it. Its sharper and more detailed.

so then youtube still downgrades 720 source ?? but you *think* it's due to the length of the clip??
what you should to to test this theory is only upload like 2 minutes of the SAME source and check the results. then you'll know for sure....

Youtube converts it to their own FLV's and probably downgrades the bitrate too.

[[PC Gamer]]

yeah, but he's happy with his other HD clips (fallout 3) so we talking about how the longer dead space HD clip is worse. so to find out if it IS the length he should do what i suggested. only he'll know....

[dopefish]

I use Avidemux to do all my encoding and use the x264 codec its by far the best, however I just found the hard way that FRAPS uses its own special codec that is not compatible with Avidemux. So I will have a separate guide on Avidemux at a later time incase you have other video sources you want to use that do work (or if other capture programs work with it, I need to try Xfire's capture)

x264 is not a codec. x264 is a utility to encode videos to H.264.

For the Codec use Xvid

This is a terrible codec. Use H.264.



:)

[ViciousXUSMC]

I use H264 and x264 interchangably as many do. But your correct.

XVID & DIVX are not bad, but H264 has obviously passed them by in quality.

XVID is good for its speed though, so if quality is not a concern or file size you can get the job done faster.

Strange thing though my H264/AAC .MP4 coding of this file is going faster than the XVID one did it seems like. Plus my HDD is not getting pegged nearly as hard. I guess its just how AutoGK works as it uses VirtualDub.

Now that I have found some new tricks I can finaly use H264 for my FRAPS files via Frame Server because before I could not as the codec it uses was not supported in AviDemux.

Infact my very first FRAPS H264 encoding is finishing now! (well there was one earlier but with the colors messed up lol) so going to do the side by side compare and see if I can see any difference then send it off to youtube to see if they end up breaking it down differently.

Edit: Dang I have an audio sync issue and the video starts off fast for some reason. So still no usable H264 encoding for me.

If for no other reason than pure simplicity and reliability thats the main reason I am happy with XVID AutoGK encoding. I have not had even one problem or bad video yet, however using so many different H264 programs I have run into so many issues.

I still use and prefer AviDemux but I just have this audio sync issue that creeps up on me for a lot of things and it wont open FRAPS files.

[dopefish]

I use H264 and x264 interchangably as many do. But your correct.

Yes, many people do this. I wish they would stop. :)

XVID & DIVX are not bad, but H264 has obviously passed them by in quality.

They're pretty bad. ;)

XVID is good for its speed though, so if quality is not a concern or file size you can get the job done faster.

Not true. It really depends on the settings you use to encode. You can encode videos that have a much higher quality while encoding at a faster speed with a smaller final filesize. Depending on your CPU and settings with x264, you can get anywhere from 0.25 FPS to 1000+ FPS if you wanted.



There are many ways to approach creating videos. I use neroaacenc for creating AAC files. I use a hand-compiled 64-bit x264 (12-15% gains from it being 64-bit) directly rather than through some third-party frontend. I use a combination of mp4box and mkvmerge for importing the files into containers. I prefer matroska over MP4.

As for effects, timing, audio/video sync, I use Avisynth. It's scripting language and filters are extremely useful.




YouTube quality is still pretty terrible. For gaming videos, I prefer to use NoobFlicks since their quality is better.

I've included some comparisons below.

As you can see in the following images, the difference between my original source and encoded source is almost impossible to tell.

In both YouTube clips, all details in the hand, ground, walls, etc. are destroyed. The NoobFlicks clips also suffer greatly in quality, but a lot more detail is retained throughout the entire scene.


Edit:
Keep in mind that YouTube will downscale 1080p to 720p. NoobFlicks keeps 1080p at 1080p, so the bitrate at 1080p will suffer some with NoobFlicks.


Original, non-encoded 1080p source:


Encoded 1080p source used to upload:


YouTube quality from a 1080p upload:


YouTube quality from a 720p upload:


NoobFlicks quality from a 1080p upload:


NoobFlicks quality from a 720p upload:

[ViciousXUSMC]

I'll have to have you help me learn what you know if your willing.

Im done for today I have 3 hours till I have to be at work so need some sleep.

My x264 adventure ends on a sad note today.

The frame sever application from vegas did not work with avidemux I get a green scree with audio just like I get if I try to import a fraps .avi file directly so I guess the codec must be retained from the original files, or what ever codec that frame server uses it does not support.

I tried a few things like exporting from vegas as a different file type and a different codec like WM9 and it still gives me a save error and gives me a bad file. (first 3 seconds of the clip are very fast video with normal audio causing audio to be out of sync the entire clip, cant tell but seems like the sync gets worse as it goes)

I just wish there was some fool proof easy way to do x264 encoding w/ AAC as for the container .mp4 is fine with me but .mkv is also good. Im not going to compete with you in why one is better than the other as your knowledge is much greater.

You should try to write us a tutorial or something on how you do it and the programs you use. I especially need to find a way to do this from sony vegas because more often than not I need to edit a video not just convert it.

[dopefish]

Yeah. I'll work on something sometime. I do things in a more complex manner usually because I have more control and the results are better.

As long as you work with a lossless source in other editors like Vegas or VirtualDub, and you save it as lossless, then you can easily encode it with x264.

[ViciousXUSMC]

Yeah problem is a lossless file of even just 9 min is 56gb id hate to see a longer file!

I really liked that debugmode frame server aplication. It worked flawlessly with AutoGK allowing me to go directly into XVID with no middle file, but it will not work with Avidemux.

So chances are you method will work with it as Avidemux seems to be picky about what codecs and files it supports. When it works its the best encoder I have used, with tons of options, and filters, and a great interface. However I just seem to run into the few situations where it does not work right.

Im starting to wonder if maybe is partially my system since I have so many different codecs and programs installed, maybe it is a conflict of sorts. I mean Vegas is giving me some error about a file it needs when I tried to do XVID when last time I tried it, it worked.

Also I was very surprised when I just quickly experimented with the only other format Vegas offered me that had decent options and that was WM9 it came out fast and with a smaller file size but looked nearly identical to the lossless uncompressed file.

Im fully in support of your tutorial, if you can just get us started and then we can ask questions if we get stuck :P

I also prefer a manual advanced method when it comes to most things, just video editing has given me trouble for some reason.

[dopefish]

Yeah problem is a lossless file of even just 9 min is 56gb id hate to see a longer file!

Don't confuse uncompressed and lossless. :)

When you capture stuff, it mostly is uncompressed. You can store it in a lossless file that takes up far less space while still maintaining quality.

You can use x264 to store a lossless H.264 file. This cuts down on size considerably.

Here's an example of a 4 second clip:
433 MB uncompressed
166 MB compressed lossless

Think of WAV to FLAC.

You can use HUFFYUV to store in a more commonly supported format. You can even load it into VirtualDub I believe.




I'll work on some helpful information later. It won't necessarily be a tutorial so much as providing lots of helpful information that you can take and use at your leisure.

[ViciousXUSMC]

HUFFYUF is supposed to work in Vegas, i guess I just need to d/l and install it so I will give that a shot later.

Also the Vegas DV codec is supposed to be virtually loseless, not sure if I have that or not but I found it in my google search.

[ViciousXUSMC]

well downloaded and installed HuffYUV and cant find it in my vegas encoding codec options. Id id however when googling stuff find recommended on Doom9 an alternative FFD Shows FFV1 and that one I think I do have so going to give it a shot.

Edit: Scratch that when I went into my FFD Show codecs list I found it in there as well as FFV1. Now not sure wich is better. It probably wont matter but doing a small test run with both. Also there are several smaller options inside the codec setup that I do not understand.

Edit 2: FFV1 resulted in some kind of slow motion video, so it was slow and it put audio out of sync. Huff worked to what seems perfect in the file it created and its much smaller than uncompressed. Still though running that file through avidemux gives me the bad files where it starts in hyper speed and then slows down to normal causing audio sync issues and the file was not save properly error.

I can open up other files on my computer like stuff I have downloaded and encode it just fine in avidemux so not sure what the deal is.