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YouTube Introduces 1080p Premium

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Re: YouTube Introduces 1080p Premium

#31

Post by ksec »

Macha wrote: post #30
ksec wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>2.5mbps are youtube's own recommendations: https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/1722171?hl=en#zipp ... That is for uploading . They will transcode your H.264 file when you upload it regardless of bitrate.

It's like you didn't even read the very next sentence.

You said transcode to H.265. And they dont transcode to H.265 or HEVC. ( Apart from some edge case of 360 degree video )

And your original claims of YouTube using 2.5Mbps and 4Mbps. Go and find me clip with those bitrate?

Re: YouTube Introduces 1080p Premium

#32

Post by rasz »

SirMaster wrote: post #21

You can watch the enhanced 1080p version without a premium account with yt-dlp by just adding: --extractor-args "youtube:player_client=default,ios" to the command. The ID for the enhanced bitrate 1080p is 616.

random 1080p only upload https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CxN56ns8tbM "Junk or Jewel? The 1974 VW Thing Charity Car Purchase." Mustie1

    137 mp4   1920x1080   30    │    1.59GiB 2686k dash  │ avc1.640028   2686k video only          1080p, mp4_dash
    270 mp4   1920x1080   30    │ ~  2.86GiB 4707k m3u8  │ avc1.640028   4707k video only
    248 webm  1920x1080   30    │  801.49MiB 1320k dash  │ vp9           1320k video only          1080p, webm_dash
    614 mp4   1920x1080   30    │ ~  2.13GiB 3514k m3u8  │ vp09.00.40.08 3514k video only
    616 mp4   1920x1080   30    │ ~  3.52GiB 5789k m3u8  │ vp09.00.40.08 5789k video only
without magic beans only dash 137 and 248 available. ~5-6Mbit 1080 is what Normal Twitch streams are at.

Checked 4K one https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pUm5B-5uQik "FIRST WIN IN THE SW20!!! MR2 Championship Brands Hatch 2023" DannyDC2

    299 mp4   1920x1080   60    │    2.34GiB  5047k dash  │ avc1.64002a    5047k video only          1080p60, mp4_dash
    312 mp4   1920x1080   60    │ ~  3.68GiB  7756k m3u8  │ avc1.64002A    7756k video only
    303 webm  1920x1080   60    │    1.62GiB  3508k dash  │ vp9            3508k video only          1080p60, webm_dash
    617 mp4   1920x1080   60    │ ~  2.86GiB  6027k m3u8  │ vp09.00.41.08  6027k video only
    308 webm  2560x1440   60    │    5.17GiB 11168k dash  │ vp9           11168k video only          1440p60, webm_dash
    623 mp4   2560x1440   60    │ ~  6.72GiB 14169k m3u8  │ vp09.00.50.08 14169k video only
    315 webm  3840x2160   60    │   11.55GiB 24964k dash  │ vp9           24964k video only          2160p60, webm_dash
    628 mp4   3840x2160   60    │ ~ 13.42GiB 28319k m3u8  │ vp09.00.51.08 28319k video only
Now this is somewhat more interesting. IOS API unlocks higher bitrate m3u8 tracks for all resolutions, even 4K goes from 25 to 28Mbit.

Re: YouTube Introduces 1080p Premium

#33

Post by Macha »

ksec wrote: post #31
Macha wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's like you didn't even read the very next sentence.

You said transcode to H.265 . And they dont transcode to H.265 or HEVC. ( Apart from some edge case of 360 degree video ) And your original claims of YouTube using 2.5Mbps and 4Mbps. Go and find me clip with those bitrate?

Ok, sure, they also produce extra h264 files at various resolutions and quality levels. Transcoding can't invent quality that wasn't there in the input, so I don't see how that changes anything. That 2.5mbit/s upload they accept is therefore the ceiling.

Re: YouTube Introduces 1080p Premium

#34

Post by Sohcahtoa82 »

wodenokoto wrote: post #14
botanical wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

DVD's definitely didn't use up the entire 4.7GB. A movie was anything from 700MB to 1GB

I remember old dvd players had a noticeable pause in the movie when it changed layers.

Yup.

The movie producers would try to hide it by placing the layer change in a scene change, but I often still noticed it.

Re: YouTube Introduces 1080p Premium

#35

Post by kevincox »

Timon3 wrote: post #13

Honestly this is one of the best monetization schemes I can think of for YouTube. It's an advantage that doesn't take away anything for non-premium users, and it improves the main functionality of the service. I sincerely hope they can do more like this instead of increasing ad lengths for non-premium users!

It's really strange though when they offer higher resolution streams for free. So this only really helps for videos that are 1080p. In most cases watching 2k or 4k even on a 1080p monitor will result in better quality (although maybe less bandwidth efficient).

Re: YouTube Introduces 1080p Premium

#36

Post by kevincox »

jiggawatts wrote: post #4
wodenokoto wrote: post #2

Am I seeing the past in a nostalgic light or were DVD 480p considerably better than YouTube 480p? I feel like streaming services compress their streams so hard that the resolution indicators become meaningless.

I watch 4320p (8K) streams when possible because it noticeably improves the quality on my 4K screens — and this is with my worsening eyesight! That shouldn’t be noticeable if the 4K stream was encoded properly.

> That shouldn’t be noticeable if the 4K stream was encoded properly.

I don't think this is true. At some point there are diminishing returns. At some point if the 4k video has twice the bitrate it is going to have more information available. Some will be lost in the down sampling but it isn't "improper" to end up with more data on the screen.

It is true that YouTube bitrates are pretty "conservative" for the resolution but I don't think that is "improper" it is just a tradeoff based on common device an internet speeds. They could be more bandwidth efficient if they did a custom transcode for each user's screen size and bandwidth but that is infeasible. So it is fine that some users will not be able to stream the 4k transcode on their 4k screen and will need to use the 2k stream and some users will have extra bandwidth on their 1080p screen so will stream the 2k version for better quality. The goal isn't to be perfect for each device but to be good on average.

Re: YouTube Introduces 1080p Premium

#37

Post by SirMaster »

Saris wrote: post #27
wodenokoto wrote: post #2

Am I seeing the past in a nostalgic light or were DVD 480p considerably better than YouTube 480p? I feel like streaming services compress their streams so hard that the resolution indicators become meaningless.

Yep, streaming sites use so much compression to save on costs that everything looks much worse then it should.

Eh, this isn't really my experience these days.

Here is Disney+ stream vs a Disc 1:1 copy:

https://nicko88.com/misc/compare/Ant%20Man%20Quantumania/

https://nicko88.com/misc/compare/Avatar%20The%20Way%20of%20W...

Streaming looks only slightly marginally worse IMO.

Re: YouTube Introduces 1080p Premium

#38

Post by kevincox »

praash wrote: post #16

Is this different from selecting a higher resolution stream (with increased bitrate) and downscaling it on a 1080p display? If not, will they hide 1440+p options behind a paywall as well? Most creators upload at 1080p, and YouTube has always given bitrate recommendations to match their service. Even with updated documentation, I'm expecting lots of people using their existing encoding presets for future 1080p uploads…

Mostly no. It will be better in some scenarios.

1. If you are bandwidth limited the high bitrate version should be a bit more efficient than the higher resolution (as it isn't wasting space on details that will be lost in the downscaling).

2. For videos that are uploaded in 1080p it will be the best quality available.

So it does seem like a pretty niche benefit. Maybe if you have a 1080p phone it can be worth it for the reduced resource usage and better battery life? But with many channels starting to upload in 4k it does seem like a very minor improvement in most cases.

Re: YouTube Introduces 1080p Premium

#39

Post by reaperman »

Timon3 wrote: post #13

Honestly this is one of the best monetization schemes I can think of for YouTube. It's an advantage that doesn't take away anything for non-premium users, and it improves the main functionality of the service. I sincerely hope they can do more like this instead of increasing ad lengths for non-premium users!

Eh, it's more of a boiling the frog situation. The quality for 1080p video has gone down a LOT over the past 5 years. It's hard to notice for general-purpose videos, but speciality videos (in my case, Starcraft2 replays) with non-standard content or high complexity (some slow motion videos of chaotic systems) just immediately collapse into noise.

It's been nearly impossible to see invisible units in Starcraft2 replays on 1080p for a long time now, but that didn't used to be the case. YouTube has spent a lot on improving the compression algorithms to save money, and they've maintained 90% of the quality for most content, but the edge cases have seen 50%+ drop in visible quality. 4k completely fixes these problems and has very conservative (expensive) compression, but too many content creators still don't take advantage of that and produce only in 1080p.

When 1080p came out on YouTube, it was much, much less compressed than it is now. So they did take it away for non-premium users. They just did it slowly over a long timescale.

Re: YouTube Introduces 1080p Premium

#40

Post by reaperman »

kevincox wrote: post #35
Timon3 wrote: post #13

Honestly this is one of the best monetization schemes I can think of for YouTube. It's an advantage that doesn't take away anything for non-premium users, and it improves the main functionality of the service. I sincerely hope they can do more like this instead of increasing ad lengths for non-premium users!

It's really strange though when they offer higher resolution streams for free. So this only really helps for videos that are 1080p. In most cases watching 2k or 4k even on a 1080p monitor will result in better quality (although maybe less bandwidth efficient).

> In most cases watching 2k or 4k even on a 1080p monitor will result in better quality

Completely agree and its been super annoying to me that 1080p was compressed so dang aggressively in the past few years.

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