Getting the best from YouTube
There is much to like about YouTube. Its massive potential audience and simple functionality make it a very empowering platform for self broadcasting. But YouTube also has built-in shortcomings that can have serious impact on the quality of experience you can generate.
YouTube, like much of the video content on the web, uses the Flash Video (FLV) format and the On2 codec for end delivery. With little doubt the On2 codec delivers the best quality-to-size compression of any codec available for very low-bandwidth delivery. Not even AVC/h.264 can equal On2's sharp and smooth clarity at extremely low bitrates taking nearly twice the bitrate to look as good. YouTube defaults 320x240 frames at about 200kbps and these image specs are certainly capable of delivering a respectable on-line image in the FLV format.
What has been a problem is YouTube's insistent re-encoding to FLV. YouTube traditionally does not allow for uploading of video in FLV and this is compounded by the 100MB upload limit cap. Instead of a simple FLV, 20MB to 30MB upload for a 10 minute video; the user is forced to upload a lossy compressed video close 100MB in order to have some remnant of their original quality survive the re-compression process.
Now, however it seems this problem has been recently rectified by YouTube. While the YouTube Help pages declare the upload compliant formats as MPEG, AVI, MOV and WMV and even clearly state that YouTube does not currently accept videos in Flash (.flv) format we have found that you can in fact upload FLV format video which is then mounted on YouTube natively without re-compression. While it was certainly strange (and problematic) that YouTube did not allow for FLV upload in the past, it seems even stranger that when it did implement this feature it remains un-declared on the site.
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Posted at 01:00AM Oct 24, 2007
by Mike Jones in video |
