What is the highest quality audio format to use for Youtube Videos ?

[Muziksculp]

Hi,

What is the highest audio format to use for uploading (Video) to Youtube ?

Any feedback on this would be appreciated.

Thanks,
Muziksculp

[codec_spurt]

Isn't it 'adademic' as they say? No matter what you upload, they will downgrade it.

A bit like Souncloud that re-encodes everything to 128K.

That is why no one can ever hear what the f**k those audio engineers are talking about when they display the finer intricacies of their VST that goes all the way up to 64KHz.

Then again, if you are from the school of idiocy that is Presonus, you will have a musical backing track louder than the dialogue on the video, but they are a SPESHULL case. That's right: A video telling you how to do stuff with audio, but with an audio backing track of Heavy Metal, just so you can sound cool and be part of the Pepsi generation. It's not only Presonus that do this, but they are amongst the worst offenders. Shit, I nearly ranted there. Be thankful.

Youtube video is shit. That is a given.

They compress everything to buggery for play across the webz.

Soundcloud, as I mentioned also does this as a matter of practice. No matter that your super duper MP3 was at 320K CBR, we are gonna downsize it to 128K. So there.


They may not be the only ones that indulge in this practice.

No, you are not going deaf. People that put up audio comparison stuff are wasting their time with youtube. No, you can not hear the difference. Not because you don't have Golden Ears, but because it was all crushed to f**k before you heard it.

[jancivil]

Isn't it 'adademic' as they say? No matter what you upload, they will downgrade it.

A bit like Souncloud that re-encodes everything to 128K.

Not so much. If you have the resolution of eg., 1080p, your eg., 192kbps audio remains intact. When I want to present better audio, youtube is what I do. The render takes longer than some automatic setting which would give you lower resolution than I choose.

AFAIK, this is the highest resolution in terms of the final presentation. http://www.h3xed.com/web-and-internet/y ... 720p-1080p
So, no matter what the video file contains, it appears that youtube's best is 192kbps. I replaced the audio of several videos with 24-bit .wav. It didn't sound worse than the previous versions where I followed guidelines. I can't do a blind test on myself I don't think so I'm not going to front with more than that. I am however certain enough that with my own music I'm going to hear a difference between 192 and 128. The last thing I uploaded to Soundcloud was intolerable (I tend to get away with a lot), and I quite enjoy it from the bigger file on my hard drive.

In terms of the other things you say, there are in fact ways of ensuring better quality video than some people are aware of. The defaults of the program you're using do tend to be for a slow connection on the web. If you google this sort of thing, you can find all kind of discussion amongst video professionals that tell a different story than yours.

[jancivil]

http://harvey.nu/video_export/compresso ... utube.html

And, I did three different versions of this upload. I think I am not wasting my time. The highest HD setting of this I believe sounds best.

[Muziksculp]

Hi jancivil,

Thanks for the helpful feedback.

Cheers,
Muziksculp

[DarkerDigital]

Here's a link to YouTube's advanced encoding settings:

https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/1722171?hl=en

As long as your file format matches the one that YouTube is using, they probably shouldn't convert your audio.

So you should use

Container: .mp4
Audio Codec: AAC-LC
Sample rate 96khz or 48 khz
Video Codec: H.264
Audio Bitrate: 384 kbps

So, if your video has a resolution of 1280x720 and the user chooses 720p, the audio would be 384 kbps. That's why your AAC audio should also be 384 kbps when you upload it.

But don't take my advice for granted, I'm not 100% sure.

[jancivil]

As I take it that page is about upload guidelines, rather than what youtube does subsequently. If the video is from say a camera that gives 1080i60, you want to "deinterlace" it so they have 30fps. The reason for this is a long story and I don't know what it says about audio, but from reading that I think they are providing guidelines rather than what happens under their compression. I think they are suggesting you make the audio 384 kbps for the upload, I don't read that as saying they will respect that and not compress it. I have spent some time fact-finding and 192 kbps seems like a solid answer at this point. Also cf. 60/2, 384/2. But that's beyond my pay grade.

I don't know what the theory is*, I find a lot of things asserted. I played around with various things last night and I simply ended up going back to what I was doing: under the understanding of a maximum output being 192 kbps, I made my render go with 24-bit wave and it seems the best result. *IE: if the idea is to upload something with a higher resolution, why not go for it. But in terms of claiming to hear it, once I accidently did blindly confirm that I was full of shit, I believed the 24-bit had something over a 16-bit and in fact I was listening to a 320 kbps mp3. So I don't think there is anything special about 384 other than it's twice 192, which I don't have time to investigate.

[jancivil]

The reason I think for making a High Definition version available is this is what enables 192 kbps to work. The only thing I'm getting from the 'should be 384' is that deinterlacing business, which I cannot verify at the moment as per being meaningful for audio as it is for video.

For video that is about how it works on computer displays, the way it flickers. It's quite involved. I'm inclined to think it doesn't travel to audio resolution.