Comments on: YouTube Video Quality Soon Will Not Suck

By: mieoux

mieoux — Tue, 06 Jan 2009 21:06:44 +0000

YouTube has the worst video quality anywhere. I don’t watch it very much because of this

By: Derek

Derek — Sun, 21 Sep 2008 20:14:03 +0000

There is a difference in both the video quality and the sound. i checked..wait a minute so when you upload the video both the hight quality and low quality versions are created during the conversion and the hight quality one is tucked away somewhere?

By: Joseph

Joseph — Fri, 02 May 2008 06:40:06 +0000

I can barely see a difference. Maybe the sound is a bit better, but the quality still sucks. I dont know how youtube got so popular. Some body could have created a site just like youtube, and had perfect video quality. Infact that can be done now, and youtube wont be so dominant anymore.

But still, I think youtube should have high definition video quality.

By: Paul Ellis

Paul Ellis — Wed, 12 Mar 2008 04:01:22 +0000

One more tidbit I found. If you add &fmt=6 to the end of the video’s link (often even ones that don’t show the option to switch HQ) it will load the HQ version. If you do &fmt=18 it will load an MP4/h264 version. There isn’t always a HQ or MP4 version however. The example below only has standard and MP4, no HQ FLV.

Example:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cpMu6yyH6pY
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cpMu6yyH6pY&fmt=18

By: Paul Ellis

Paul Ellis — Wed, 12 Mar 2008 01:24:38 +0000

Ok, my last comment for a while. This isn't the only "HQ" video out there on Youtube. Here are some more "HQ" videos.

By: Paul Ellis

Paul Ellis — Wed, 12 Mar 2008 01:08:24 +0000

Another note on this. I analyzed the video stream and the codec is still “Flash Video” (aka Sorensen Spark) not a higher quality one like h264.

Here is the breakdown on the differences in quality for the video in the link:

Video Resolution: 448×336 (about twice as many pixels)
Video Bitrate: 628kbps
Audio Codec and Bitrate: mono MP3 96kbps (way higher quality)
Audio Sample Rate: 44khz

Video Resolution: 320×240
Video Bitrate: 315kbps
Audio Codec and Bitrate: mono MP3 8kbps
Audio Sample Rate: 22khz

By: Paul Ellis

Paul Ellis — Wed, 12 Mar 2008 00:53:03 +0000

For those who don't want to write down the HQ video link at the end of the video here it is. And to answer your question, no, I can't think of a place to watch lower quality video on the web.