Boards of Canada - New Seeds

Evening all.

I've made a video for New Seeds, inspired by the TH LP playing when filming in my back garden....which has been often.

A little bit of summer captured as autumn draws near. Hope you like it.

http://youtu.be/SahqnXb3714

You'll have to set it to 1080p on Youtube as I can't seem to make that the default setting...anyone know how to do that?

I filmed it on an iPod Nano (spec: H.264 VGA video, 640 by 480 pixels, 30 frames per sec) and processed it in iMovie.

Exported it at 1080p, the file came out as 3.5GB (!) and took 8 friggin' hours to upload (!!)

It still looks a tad crappy at the Auto/360p setting on YT...though much better in 1080.

Nature of the beast I suppose, what with my ShakyCam approach, but hey ho. I like the concept.

Without Bees We Are Nothing

If your source video was only 640x480, why'd you upscale it to 1080P (1920x1080)? You're adding pixels/info that's not there, and ultimately degrading the image quality.

And you click the cog icon to change the image quality...

  On 9/5/2013 at 9:50 PM, Joyrex said:

If your source video was only 640x480, why'd you upscale it to 1080P (1920x1080)? You're adding pixels/info that's not there, and ultimately degrading the image quality.

And you click the cog icon to change the image quality...

God, I'm such a noob...this technology lark is all Greek to me...cheers for the tip!

What does the 'image quality' thingy actually do then? I'd read a couple of bits on the web where it said YouTube compresses the video, so it's better to upload it in a ridiculously high resolution as it gets 'pegged back' down again by YT. I'd better by an Idiot's Guide and invest in a better camera, methinks.

And re-render the bugger.

Can you delete this thread JR, and I'll come back, err...brighter?

I was gonna watch that, but you've set it to private.

And yeah, actually, I think you're right about the compression. You can't influence the degree to which YouTube compresses its videos (and it's quite a high one, looking at the filesize and quality) - I just compared a downloaded YouTube-1080p file to a YouTube-480p file and apparently the bitrate of the video-stream is about 5500 kb/s for the high resolution one and just barely 500 kb/s for a 480p version.

That means, if you render your video as 480p, no matter how ridiculously high the bitrate you give it, as far as I know, it will get always get recompressed to a ~500 kb/s version by YouTube.

Joyrex is right about the upscaling doing SOME damage, but in the end, it's upscaling vs intense compression, it's debatable, but I think you made the right choice there.

  On 9/5/2013 at 10:01 PM, ravedamage said:

 

  On 9/5/2013 at 9:50 PM, Joyrex said:

If your source video was only 640x480, why'd you upscale it to 1080P (1920x1080)? You're adding pixels/info that's not there, and ultimately degrading the image quality.

And you click the cog icon to change the image quality...

God, I'm such a noob...this technology lark is all Greek to me...cheers for the tip!

 

What does the 'image quality' thingy actually do then? I'd read a couple of bits on the web where it said YouTube compresses the video, so it's better to upload it in a ridiculously high resolution as it gets 'pegged back' down again by YT. I'd better by an Idiot's Guide and invest in a better camera, methinks.

 

And re-render the bugger.

 

Can you delete this thread JR, and I'll come back, err...brighter?

 

 

If your source video (aka the iPod Nano) was capable of shooting in 1080P resolution, then it would have made sense to upload it to YouTube in 1080P, where the 1080P option would be available to users to select it. Since your video was recorded at 640x480, it should be uploaded at that resolution, and YT will offer it up as 480P maximum quality. Upscaling non-HD video only degrades the image quality. That's also why your render of the video took so long - it was upscaling from 480P to 1080P, adding pixels and smoothing out the differences as best as your rendering software could manage.

What YouTube does is dynamically offer the video up at the highest quality, and downgrade the stream to whatever the user's end setting is on the YT player, as well their internet connection speed to ensure steady playback. That's why the video downloader apps for YT always grab the highest quality version, since that's what (hopefully) is available.

And YouTube does do some compression, but again, that's happening on the playback stream dependent on your internet connection quality - not on your initial upload, AFAIK. I've watched plenty of Blu-Ray quality HD video off YouTube.

Read the rules, JR!

As in, my post.

You're right about everything you say regarding YouTube-functionality, however, I'm pretty sure a former 480p-video will look better as an upscaled 1080p version @5500 kbps than as a double-compressed 480p version @500 kbps (YouTube does recompress it, no matter what)

I did redo it as 480p, which is the version in the other thread...looks much better than the 1080p version I tried before that.

Tis all a learning curve for this noob, glad I could count on the WATMM massive for Pro-Tips!

When I click on this it says private?

Try the other thread, Madame!

Or here:

  On 9/7/2013 at 10:42 PM, Terpentintollwut said:

Read the rules, JR!

 

As in, my post.

 

You're right about everything you say regarding YouTube-functionality, however, I'm pretty sure a former 480p-video will look better as an upscaled 1080p version @5500 kbps than as a double-compressed 480p version @500 kbps (YouTube does recompress it, no matter what)

So you're trying to tell me that pixel doubling looks better than bitrate compression?

Great video, loving the camera work.

Cheers man, tis quite surprising what can be achieved with a Nano sello-taped to the end of a twig.

  On 9/9/2013 at 5:45 PM, Joyrex said:

 

  On 9/7/2013 at 10:42 PM, Terpentintollwut said:

Read the rules, JR!

 

As in, my post.

 

You're right about everything you say regarding YouTube-functionality, however, I'm pretty sure a former 480p-video will look better as an upscaled 1080p version @5500 kbps than as a double-compressed 480p version @500 kbps (YouTube does recompress it, no matter what)

So you're trying to tell me that pixel doubling looks better than bitrate compression?

 

Yes! Look, you made me doubt my own logic, so I actually went there and uploaded some videos to confirm what I was thinking.

I took a video I shot and rendered it to a 480p-file. I then uploaded both the 480p-file and an upscaled 1080p-version sourced from the previously downscaled 480p-file.

I actually gave them the same bitrate so the 480p-upload even had an advantage over the upscaled version. Here's the comparison on the same frame.

edit: ignore the green bar on the right side, it's a rendering glitch, got nothing to do with the "experiment".

This is YouTube's 480p-version of the video I uploaded in 480p:

This is YouTube's 480p-version of the upscaled video - it looks worse than the other video's 480p-version, for which the downscaling on YouTube is to blame:

And finally, this is YouTube's 1080p-version of the upscaled video:

^Look at the detail in the street and on the houses. Much better looking than the 480p-versions, due to their very low bitrate. Even though I shrunk the last screenshot down again and uploaded a file with a lower bitrate than the 480p-version, it still looks better. You can switch back and forth between the images on imgur for better comparison. http://imgur.com/4dIIJph,HwVR6b9,OKZ6o8k#0