480p or 720p Re-encode?

Discussion in 'other software & services' started by khanyash, Jan 17, 2015.

  1. khanyash

    khanyash Registered Member

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    I use 4kdownloader to download videos from Youtube.
    4kdownloader offers videos in mp4 & mkv.
    I mostly download 720p to watch on my full HD TV as the size & quality is good.
    mkv videos size is smaller compared to mp4 provided by 4kdownloader.
    But mkv by 4kdownloader doesn't plays on my TV as 720p mkv encodes comes with VP9 & VP9 is not supported by my TV.
    So I have 2 options.
    Download 480p mp4 or download mkv 720p & re-encode it with Vidcoder. (This will take time but its fine with me. As I mentioned above mkv videos size is smaller & thats good for my limited internet plan.)

    So I want to know which one would look better on my full HD TV, 480p mp4 or 720p mkv re-encoded with Vidcoder?
     
  2. Raza0007

    Raza0007 Registered Member

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    narenbisht,

    Its incredible that you are still stuck with this youtube problem. I thought people here had clarified for you that your 4kdownlaoder is re-encoding and reconverting youtube videos to mkv. Just ditch 4kdownlaoder and use another downloader that will download youtube videos in their native format, h264/mp4 for 720p and above, and they will work fine on your HD TV.

    Supported Youtube File formats -- There is no .mkv listed. I have never seen mkv videos on youtube

    Recommended Youtube file format
     
  3. guest

    guest Guest

    Nintendo Maniac 64 had posted two Firefox extensions that can download videos without re-encoding them in your other thread, here and here. I haven't tried them myself, but as Raza0007 said, I think it is time to ditch 4kdownloader and find out if you'll get a better luck with the addons Nintendo Maniac 64 had suggested.

    EDIT: How much the file size difference between the files downloaded by 4kdownloader and without it anyway? I don't believe it's that much different.

    EDIT #2: And if you still insist to use 4kdownloader, to give you a suggestion, get the 720p one as it's the closest video resolution to your full HDTV.

    EDIT #3: @Raza0007, those are information and suggestion about video uploading, not about what they provide for streaming. :confused:
     
    Last edited by a moderator: Jan 17, 2015
  4. khanyash

    khanyash Registered Member

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    I dont use Firefox.

    Quite a difference in file size mp4 & mkv by 4k i.e ex- 720p mp4 size for 2 hour movie 1.4GB, mkv size 800MB. Quality of video looks same for both.
     
  5. guest

    guest Guest

    Well, if you said you don't notice much quality difference between the two then who am I to judge? ;)
     
  6. khanyash

    khanyash Registered Member

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    Yes, for now I will go with 720p re-encode.
     
  7. Raza0007

    Raza0007 Registered Member

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    On an HD TV, a HD video file will look a lot better than a 480p file which will look washed up. It is always best to match the resolution of the video with the native resolution of your TV. So, if your TV is 1080p, then a 1080p video file will look better on it then a 720p video file. However, it depends a lot on the encoding parameters used to encode the video file. I have some videos that are only 720p, but they look a lot better then the same video files when encoded in 1080p but with different encoding parameters.
     
  8. NGRhodes

    NGRhodes Registered Member

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    Mp4 and mkv are just the containers, it depends on the codec used for the encode/transcode and quality settings.
    480p high quality, low compression will look better than a 720p poor quality high compression file.
     
  9. Raza0007

    Raza0007 Registered Member

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    Those are the formats Youtube supports. They do not support mkv container, either for uploading or downloading/streaming. Youtube's HD videos are all in mp4 container format and that is the format they recommend for uploading videos too.
     
  10. Alhaitham

    Alhaitham Registered Member

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    YouTube provides .MP4 and .WEBM files for HD videos

    WEBM is actually a limited subset of Matroska (MKV)

    WEBMs are playable in most players or can be easily remuxed to MKVs without converting
     
  11. Raza0007

    Raza0007 Registered Member

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    In all my years of downloading from youtube, I have never encountered a .webm video file. Maybe this file format is made available to those who do not have flash installed on their PC's. Can you provide me a sample video link from youtube that is in .webm format?

    Youtube recommends that all videos uploaded to their website be in .mp4 format. They do accept other container formats but during upload, your video is converted to .mp4 for HD and .3gp and .flv for 240p and lower resolutions.
     
  12. guest

    guest Guest

    True. But they also do not provide AVI for streaming either. I agree if you think it is silly to still not accepting MKV uploads in this age, especially judging by the popularity of YT.

    https://www.wilderssecurity.com/threads/mp4-mkv.367704/page-2#post-2437210

    Without Flash, yes.
     
  13. Raza0007

    Raza0007 Registered Member

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    I think the reason they do not allow mkv is that it is still not as widely supported as mp4 container. There are media players that still can not render a mkv file properly. On the hardware side the problem is worse. Very few Smart TVs, Digital Camera's, Video Camera's, Blueray Players etc can natively play an mkv file, but all can play a mp4 file. So it makes sense from youtube's point of view to support a container format that is widely supported.

    About the webm video: Since I always have Flash installed on my PC, probably this is why this option has never been available to me. Also most videos I have downloaded in the last 4-5 years have been 720p and higher and after reading your linked discussion post it appears that webm is 360p only on youtube.
     
  14. guest

    guest Guest

    I can't see the relevancy of it. Since they re-encode the uploaded videos anyway, why not accepting MKV as input format? Just for uploading. I can't understand Google sometimes. :confused:

    By default, yes. Though from the explanation by Nintendo Maniac 64 it appears that we can get even HD videos in WebM with the right tool.
     
  15. Raza0007

    Raza0007 Registered Member

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    Because if you record your own video using a digital camera or a video camera, you are unlikely to get a mkv container. You will only have a mkv video if you converted it yourself before uploading. It may be an anti piracy measure on their part or it may simply be that if they allow a mkv video upload option, they will have to pay for using the tool for mkv to mp4 conversion and they just want to save money. Who knows.
     
  16. guest

    guest Guest

    Nobody pays for FFmpeg. Honestly speaking, I have no idea how Google/YT encode user videos. But if they do use FFmpeg in one way or another, input format shouldn't matter.
     
    Last edited by a moderator: Jan 19, 2015
  17. Raza0007

    Raza0007 Registered Member

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    FFmpeg may be free for non commercial use. I am not sure it is free if you are making money while using it. Whatever tool google is using, they probably have to pay somebody for using it.

    One other important consideration is Flash. Flash Player currently does not support mkv as an input or for streaming.

    http://helpx.adobe.com/flash/kb/supported-file-formats-flash-professional.html

    http://helpx.adobe.com/flash/kb/supported-codecs-flash-player.html

     
    Last edited: Jan 19, 2015
  18. guest

    guest Guest

    I said it doesn't matter, they can throw anything to MP4 and everyone can have the videos being playable, be it on Windows, Linux or Mac with Flash or with HTML5.
     
  19. NGRhodes

    NGRhodes Registered Member

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    FFMPEG is open source and free to use by all. FYI Google has contributed to the finding and fixing of a lot of bugs.

    This makes the most sense as to why mp4.
    Also mp4 is supported on more platforms out of the box for playback than MKV. (TV's, Consoles, Mac, Windows etc).
     
  20. Raza0007

    Raza0007 Registered Member

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    I guess they use flash for importing and converting, so that is the limiting factor here.
     
  21. Raza0007

    Raza0007 Registered Member

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    I didn't know that. Thanks for the info. I guess Google uses flash for importing and converting so they no doubt have to pay adobe for this service.
     
  22. guest

    guest Guest

    A bit out of the border, but Dailymotion does not accept MKV as input format either. What the hell is wrong with you people?! :eek:
     
  23. Raza0007

    Raza0007 Registered Member

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    Just thought I should post this here as we were just discussing something similar in this thread. As of January 27th 2015, Youtube now defaults to HTML5 over Flash, so now it may be able to provide native mkv input/streaming support.

    Here is a link to the post by @ronjor

    YouTube now defaults to HTML5 <video>
     
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