| YouTube in 1080p |
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| Written by D. Eric Franks | |||
| Monday, 16 November 2009 16:08 | |||
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For content providers, there are the usual complications to deal with for a new format, but fortunately, we've all been expecting this and there's nothing surprising. One really fantastic revelation is that YouTube claims they will automatically re-encode existing videos that have already been uploaded in 1080p, but so far have only been streamed in 720p. That sounds like a mind-blowing number of re-encodes, but I suppose when the servers are slow, they'll get it done eventually. With at least 20 hours of video being encoded every minute, I'm not sure how they'll squeeze it in. Note: YouTube is currently experimenting with this feature and optimizing it accordingly and can't guarantee that videos will always be transcoded into this format.
I shot the shuttle launch this afternoon (STS-129, Atlantis, 2:28 p.m. from ~40 miles away) just for something to upload and play with. The video starts one minute after launch, as the shuttle cleared the trees at my location and ends with SRB-Sep (after the massive solids go out, there isn't much to see anymore). You have to actually (1) click on the "Watch on YouTube" item first, (2) then click on the HD button ("Watch in HD") located in the right hand corner of the player and (3) view it full screen on your (4) 1080p monitor. Here are the gory details of what I uploaded:
The really interesting part, however, is:
What does this mean? Well, given that both formats are progressive, which completely negates the data rate equivalence of broadcast 720p60 vs. 1080i60, we'd hope that YouTube would allocate slightly more data bandwidth to the new 1080p streams. Purely in terms of pixels, 1080p on YouTube contains 11% more pixels than 720p. Therefore, YouTube is doing it right and our 1080p pixels are getting the treatment they deserve and maybe a little more. That doesn't mean you should get all excited about 1080p, however. Broadcast HD television happens in two different formats, 720p and 1080i. 720p60 means 60 full-resolution (progressive) frames of 1280x720 pixels per second, or 55.3 million pixels a second. Compare that with 1080i60, which is 60 half-resolution (interlaced) frames of 1920x1080 pixels per second, or 62.2 million pixels per second. That's a small difference of 11%. After a bunch of hand waving and fancy encoding, both formats can, more or less, be transmitted at roughly the same data rate (somewhere less than 19 Mbps), which is extremely important for broadcast TV (but, yea, less so for cable and satellite).
Here are some serious complications with the new YouTube 1080p format:
No matter the uncertainties, caveats and the fact that the vast majority of viewers will not be watching our lovingly crafted 1080p videos at anywhere near 1920x1080, I still believe that this is a game changer: YouTube supports 1080p and if you are shooting 1080p, then that is the format you should encode and upload from now on. Even if most viewers won't appreciate it (or even see it at full resolution) today, there's no reason not to upload the best quality you can. References:
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We all knew 1080p Internet distribution was going to arrive sooner or later - with an emphasis on "sooner" - and, lo and behold, it is here today, on YouTube. Two important points concerning this new format:|
YouTube in 1080p
Nov 17 2009 14:48:22 This thread discusses the Content article: YouTube in 1080p
Eric, (Obviously)I haven't uploaded any videos to YouTube so I'm not sure the answer. Upload cap: Does YouTube set a limit on how much HD space they allocate to your account? If so, then how much LESS are you forced to reduce your video collection sitting on their servers? With an 11% increase in pixels, and file sizes of 240 megs and way larger into the gigabytes, it looks like someone with a "starter" account would only be able to upload a very limited number of videos. |
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Re:YouTube in 1080p
Nov 17 2009 21:40:54 Hmm. I dunno about limits. Since I don't upload a ton of video, I never seem to bump into them. And it also seems to me that if you ARE bumping into limits, you better darned well be (a) bloody interesting or else it's (b) time to work on your editing! Hehe.
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Re:YouTube in 1080p
Nov 18 2009 04:29:23 Confused on the whole p vs. i thing. I get progessive vs. interlaced, but where does 30 fps come in? in your article you mentioned that 720p60 is 60 full frames per second. so is broadcast tv actually 60fps? 30fps is only for the internet? am i right in this?
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#2761 |
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Re:YouTube in 1080p
Nov 18 2009 14:05:32 Good question.
Broadcast television is: - 720p60: 1280x720 @ 60 frames per second - 1080i60: 1920x1080 @ 60 fields per second (or you can think of it as 30 interlaced frames per second) Internet is: - anything at all, really, however... - YouTube will run 1920x1080 @ 24-30 frames per second (maybe lower too?) |
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Re:YouTube in 1080p
Nov 18 2009 14:47:53 ahhh. i don't know how that information was never made clear to me. the only two frame rates i ever heard anybody talk about were 30fps and 24fps. i know that interlaced was 60, but it was really 2 half frames to make up 30fps. i feel dumb, but reading your book and also my vixia hv30 manual i couldn't understand what was so much better about 1080p. i just assumed that a 1080p camerea captured true 30fps instead of using a buffer.
at what point do our eyes become incapable of noticing an increase in frame rate? i saw a tv at costco the other day that was boasting a refresh rate of 120hz something..., i'm assuming that was meaning it could show a new picture every 1/120 of a second, but no one does that...and would it even matter? or is the idea to just have as much extra power as possible to make the standard calculations seem easier. |
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Re:YouTube in 1080p
Nov 18 2009 17:42:19 Eric, Just being nosy now but the saturation on the sky looks a great blue color. Did you do any color correction or is this just the way you have your camera setup?
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#2767 |
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Re:YouTube in 1080p
Nov 18 2009 20:28:23 Oy! Don't feel dumb! How the heck would anyone be expected to know this stuff!
I've heard the persistence of vision thing kicks in around 15 fps, but there's also the deal where we can detect flicker even as high as 24 fps. Edison (who knew a thing or two about the subject) felt that 48 fps was a minimum (and James Cameron agrees with that). Now, that's a different question from "Can anyone tell the difference between 24 and 30 fps, all other things being equal?" I'd put money on "No." Then you gotta watch the marketing. Skepticism is always a good thing: 120Hz is pure marketing. I guess the refresh is 120Hz, which might blink the 60 fps picture on the screen twice. Might look better. Probably doesn't. My guess is that 120Hz was an engineering spec that the marketing department decided should be played up. My guess is that it's originally a computer thing: video cards can drive monitors at 120Hz. And then there's the old flicker issue. Just like movie theaters actually blink the same frame on the screen 2-3 times (24 frames per second, 48-72 Hz shutter), so computer monitors do the same thing. Big difference, however is the that LCD monitor pixels don't turn off that quickly, so 120Hz rate is probably overkill, at least in terms of flicker. |
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Re:YouTube in 1080p
Nov 18 2009 20:29:50 @Jeff: yea, I kicked the saturation up and bumped the gamma down a bit to get the flame oranger and the sky bluer.
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Re:YouTube in 1080p
Nov 21 2009 14:50:55 Another 1080p clip (go to YouTube and do a little dance to see it full-screen 1080p, if that is an option for you):
Ran into a nasty little problem with this one: YouTube simply would not encode video with a bit rate above 20 Mbps and simply said "Error Encoding" (or something like that). The clip above was rendered at about 14 Mbps. Very frustrating to figure out that problem (render, upload, render, upload, render, upload...). Dunno if this is a 1080p beta quirk or something else, but if you are seeing that error, try a lower bit rate. |
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