K.B. Posted November 3, 2012 Share Posted November 3, 2012 There's an appreciable difference in playback audio quality, especially if your starting audio is already lossy. You'd have to rework the video template to have a width of 1280 (or a height of 1152), but it seems to me like that wouldn't be much trouble. Especially when weighed against what you'd gain. Here are the numbers, which a couple friends and I pulled back in late Aug. All are in kbps for lc aac. -hd: 192 -480p: 130ish (vbr) -360p: 96 Audio quality for hd playback is the same for 720p, 1080p, and original. 240p is surely worse, but I don't have data for it and it's moot since you guys upload in at least 360p. [fyi/factoid: youtube raised their re-encoding quality in early July: hd used to give 150ish (vbr); I don't know how the other values were changed.] The audio at 360p will have noticeable artifacts. It's probably fine for most tracks for most people, at least for casual listening, but it isn't hard to notice cymbals that sound like garbage, for instance, if you're paying attention. Not an huge deal with every ocr mix, sure, but even your run of the mill "e" glowsticks are going to sound a little different, if nothing else. And that's assuming you're starting with lossless, which doesn't seem to be the case. Starting with v1 lame mp3 isn't so bad, but the end result is still going to sound a lot worse than 96 aac, which isn't great to begin with, and 192 mp3 will be even worse because that's already pushing transparency (and that's to say nothing of earlier stuff in lower quality, since there isn't anything to be done about that). I'm fairly certain this is the reason why ocr youtubes generally sound off to me, even with my shitty setup and my average-at-best hearing. I highly recommend requesting lossless versions of future submissions for youtube uploads (even if you aren't going to release them for download/torrent), but, in lieu of that, lossy ones will often need the hd treatment (or at least the 480p treatment) in order to sound decent. And, again, going hd is a comparatively quick fix that will benefit every future upload, regardless of starting audio quality. I bet you guys have more pressing issues, but it's low-hanging fruit. And I'd be happy to help however I can. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
KyleJCrb Posted November 3, 2012 Share Posted November 3, 2012 Or you could just, y'know, download the song. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
K.B. Posted November 3, 2012 Author Share Posted November 3, 2012 Which is what I always do. In fact, I don't subscribe to ocr's youtube because it clutters my feed to no benefit, but the youtubes make for an easy way to share the mixes with other people. Which is the entire point of having music on youtube. Not sure why you're being antagonistic. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rozovian Posted November 3, 2012 Share Posted November 3, 2012 I've noticed some of my tracks distorted, and that's when I was still listening to stuff on youtube. Youtube is (unfortunately?) a video site, so it's focus is on video quality. Going hd with ocr's vids might not be worth it, since most of the stream bandwidth would go to the video rather than the audio. Bandwidth isn't really our problem once the stuff is on YT (only when uploading), but we're dealing with 2.5k tracks. That's of course, unless there's better audio encoding options available. As part of the torrent update, Larry collected wavs from artists that still had or could render them. If that goes another round, there should be a fair amount of higher-quality audio to use. If the track vids are updated I reckon hd is on the todo-list, but without higher quality material to start with I can't say if it's worth it. It's ultimately up to the vid and promo ppl. Besides, ppl who do most of their music listening on YT are hardly audio quality connoisseurs. TL;DR: Audio could be better, might become better, wait for official word. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
quintin3265 Posted November 4, 2012 Share Posted November 4, 2012 Making an "HD" track on YouTube affects video quality much more than audio quality. You can see this if you download the actual video behind the scenes, which you can do using several Firefox extensions or some desktop programs. Using ffmpeg to look at the properties of the audio reveals that they are all highly compressed. The problem is made worse if an MP3 file is used for upload, because YouTube doesn't use MP3 for its compression, adding additional compression artifacts to the audio. I hate spammers, but I couldn't help from chiming in to suggest that you sign up for an account at gameremixes.com, where both the lossless and lossy versions of your music would be made available. djpretzel already has a separate system for "official" remixes, but for people just wanting to get feedback on their own songs before submission, adding video and recompressing files on YouTube seems like overkill. Which is what I always do. In fact, I don't subscribe to ocr's youtube because it clutters my feed to no benefit, but the youtubes make for an easy way to share the mixes with other people. Which is the entire point of having music on youtube.Not sure why you're being antagonistic. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
K.B. Posted November 5, 2012 Author Share Posted November 5, 2012 quintin: that's one of the ways we tested, the other being uploading at varying video qualities and downloading the mp4 on the video manager page. The bitrates were the same for both tests. That is, for example, if playback is set at 360p, the audio is the same regardless of whether the video was uploaded at 360p, at 480p, or at any of the hd values. Going hd with ocr's vids might not be worth it, since most of the stream bandwidth would go to the video rather than the audio. Bandwidth isn't really our problem once the stuff is on YT (only when uploading), but we're dealing with 2.5k tracks. True, but at that point it'd be the listener's call whether to bother with hd. No harm in giving the option. Although yeah, it'd make for longer uploads. This reminded me that ocr does embed youtubes on the mix pages. I have no idea how much those are used (although the youtube owners could check the stats on a few videos to get an idea), so I don't know how much of a concern that would be. Or maybe there's a way to restrict fidelity options for embeds. I'd also forgotten that LT asked for wavs in addition to higher-qual mp3s. Probably way more trouble than it's worth to redo existing youtubes, though. You could, but what a headache. In case I was unclear, I just meant going hd for future uploads. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
quintin3265 Posted November 8, 2012 Share Posted November 8, 2012 There's also the idea of "garbage in, garbage out." Almost all audio programs now support rendering lossless in 24-bit, so it may be more important to concentrate on getting people to submit the lossless high-quality renders rather than compressed MP3s. Rather than worrying about YouTube quality, it may be more pertinent to worry about source quality. Source quality improves both YouTube quality and file download quality. A site such as Overclocked ReMix, which has 930 times more clicks than the second highest site in the Google search results, has the power to singlehandedly force the remix community to improve its mastering quality. It's unlikely that remixers would say "it's too difficult to change one option to render in FLAC, so I won't submit this remix." quintin: that's one of the ways we tested, the other being uploading at varying video qualities and downloading the mp4 on the video manager page. The bitrates were the same for both tests. That is, for example, if playback is set at 360p, the audio is the same regardless of whether the video was uploaded at 360p, at 480p, or at any of the hd values.True, but at that point it'd be the listener's call whether to bother with hd. No harm in giving the option. Although yeah, it'd make for longer uploads. This reminded me that ocr does embed youtubes on the mix pages. I have no idea how much those are used (although the youtube owners could check the stats on a few videos to get an idea), so I don't know how much of a concern that would be. Or maybe there's a way to restrict fidelity options for embeds. I'd also forgotten that LT asked for wavs in addition to higher-qual mp3s. Probably way more trouble than it's worth to redo existing youtubes, though. You could, but what a headache. In case I was unclear, I just meant going hd for future uploads. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
K.B. Posted November 9, 2012 Author Share Posted November 9, 2012 Either would help, and both would be good, but one requires a change to submission standards whereas the other can be done at any time and comparatively smoothly. So I'd prefer to focus on going hd, per the topic, as it's a much easier change (ostensibly, at least). And higher-quality downloads/torrents is a separate issue. I don't have a stance on it; I'd simply prefer to limit the number of crusades in this thread to one. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
timaeus222 Posted January 23, 2013 Share Posted January 23, 2013 And of course, not every DAW can render in FLAC. I don't think FL Studio can. WAV is totally doable. Close enough, right? Or just 224-320 kbps MP3. What song could there ever be that really needs that lossless compression, right? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Roberto Posted January 26, 2013 Share Posted January 26, 2013 You know, I have to entirely disagree with the OP here. I actually hate the people who create those "fake HD" videos, the prime example being the TASvideos community (don't be surprised if you see Game Boy videos encoded at 1600×1440 pixels there). For what it's worth, I am more than happy to see that OCR didn't join this idiocy, and still uploads reasonable 360p videos. It's hard to keep on doing things right when too many people have a fetish for those two magic letters, HD. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Brandon Strader Posted February 15, 2013 Share Posted February 15, 2013 Not only do I think upgrading to HD would be great (720p minimum) but I think that old video template is in for some updates. In addition to modernizing some of the information in there, such as the list of albums and other things, it'd be great to see an actual reference to the artist who made the song. At the beginning you could have the intro from album trailers "OverClocked ReMix Presents..." then have the title, "Song name by Artist name". This would help with all of the people who mistake ocremix as the artist for all of the songs. Also, the template could be set to end when the song ends instead of going an extra 6 seconds or so. Just setting the video to end when the song does could possibly prevent and such from occuring. And maybe the "link to the Artist's youtube channel" could be added back to the videos, like they used to be, before the youtube system changed, but then it changed back. (so confusing)It's not dumb to want higher quality audio on youtube. It's 2013. Here is a graph of music streaming services mentioned on social media: Disregarding pay services (as remixes aren't monetized) such as Pandora and Spotify, the third most popular service is... yup... YouTube. I personally go to youtube whenever I am searching for a song. I think anyone who discredits Youtube as possibly the most important portal for OC ReMixes may be not giving it the credit it deserves. So there is just a handful of tweaks I think would really improve the remix videos that are uploaded to youtube. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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