Getting good video quality on YouTube

[kye]

43 minutes ago, no_connection said:

*edit* I'm a dummy. Using h246ify means 1440p max since YouTube only does 4k with VP9 coded. Should have figured that out before scathing my head.
So in short. H264 max out at 1440p and VP9 goes to 4k and beyond.

Interesting, I guess if some of the download tools have this limit then that explains why they don't show options to download 2160p.

However, that still doesn't explain why I can't play 2160p on YT site natively!

Can anyone verify the above videos have a 2160p option for them in YT?

[no_connection]

I checked one of them and it's 4k in VP9

I don't have a mac available but Ill test FireFox with ANT when I get to one. With Quantum it uses a new way of accessing since extensions can't talk to outside programs but need a middle man so to speak.

[Anders Bixbe]

My friend has a 1440p Mac laptop and it can not play YouTube 4K with Safari. His Mac plays fine 4K YT with Chrome. That´might be the reason you don´t get the VP9 codec (which now is visible again in the nerd info with my pc).  The videos you posted are in 4K 2160p VP9 with Googles Chrome browser which is the browser recommended for YouTube.

[deezid]

50 minutes ago, Anders Bixbe said:

My friend has a 1440p Mac laptop and it can not play YouTube 4K with Safari. His Mac plays fine 4K YT with Chrome. That´might be the reason you don´t get the VP9 codec (which now is visible again in the nerd info with my pc).  The videos you posted are in 4K 2160p VP9 with Googles Chrome browser which is the browser recommended for YouTube.

Would recommend Firefox instead, if accurate Color is important.

[no_connection]

And PC instead of mac for good skintones.
Nope that is not a joke, we had two setups one PC and one mac feeding video to ATEM for reduncancy. Using QLab on MAC and MPC-HC on PC.
The image was pretty much identical except for a green tint from the mac. Just about noticeable side by side
Oh and mac can't do 50p so it stuttered slightly too.

[kye]

I've made some progress.

On Mac, only Chrome supports VP9 (and therefore 2160p and above).  

Genyoutube supports 2160p, but downloads to webm format files, which is an open source format, that contains the VP9 stream.

I've managed to convert the webm with VP9 into an uncompressed .PNG sequence, which can be loaded into Resolve. (uncompressed TIFFs don't work - not sure why).

In Resolve I compared the original clip to the PNG sequence and there is a small difference, mostly highlights.  I also compared the webm from the 4k YT video where I just uploaded the original MXF file from the camera, and saw the differences.  I then removed the difference that the image sequence conversion created from the difference between the original MXF file and the converted webm file, and significantly boosted the video levels to get the below image.  It should show the areas where the compression is damaging the original file.

In theory I can do this for other uploads and then compare them.  I can't get signal-to-noise ratios as it's not calibrated, but I can get relative values.

Is this something that anyone is interested in?

We have already established that uploading in 4k (or 1440p) is a good idea, even if you only have a 1080p source file, in order to get less harsh compression.  Others suggested that 60fps may also get you VIP privileges during the conversion process.

I'll do it if there's interest, but the analysis is a PITA to do, and I think I've satisfied my own curiosity from a "good enough" perspective.