YouTube dynamic compression/audio distortion problem pains many
Posted on: August 1, 2008In recent weeks, an increasing number of people have noticed YouTube squashing the heck out of volumes, distorting louder passages, and quite frankly, buggering their videos to heck. While thought to be a new problem, my avid reader, you've noticed that I observed this back in April 2008! And let’s not forget the sucky customer service, either. My bug report was clear and concise, and YouTube ignored me. Fast forward to the present, where they've replaced official support contact links with links to their community forums, and lo and behold, what do I find within? Numerous reports of this very problem! That's an improvement of knowledge-sharing, at least.
(But, to add insult to injury, there’s a bug affecting forum logins: even when signed in with your YouTube account, it still asks you to sign up. Due to this, I was able to post to the forums earlier, but now find myself unable to post.)
Originally, a variation of this problem only affected high-quality videos, but now, it's spread to regular-qual ones as well, getting heard evermore in the process. Thorough testing and intricate workarounds have popped up, and even Wired Magazine has done a piece on it — I earlier edited the Wired How-To wiki to make note of this issue — and in addition to being Slashdotted, it can't be long before more press appears.
(Read more for comparison videos.)
I take no pride in being among the first to report this bug (somewhat ironically, thanks to Google cache, history shows the record): I simply wish it could've been fixed sooner. The 1000s of videos uploaded each day are now subject to sonic manglation, with no easy way to reencode presented.
YouTube, on one hand, I praise you for the many laughs and lulz you've given me over the years. On the other hand, I spank you soundly for overlooking such a glaring, ghastly injustice to the art of sound.
You're the biggest video-sharing site, but your quality certainly isn't the best — anyone and everyone curious is welcome to upload your video to both YouTube and blip.tv (and if you seek further automation, check out TubeMogul) and compare the end results. Here’s a comparison:
YouTube
blip.tv
I don’t rest my case yet, but the difference in sight + sound is profound. Don’t let YouTube tell you something’s wrong with your video if it sounds fine on other sites! Besides the nasty dynamic compression/audio distortion problem, blip.tv has stereo sound and much crisper resolution.
This is also why Second Life Video Tutorials on the Official Second Life Blog are now embedded not from YouTube, but blip.tv.
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August 1st, 2008 at 10:24 PM PDT
On that note, I just noticed the ads IN the actual videos themselves. Granted you can click the away, but with another right next to the video itself, is this really necessary?
Yes, it's free, but free should never mean users have to put up with crap like this.
August 2nd, 2008 at 4:24 AM PDT
There's also a site called Vimeo that I've seen some very impressive things on–though that does seem to be more for higher-end filmmakers.
August 2nd, 2008 at 4:54 AM PDT
CyFishy: Unfortunately Vimeo, while providing a high quality technical service, has recently announced that it is banning "game videos", and while they do say that they will be allowing "machinima" (for now) they do not really define that very well. As we all know, Second Life is Not A Game, but I dare say that the difference will not be something they care terribly much about, and I also dare say that a lot of Torley's video, for instance, would be banned as a "walkthrough" or some such.
August 2nd, 2008 at 7:00 AM PDT
I have had numerous problems with YOUtube sign in and usernames, making it very frustrating to even use their site… but they do have it all! I have always been able to find almost any song I am hunting for… I had thought of doing a in-world youtube screen from one of your other blogs or tuturiols Torley but never got around to it, now I wont bother. Thanks for the heads up… You are my sunshine!
August 2nd, 2008 at 3:48 PM PDT
Blip looks great. moved my videos over to check it out.
I see that blip.tv converts it into a flash movie. So how can we bring it into secondlife?
F.Foden
August 3rd, 2008 at 6:01 AM PDT
@Amphithetre: I believe the account owner can turn off those ads within YouTube's monetization options, and I'm not fond of them myself. They're a PAIN when you sit back and try to watch a movie in full-screen, and suddenly one pops up. I saw a study recently suggesting they're not effective. Obviously!
@CyFishy: I've liked them for some things and they have very elegant site design, but their weekly bandwidth cap and lack of a batch uploader blocked me from experimenting further.
@Ordinal: I didn't know that. I appreciate your context.
I should also note that blip.tv says they don't allow screen recordings from videogames @ http://blip.tv/faq/content/#videogames , BUT they do allow machinima. There's an overlap between the two, especially if you're doing improv-focused machinima, but then, a key difference would be *narrative*.
@Mimzy: It's kind of funny how YouTube has been used as a song-preview service; often, I'll see "videos" where it's just a song and a static image announcing the title of the song, or perhaps psychedelic fractals generated from a visualizer. http://www.imeem.com/ is better devoted to this process.
@Foo: Fine question! blip.tv also retains the original format that you uploaded in, so if you upload as a QuickTime-compatible MP4, then you can stream that inworld.
August 3rd, 2008 at 7:40 AM PDT
Hi Torley,
Thanks for the Sunday morning @ 6AM response. lol
I've been looking for a MP4 conversion program. Darn things cost money
So I guess SL only accepts MP4. I have seen that Microsoft has several variations on that theme. The latest being something called ISO MPEG-4.
hmmmm.. wonder if these would work?
Foo Foden
August 3rd, 2008 at 11:01 AM PDT
I looked in the whole youtube settings. Nothing there about changing ads in videos or anything that might lead there, except adsense things about earning money. Google wants me to sign up for their adsense program just to change some setting in youtube? >:(
August 3rd, 2008 at 1:54 PM PDT
Oh… forgot to mention…
On YouTube my voice level is very low and I have to turn up the volume pretty high. If I download it as a MP4 it sounds loud enough to be heard just fine at my normal volume settings.
I can understand YouTube distorting audio… but does that include volume too??? I thought I was speaking pretty loud (for me, I have a soft voice) when I recorded the video.
Foo Foden
P.S. Anyone have any throat lozenges?
August 4th, 2008 at 6:13 PM PDT
Foo @ 9:
From what I've read on the bug report forums of YT, the problem *mainly* stems from volume (or to be specific, dynamic range) in the uploaded sound element of your video. Several individuals have done some test comparisons and it seems the problem stems from what may have been a well-intentioned filtering process to compensate for some of the poorly recorded audio that is prevalent on many of the amateur videos there…
Others suggest that YT is doing this intentionally due to pressure from the music industry (so that DL'd copies of videos that technically violate copyright will be more or less useless to people ripping the audio stream from a YT video to create a replayable MP3 copy for their iPod or or other portable device.
Most workarounds suggested for this involve embedding a constant amplitude/volume sine wave signal into your audio track(s), at a frequency outside human hearing range, as a way of tricking the filters into thinking that the volume level for the entire video is constant and therefore not in need of automated tweaking. Unfortunately, adding such a signal is only a trivial option if you happen to have some fairly sophisticated (read costly) audio editing software readily available.
Not something especially accessible for the average non-technical maker of quick-and-dirty videos.
August 10th, 2008 at 8:42 AM PDT
@Foo: Second Life actually accepts any QuickTime-compatible codec. The easiest way to test is see if the movie will work in stock QuickTime Player. But H.264 MP4s can be much higher-quality than older codecs and play on iPods and other mobile devices, which is why I use it.
Re: Volume levels, if you have an audio editing program, you can use tools like a noise gate to trim out hiss, noise fingerprint removal to remove noise during talking passages, and a dynamic compressor + limiter to boost your volume. I recommend doing research @ http://kvraudio.com and I hope your throat feels better by now.
@Azadine: It looks like the YouTube issues I mentioned above MAY be over, based on forum reports. I still can't login to post, but I think the "pressure from the music industry" is too conspiracy-out-there and not likely to be the true answer. I really believe they just messed it up without communicating well.