Why so many bad quality youtube videos?

roxics

roxics

Veteran
I'm not talking content, I'm talking actual quality. Even in the days of standard definition video like VHS we had better quality video than so many 240p youtube videos. We're talking youtube, so it's not like people are paying for their own bandwidth when they upload these videos, so why are so many of them so bad?
 
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Upon watching thousands and thousands of videos, I have never seen a video only in 240p.

99% are 1080p. At least 720p.
 
Do you mean the clips from fail videos of that classic retro quality or Russian dash cams? Because then I would agree. Those are all of some crap quality videos always.

Youtube videos are always whack in the lighting department anyway so maybe your beef lies there since you're a DP
 
If you go back and look at home video footage recorded on VHS, Hi-8, etc, 99.9999% of is going to look like complete garbage. People just never used to show their home video recordings to the world, unless it happened to make it onto the news somehow, or Americas Funniest Home Videos...... nowadays people will upload just about anything.

Add to that the fact that video functionality is being added to just about any electronic device these days, and you have millions of users uploading videos, most of whom have no idea how to shoot a video properly.

And worse, with the dilution of quality of video acceptance caused by Youtube, people stopping caring at all about making their footage look good, because the amount of views they were getting was rarely dependent on how good the footage looked.
 
For me it's mostly documentary films. These are usually produced as high quality TV/DVD projects that somehow when transferred to youtube, become complete garbage 240p videos, even if uploaded as HD. One example:


I've transferred many of my old home videos on VHS tapes and Video 8 tapes to digital and they were always much better than this.
I know that technically it's a combination of upscaling, high compression, etc. My question is why would you even bother uploading something that bad and trying to pass it off as HD?
 
Oh yea, I forgot all educational materials of that nature are horrid in quality but rich in content. Truthfully it's a shame. I'm not sure why it is the case more often then not but then again Its not absolute filth in today's standards like the videos posted by combat. I always assumed as long as at least 1 or 2 parts of the completed project youtube could identify as 720, it would just call the whole thing that definition. Seems like it would benefit their business model to follow that system so they could say they have millions of more videos in HD. Just food for thought tho
 
I'm confused about the notion 99% are great quality. I find the opposite - too many in my interest group probably brought in from VHS, and 480 the highest typical standard. Obviously more recent material is SD or HD, but even then, some is clearly upscaled from lower origins.
 
I've seen it quite often with music videos only available in 360p from the official label. I don't know if they hope to sell DVDs of the videos if they have crappy copies on YouTube or what their reasoning is. In the meanwhile their artists look like pixelated mush... This is the case with some friends of mine's band. Their videos have a €20.000 budget at least and still look like crap in because they're only available in 360p. Stupid.
 
Looks like a bad transfer, so who knows what the quality of the original upload to YouTube looked like. ( I don't think this is a YouTube issue )
 
roxics said:
For me it's mostly documentary films. These are usually produced as high quality TV/DVD projects that somehow when transferred to youtube, become complete garbage 240p videos, even if uploaded as HD.
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Oh, now I get what you're saying. I think it's because encoding is hard. Well, on properly chosen hardware and software, I could imagine it's easy, especially if you've read or watched a good tutorial. Once you know it, you can repeat it quickly and mechanically for all your videos.

But if you are new to video production, using cheap consumer encoding products (for example, some $30 VHS-to-MPEG2 plastic encoder box), or just spending too little time learning, then it's easy to mess it all up.

When I was in film school in the late 90s, they just got some computer editing systems. They were Windows instead of Mac and an early version of Adobe Premiere. It was so cool being able to editing nonlinearly. But when it came time to export, I was at a loss. And certainly my middle-aged professors couldn't lend a hand. And this was during the rise of the Internet but before a good search engine came along like Google. So I was just clicking through menus and almost guessing. "Hmm, should I use Sorenson 1.2 or H.1234?" (made up those codec names just now, I don't even remember all the choices. There were dozens). In the end, my student film shot on 16mm looked watchable but now when I see it I know it could have been much cleaner.

Many people uploading videos now are in the situation I was in, in college. It's 2016, but they are just now getting into video. So they're just winging it. They go to the Export menu in Final Cut Pro and are presented with about 300 permutations of codec, resolution, frame rate, audio settings, etc. Or even in Windows Movie Maker, if there are just four export options instead of one, there's a strong chance that a new user will choose the wrong one.

That explains many of the videos out there. If it's obviously an upload of a VHS, then my guess is they used the cheapest converter they could find on Amazon, which allows just one dubiously chosen output codec, which they then just upload from their PC. Or they may be using some free editor like Windows Movie Maker and chosen the wrong settings at some point. Or they may just be using a really old computer. Aren't some people still on Windows XP?

As for videos that are professionally produced, like the one you cited, I think the ball got dropped somewhere. Maybe the producer is 65 years old. That means he's really good at shooting, editing, etc., but he cut his teeth on much older equipment. When the NLEs and Youtube came along, he was in his 50s. Your ability to learn new things decreases with age (I think, unless you really work to keep that learning muscle toned. It's easier to just settle into a mental rut, especially if you're successful). Or maybe the producer delegated the Youtube export to an intern, who was new to the industry, as described before. Stupid mistakes like this are more likely at larger companies, where there are too many cooks in the kitchen and little sense of ownership ("That's not my job. My job is shooting. Her job is editing. His job is encoding"). At a small shop, the owner will more likely be involved every step of the way and be more hands on.

Or, finally, the uploader is not part of the production company. The video you cited may have been ripped from a DVD and uploaded by some documentary buff who may be new to encoding, as I have described.

You may say, all you have to do is a little Googling. But for many people, clicking around through the menus and trying stuff is more pleasant than reading or watching a 30-minute tutorial video on how to properly export your videos for Youtube. As Frank Westheimer once said, "A couple of months in the laboratory can frequently save a couple of hours in the library."
 
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Scott F said:
One notion brought up was that the current generation of youth doesn't "see" low quality and inconsistencies like the way us older folks do. Or care about it anyways.
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Not just the current generation. What counts on YouTube is hits, and there doesn't appear to be a correlation with technical quality.
 
I don't know that the OP gave actual examples of clips on youtube that were 'bad quality'... some of the others gave examples of clips that looked like they were captured from VHS or the like, and as such, would only have at most 352x240... we suffered through the 80/90s with that... along with various other artifacts as the tape wore down...

It is also true that some distributors have not updated all of their VHS/Beta libraries to even DVD, so the only way to 'see' those films is by a capture from VHS... perhaps even poor quality VHS...

As for 'what the youts of today view'... well, I seem to be in the 'youts' demographic in many ways. I view a lot of media on my iPhone via ATT, and recent revelations indicate that Netflix throttled back content to those who had ATT and Verizon, to 650Kbs read that again... 650Kbs, and few people viewing material on 'mobile' devices rose even a whisper of complaint.

So, people who put material up on Youtube, may considered the target market's preferred device... and set their compression parameters accordingly...

For my day job we have been creating some clips for demonstration, and we have found that creating media with bit rats of 1-1.5 Mbs can be good for the type of service we are selling to, that is connectivity to 'rual' or low coverage areas. At 1-1.5 Mbs, the quality is far superior to any form of SD service, and one can quibble that at that rate one could not drive a 50" display, with the viewers sitting 5' from the screen... but for mobile devices that rate can supple the stream in sufficient quality for that type of viewing.

Personally, for my home... I'm using a 720p now 'oldish' display...

It does take a certain amount of testing to find an optimal compression rate, and codec. The clips we are creating are typically using H.264 and 480p resolution.

Here's a handy tool for evaluating what is going on with a Youtube Clip...

For Windows Right-Click in the media window and get this menu:

attachment.php


Then select 'Stats for Nerds' option, and the following display should come up.

attachment.php


You should also review the other options as well such as the 'URL at current time', so you can more precisely present to others what you are talking about if the visual event is somewhere down the time line...
 
roxics said:
I'm not talking content, I'm talking actual quality. Even in the days of standard definition video like VHS we had better quality video than so many 240p youtube videos. We're talking youtube, so it's not like people are paying for their own bandwidth when they upload these videos, so why are so many of them so bad?
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Compression artifacts didn't exist on VHS like it does now, right? Low bit rate compressed video results in artifacts that can be very blocky and mushy. The potential for poor quality is great.

It's similar with cheap CMOS imaging sensors in cell phones. I feel like in many ways, our "home videos" have digressed on many consumer mobile devices because they're recorded vertically or have absolutely horrendous jello (often post corrected so now its just bizarre motion artifacts flashing up on fairly stable footage) or the compression is set so low to be able to send as an attachment or text message. You can shoot gorgeous video with a cell phone, or it can be crap. Such is the case with compression going to YouTube, a lot of stuff is handled by people without the sensibilities or know how to simply export a high quality, properly formatted file.
 
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