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By Kawatzakka - 12 Years Ago
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Hello All,
I am sure we are not the first ones to come across this issue...
We go through the process of exporting our videos in the highest quality possible, we then upload them to YouTube, play them, and YouTube plays it 9 out of 10 times with low quality resolution as default. Why!?
We export in 1080p HD format, and YouTube plays it by default on 360p or 480p most of the time. You can always stop the video, select the full screen option (sometimes when you do this, it will bump you up to a higher resolution...but again, not always) and explicitly choose for the video to play in 1080p, which everyone in this forum would know how to do, but what happens with Joe the Plumber...? He would open up the video, say "Arghh ugly blurry images...next, video...bye!"
In the YouTube Settings > Playback section you can choose for:
Playback
Video playback quality:
[Checked] - Always choose the best quality for my connection and player size
[Checked] - Always play HD on fullscreen (when available)
But in reality....it doesn't do this!?
Can anyone shed some light on how we can "force" YouTube to play our videos to our audience with 1080p if their hardware/connection has the capabilities to do so?
Thanks!
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By Cricky - 12 Years Ago
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Can anyone shed some light on how we can "force" YouTube to play our videos to our audience with 1080p if their hardware/connection has the capabilities to do so?
Why not contact Google? YouTube is their baby.
You can provide a shared link that displays HD when you choose it specifically.
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By Kawatzakka - 12 Years Ago
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Cricky (5/2/2012)
Can anyone shed some light on how we can "force" YouTube to play our videos to our audience with 1080p if their hardware/connection has the capabilities to do so? Why not contact Google? YouTube is their baby. You can provide a shared link that displays HD when you choose it specifically.
Contacting Google/YouTube on something like this would be like putting a message in a bottle...we've done it in the past for other things. No luck.
Most of the examples/showcases posted in this forum have this issue as well. That's why we post it here 
Hopefully we can collect some good input on this thread, from the people that really are keen to solving/getting around these issues.
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By thebiz.movies - 12 Years Ago
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Its not much of an issue to me. I know how to change the resolution and I do so if necessary or warranted. To my knowledge the "Use HD in full screen" does work when available.
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By Kawatzakka - 12 Years Ago
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thebiz.movies (5/2/2012)
Its not much of an issue to me. I know how to change the resolution and I do so if necessary or warranted. To my knowledge the "Use HD in full screen" does work when available.
But isn't this because you are talking about Vimeo?
When it comes to this point, Vimeo is much simpler than YouTube (sometimes it's in your favor, sometimes it's not)...
Do you have any videos on YouTube that consistently play at the highest quality resolution (when available of course)?
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By thebiz.movies - 12 Years Ago
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The resolution changes based upon the video player size. At the small size my video here plays at 360, at medium at 480 and at full screen at the highest resolution available (720 in this case). This is how I expect it to work and this is how it works on my browser.
Checked] - Always choose the best quality for my connection and player size - This sounds to me like the resolution is decided by the player size.
[Checked] - Always play HD on fullscreen (when available) - How is this not working for you?
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By Kawatzakka - 12 Years Ago
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In difference to Vimeo, YouTube starts playing the moment the page loads, so the initial resolution is set to a small player. To go to full screen, you would click for it as the video is already playing, and here 2 things happen:
a) It stays in the low resolution option as it had with the small player.
OR
b) It goes for 720p...very very rarely does it go for the full 1080p. So does it go HD? Yes it does. But the question is, why doesn't it go for the highest res. available as the You Tube setting suggests?
This behavior can be seen in 90% of YouTube videos.
Now, I can understand that of that 90%, the vast majority don't bother with these details, that's why for most this is a non-issue. But for us (I mean communities like these, animators, video producers, etc.) it does matter.
The only thing we would like to achieve is to "force" YouTube to play in the highest resolution available right off the bat (without having to manually change it), as the setting suggests.
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By Kawatzakka - 12 Years Ago
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Here is a quick example of what we mean...
NOTE: This is NOT our material, this only meant as an example. The link was found in the showcase section of this forum. This is just to illustrate that this is a general issue.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0NDi_IJSNnc&feature=related
When it starts playing, immediately click on full screen mode...does it default to the best quality resolution?
For us: NO
...and that means "NO" from 5 different terminals in 3 different locations, various OSs from Mac, Linux and Windows....with 4 different browsers: Firefox, IE, Safari, and Opera...and not a single time did YouTube play at it's highest resolution, which in this case would be 720HD....
As we have said before, we had to do it manually, and THEN...it went to the highest resolution...
But how do you get it to do it from the start??
I think that we can all agree that the difference between 720pHD and one level down 480p is GIGANTIC! One is very pleasant to look at, the other one is not. If your audience has an initial attention span of 5 seconds, and they get the low resolution version...chances are:
YOU LOST THEM....
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By Paumanok West - 12 Years Ago
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Kawatzakka (5/2/2012)I think that we can all agree that the difference between 720pHD and one level down 480p is GIGANTIC! One is very pleasant to look at, the other one is not. If your audience has an initial attention span of 5 seconds, and they get the low resolution version...chances are:
YOU LOST THEM....
I agree you should be afraid of your audience. In fact, I think you should be terrified of not making a good impression, and therefore losing them. But I think you have 1000 far more important things to worry about than whether your video comes up initially at 480p.
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By Kawatzakka - 12 Years Ago
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Paumanok West (5/2/2012)
I agree you should be afraid of your audience. In fact, I think you should be terrified of not making a good impression, and therefore losing them. But I think you have 1000 far more important things to worry about than whether your video comes up initially at 480p.
Hey there Paumanok West, indeed you are right...but we just crossed out the 999th item on the list, and are ready to tackle this last one
Any thoughts?
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By kurzal - 12 Years Ago
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Look at this page. There is an interesting title there: "What's the Best Quality for Me?".
It is easy to understand that YouTube believes that the choice of video playback quality is at the user's side, not the author of a piece of art. Reading an article in the magazine is just the same. You can simply browse through it or you can read it carefully. It's reader's choice, not the author.
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By Cricky - 12 Years Ago
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Any thoughts?
Try hosting it on your own web server, then you can have it display in any size you wish, right out the gate.
Not everyone wants HD immediately. Many people use their telephones to watch videos, their screens and bandwidth don't matter, right? Lets keep those Cel Towers hopping trying to push more and more to an already taxed system.
When people get too lazy, to choose a size on YouTube as a viewing preference, they may as well just lay down and let the machines take over...they're already body dead, why not brain dead?
Many people, including myself will start viewing something and realize it isn't what they expected and switch to something else. Why waste the initial streaming bandwidth displaying it in HD when you aren't going to finish it anyway?
Now we are back to the 1st comment. "Try hosting it on your own web server, then you can have it display in any size you wish, right out the gate. "
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By Kawatzakka - 12 Years Ago
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kurzal (5/2/2012)
Look at this page. There is an interesting title there: "What's the Best Quality for Me?". It is easy to understand that YouTube believes that the choice of video playback quality is at the user's side, not the author of a piece of art. Reading an article in the magazine is just the same. You can simply browse through it or you can read it carefully. It's reader's choice, not the author.
Hi Igor, thanks a lot for your input!
This sort of confirms our fears, but at the same time, it makes us wonder how come the big studio trailers, and big money animation groups (and several of the mid-range ones) a-l-w-a-y-s manage to find a way to have their videos playback in the highest quality??
Even though, as you pointed out, YouTube seems to decide for you...we are convinced there has to be a way to consistently play high quality.
For example....check this out (done in Blender I believe):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9QscURRuF0g
This one plays at 360p if you leave the defaults....and how about the quality!?
It's amazing!!!!! Super sharp!!!!!! No sacrifice in speed/performance...everything moves and looks hyper crisp!!
Even at low resolution the quality is obscenely good!!!
What's the trick!?!?!
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By kurzal - 12 Years Ago
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Try this settings for uploading your files to YouTube:
- file size must be smaller than 100 mb;
- file format must be *.flv;
- use Sorenson Spark for Flash 7 codec (not VP6 for Flash 8).
Three years ago this trick worked 
For uploading to YouTube I use:
- file format *.f4v
- codec MainConcept H.264 Video
- HD (1280x720)
You can see quality here: one or two
Additionally you can try HandBreak (free video transcoder). It has lot of settings.
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By Kawatzakka - 12 Years Ago
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Thanks Igor for the great post!
We are still looking for a place where to download: Sorenson Spark for Flash 7 codec. We could find the new (and VERY expensive one), but the 7 version alludes us for the moment....
We are downloading Handbreak right now...
Let's see how it goes!
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By planetstardragon - 12 Years Ago
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the only work around I can think of ....is posting it offsite. Wix just went HTML 5, and you can make an amazingly beautiful flash page for free and make your video on that page as big as you want .....it WILL play at the size you embed it at....the auto-resize only happens on youtube.
I think youtube users have a choice of not being force fed hd as their connections may not be stable, and if you select HD it will play whenever it can.
As far as the "Big Money animation" companies, I think that answers it self, 'big money'
I think if you told youtube you'd give em a million dollars for your video campaign, they would tell the users to upgrade their computers if they had to lol.
ps - i am so not liking the new playlist style youtube has endorsed, it looks huge and clumsy, it always makes me feel like it's covering up part of the video and I can't minimize it smaller than what feels like some toddler toy size. Not enjoying the new changes.
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By Kawatzakka - 12 Years Ago
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thebiz.movies (5/2/2012)
Its not much of an issue to me. I know how to change the resolution and I do so if necessary or warranted. To my knowledge the "Use HD in full screen" does work when available.
Hi thebiz.movies, we were just testing Vimeo vrs. YouTube side by side...
When it comes to which service gives the audience the best quality by default (without having the user/audience having to do a-n-y-t-h-i-n-g, besides press play)...HANDS DOWN it's Vimeo.
They basically have 2 settings: HD-on and HD-off.
When Joe the Plumber plays our video in YouTube...it's a quality roulette...you as a producer have no idea what quality your audience will get when they watch your video on YouTube...to say that's annoying is a gross understatement.
But on Vimeo it really plays the best quality possible and the videos look as best as they can be!
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By filmaker - 11 Years Ago
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Have you followed Igor's post, did that work for you? I used to post small videos (2-3 mins). All my videos start with low resolution (360 or 240p), later after 15 seconds it turns into HD (720p). But the initial blurry video will surely make my audience shy away to other videos 
Please update if Igor's worked out for you 
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