Confirming Whether YouTube Has Problems with Your Connection

Dateline: Blocky Mess

In recent months a problem has emerged for some YouTube users. Usually it presents itself in the form of unexpected blocking artifacts in the video as YouTube renders it. The source of the problem appears to be related to changes YouTube made to increase efficiency of uploading and processing, by doing the work in parallel. I'm not sure of the details, but in essence this suggests to me that checking file integrity must be using some test that is not nearly as reliable as more traditional checksum methods. I can see your eyes glazing over.

Suffice it to say, that the way to test whether your uploads are affected is to upload a file that is known to convert reliably, at least from users whose connections are not affected by the current glitch.

If you want a file or files to test, I've created two of them. One in 1080p, the other, much smaller file, in 360p resolution. Downloadable from Vimeo:

1080p version Compare the YouTube version here.

360p version For comparison, here's the YouTube version.

Both videos are provided for use under Creative Commons license
The works linked above are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.

If you confirm this problem is affecting you, you have at least two current options.

One: try to change your connection to one as direct and uncomplicated as possible. For instance, if you are uploading from a WiFi connection, try uploading from a machine that's wired directly to the appropriate router/cable modem (whatever is most direct in your situation). Since this may not be possible for shared connections or in many other situations, and the specifics will tend to vary, YouTube recently coded an uploader meant to resolve this connection-related problem, which gives you Option...

Two: Try using the SSL uploader developed specifically as a workaround for this known problem, which hopefully will get a more elegant solution in the not too distant future. The link is https://upload.youtube.com/my_videos_upload (note the SSL "https:" prefix is the key difference, and may be the only difference you'll notice between the SSL uploader and the standard uploader).

Please be aware that some users have reported it taking much more time than their previous uploads. You may want to take any steps possible to ensure that the connection is not being used for any other purposes during the upload, to reduce chances of failure and avoid what slowdowns can be avoided.

This issue is discussed extensively in the latter pages of this YouTube help forum thread (the same link as the dateline at the top).

Getting the Most from YouTube Help When Your Video Fails

Dateline: YouTube Bug Reporting & Tech Issues

How to get specific help when a video goes bad.

The first thing you may want to do is look at (and possibly share) a MediaInfo report on the file you uploaded. 

The MediaInfo utility is free, open source and, once installed can offer a concise but detailed technical overview of your uploaded video.  It can also provide details about other types of media files, such as your source video, digital photos, audio recordings, and other multimedia files you might have used in your work.  

MediaInfo reports can reveal useful, detailed information when applied to source video, and reveal conflicts between source video and what you rendered and uploaded.  


Such conflicts are often at the center of many technical issues with YouTube videos.  


You can find the downloadable installer (and the source code) for MediaInfo at http://mediainfo.sourceforge.net/  It does need to be installed, but it's a small utility and takes little space or time to install.

This is what the text-only view looks like for a MediaInfo report.

If you think one of the source videos or other media files are involved with the problems you're having, you may want to offer details about those files too. If you're fairly experienced with editing and rendering, the report may give you clues to the problem all by itself. But if you're fairly new to video, or just not technically-minded, others are likely to be able to offer far more pointed advice if you share this information up front. 

Vague questions generate vague answers, and sometimes lead to burn-out from those trying to be helpful.

Be sure to cut and paste the text-only version of the report.  The Text format is selectable from the View tab of the report.  

Others formats make the reports hard to read, or may not cut & paste at all.  The image shown (click it to see a larger, full-size, readable version) and the text below both show what a typical MediaInfo report should look like.  

If yours looks like it is repeating lines or is otherwise hugely redundant, check under the Debug tab to see that Advanced is not checked and that Debug-0 is checked:

General

Complete name : D:\YourVid\Awesome\ThisMovieShouldBeWorking.mp4

Format : MPEG-4

Format profile : Base Media / Version 2

Codec ID : mp42

File size : 97.2 MiB

Duration : 1mn 20s

Overall bit rate : 10.2 Mbps

Encoded date : UTC 2010-07-28 07:11:38

Tagged date : UTC 2010-07-28 07:11:38

Video

ID : 2

Format : AVC

Format/Info : Advanced Video Codec

Format profile : Baseline@L4.0

Format settings, CABAC : No

Format settings, ReFrames : 2 frames

Muxing mode : Container profile=Baseline@0.0

Codec ID : avc1

Codec ID/Info : Advanced Video Coding

Duration : 1mn 20s

Bit rate mode : Variable

Bit rate : 9 978 Kbps

Width : 1 280 pixels

Height : 720 pixels

Display aspect ratio : 16/9

Frame rate mode : Constant

Frame rate : 119.880 fps

Original frame rate : 59.940 fps

Resolution : 24 bits

Colorimetry : 4:2:0

Scan type : Interlaced

Bits/(Pixel*Frame) : 0.090

Stream size : 95.3 MiB (98%)

Language : English

Encoded date : UTC 2010-07-28 07:11:38

Tagged date : UTC 2010-07-28 07:11:38

Audio

ID : 1

Format : AAC

Format/Info : Advanced Audio Codec

Format version : Version 4

Format profile : LC

Format settings, SBR : No

Codec ID : 40

Duration : 1mn 20s

Bit rate mode : Constant

Bit rate : 192 Kbps

Channel(s) : 2 channels

Channel positions : L R

Sampling rate : 44.1 KHz

Resolution : 16 bits

Stream size : 1.83 MiB (2%)

Language : English

Encoded date : UTC 2010-07-28 07:11:38

Tagged date : UTC 2010-07-28 07:11:38

Depending on the container, codecs and other details it may looks somewhat different.  This particular report is for an HD (720p) MP4 video container, generated from Sony Vegas Pro 9.0.  But the overall structure of the report will usually contain three blocks of text:  General, Video and Audio.  

If your report is missing one, or has multiples, that in itself may suggest a problem.  YouTube has a nasty habit of expecting just one video stream and one audio stream, preferably of exactly the same running time.

Keep in mind that most of the people likely to respond to a question on the forum are users like yourself, and those who are actually trying to help are usually those with the least free time to spend back and forth pulling out the various details that are basic to making any kind of informed suggestions or identifying your problem as a emerging, widespread issue.  You'll find people are much more generous with their time if they see that you're already prepared and are willing to share enough details to make their efforts worthwhile and not just an exercise in frustration on both sides.

Report Playback Issues on YouTube

For a long time, and with good cause, people have been complaining there's no way to contact YouTube about issues with video playback.

It's a bit too early to say just how well this one will work, but in recent weeks they did add several items, from diagnostic tools to a link for reporting playback issue to the 'face' of videos themselves. I know I'm hoping these will work, or at least work a bit better than what has been in place so far.



Gradually, Google is coming to realize that they are not operating in a vacuum, so hopefully this is just one sign of additional options to come? Don't expect miracles, though.

This is a test - YouTube's Unlisted Videos...

Can they or can't they be embedded? This post is an attempt to test whether such videos can be embedded.



This second video is embedded from a different channel, one that is no longer tied into the Google account that handles this blog. I'm starting to suspect that problems with embedding may be related to the settings that the owner might have chosen. After all, the YouTube EDIT pages include separate modules for Privacy (where the Unlisted option appears) and another section for "Embedding."


I may leave this at that, unless something else comes up to contradict my first impressions.

YouTube users should probably still exercise caution when embedding Unlisted videos, since they're likely to become more visible if the embedding happens on any site or blog (unlike this one) where traffic is high. In fact, if you are concerned about keeping Unlisted videos at least somewhat hard to find, disabling embedding is probably not a bad idea.

Here will be my comments on whether this worked or not. Some YouTube users are reporting that these videos cannot be embedded, which is probably a good thing and an intended feature. I just don't want to make a statement about it in the Help Forum without checking things out.

There's another question about embedding, but I think it refers to links... testing it three ways here:



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UcStMHeMvN0

http://www.youtube.com/watch/v=UcStMHeMvN0

Where I am, only that last link is faulty. If it worked in the past I wasn't aware of it.

YouTube does CinemaScope

This video is presented as an example of an odd, and possibly unsupported YouTube feature. Recently, in the past few days, an ultrawide player appeared on YouTube, at least for some types of videos. The aspect ratio was around 2.35:1, instead of the 16:9 aspect ratio introduced back in December 2008.

Hopefully this embedded video illustrates this new format, but what's really interesting is if you follow this video back to YouTube, and use the new large screen switcher. It's a button with arrows pointing left and right. The "mouseover" text reads "Change Player Size." The odd thing at the moment though is that this player is only available if you avoid rendering in a way that triggers HD encoding.  For example, an otherwise identical clip was rendered at 1440x608 and displays on YouTube in the now familiar 16:9 ratio player.  Perhaps that will be fixed in a future update?  (Don't bet actual money on that hopeful statement, though).

Please note: to get the 2.35:1 aspect ratio embedded player below, you will need to (at present) manually change the values (both at the beginning and end) of the embedded player code. In this case the height value was 262, width 560.  If you're not familiar with the method (clicking the YouTube watermark) to open a video on its own YouTube page, you can click this link to get to the video behind the embedded player below.





Here are the detailed specs for the file uploaded above:

General
Name : Patriots90920cVryShortSM2.mp4
Format : MPEG-4
Format profile : Base Media / Version 2
Codec ID : mp42
File size : 15.0 MiB
Duration : 30s 30ms
Overall bit rate : 4 195 Kbps
Encoded date : UTC 2009-09-21 04:12:06
Tagged date : UTC 2009-09-21 04:12:06

Video
ID : 2
Format : AVC
Format/Info : Advanced Video Codec
Format profile : Baseline@L3.0
Format settings, CABAC : No
Format settings, ReFrames : 2 frames
Muxing mode : Container profile=Unknown@0.0
Codec ID : avc1
Codec ID/Info : Advanced Video Coding
Duration : 30s 30ms
Bit rate mode : Variable
Bit rate : 3 999 Kbps
Width : 720 pixels
Height : 304 pixels
Display aspect ratio : 2.35
Frame rate mode : Constant
Frame rate : 29.970 fps
Resolution : 24 bits
Colorimetry : 4:2:0
Scan type : Progressive
Bits/(Pixel*Frame) : 0.610
Stream size : 14.3 MiB (95%)
Language : English
Encoded date : UTC 2009-09-21 04:12:06
Tagged date : UTC 2009-09-21 04:12:06

Audio
ID : 1
Format : AAC
Format/Info : Advanced Audio Codec
Format version : Version 4
Format profile : LC
Format settings, SBR : No
Codec ID : 40
Duration : 30s 16ms
Bit rate mode : Constant
Bit rate : 192 Kbps
Channel(s) : 2 channels
Channel positions : L R
Sampling rate : 48.0 KHz
Resolution : 16 bits
Stream size : 704 KiB (5%)
Language : English
Encoded date : UTC 2009-09-21 04:12:06
Tagged date : UTC 2009-09-21 04:12:06

One further point of interest, though. Even though video appears rather ugly on YouTube itself, the same trick used above, should work to conform embedded players to any non-standard aspect ratios you might want to use. See the example below:

YouTube strikes again

For the past few days, the thumbnail server code that tells an embedded player which thumbnails to show seems to think you can nest a jpeg inside another jpeg. If you're here, or on any other site with embedded YouTube videos, for that matter, the player still works but the screen appears blank and black. Just hit the play button on the second player below to confirm that. This bug is presently discussed in a fair bit of detail on the YouTube Help Forums.

The following player should work (it's not from YouTube):

Duetto Buffo di Due Gatti from Shadowgate Imageworks on Vimeo.

Albemarle Senior Choir performs Gioachino Rossini's "Duetto Buffo di Due Gatti" (Comic Duet for Two Cats). Performance at Miller Chapel, on the grounds of the Princeton Theological Seminary, Princeton, NJ, Saturday, July 18, 2009. Marianna Parnas-Simpson, Albemarle musical director, conducting.

This next one will work (I predict) once the code is fixed:


And so it did.

There are also so many videos being corrupted since the shift a month ago to 2GB uploads that it's stopped being funny... and I had a really great sense of humor about this stuff. That sense of humor, though, has been eroding lately, probably due to my sense of downright exhaustion, trying to field user questions and pass along pithy (or immensely verbose) observations to YouTube staff. A staff that at present seem to be dealing with far too many fires at once to be able to do more than respond haphazardly to the handful of users they've allowed to "bubble up" issues for their attention.

One more vid for the lolcat fans out there:



If I weren't so messed up in the head, I would have probably stopped doing this a few months ago, for the sake of any shreds of sanity that still remain. Unfortunately I find this whole phenomenon mesmerizing. Who knows, maybe I can turn the experience into a screenplay?

We don't really need to go into that just now, do we? I think I'll be perverse and stick two embedded players for the same videos into this post (see above), just so I can more readily see if and when the coding has been fixed.

Testing strange things

Testing an issue with playlists and favorites. This is an embedded list of 20 videos taken from my favorites. I've since pared it down to 16 videos, eliminating private videos and those that appear to not permit external embedding.



This is the part above the jump.

And this comes after. This is a video uploaded from a cellphone. (Or recorded on a cellphone, transferred to a PC, and then uploaded to the Yoob).

It's pretty chunky when viewed in "blowup" size on its YouTube page. It's not so hideous when shown in a tiny window no larger than its original resolution.

YouTube's High Quality Mystery

For those just tuning in, in about the past month or so, various problems have shown up for many people, most dramatically, the tendency of HQ videos -- those that have been encoded to YouTube's Format 35 (&fmt=35) -- to play back at roughly half their intended, uploaded frame rate.

So far there's been no real word on what's going on with the High Quality format. I do have it on reliable authority that this issue has been brought to the attention of YouTube's engineering department, but so far no word has gotten back to me that the source of the problem has been found.

The following videos will demonstrate this behavior, at least as long as the problem persists. I tried in this and other videos to duplicate the method used by user kekkomatic and described in detail in his video description.

Basically, an alternating pattern, frame-by-frame of graphic boxes were laid into the video as two overlaying video tracks. The boxes alternate left-to-right, frame for frame.

If there were no dropped frames one would see these as a sort of constantly "shimmering", rhythmically consistent set of images. When frames are dropped, instead one is likely to see the boxes "stick" on one side or the other.

To confirm that this is limited to HQ35 encoding, you can go to any affected video and force display at another quality level by pasting the following to the end of the video URL.

NQ5 - add "&fmt=5" (without the quotes)
NQ34 - &fmt=34
HQ18 - &fmt=18
HD22 - &fmt=22 (where available)
Related videos should include several other demos. Here's a playlist of several tests, including ones that did not get HQ35 encoding and are therefore largely unaffected by frame droppage. (Playlist appears below the fold).

Playlist of test videos, as noted above, appears below. (The preceding hotlink will also take you to the playlist on YouTube itself).

Videos that were not strongly affected by dropped/skipped frames are in the playlist, towards the end. The following is a further attempt to explore issues related to this problem, but it seems to have failed to achieve the HQ35 encoding. It's included here instead to test whether one can truly disable related videos in a auto-generated custom player. Only one video should be playable in this player, if that's true.