[SOLVED] Has YouTube's 480p and 720p picture quality dropped on recent videos? - Page 1
Forum section: electronics / general

author: BrianHG
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 25, 2019, 02:35:41 am
content: I don't know if it is just me, but all the recently uploaded YouTube videos I've watched lately in 480p and 720p seem extra chunky, blocky and smeared out compared to older releases. Note that I am watching on a 80 inch screen.1080p videos seem to be as usual.Has YouTube cheapened or lowered the bitrate of their low end compression?Are the content creators or YouTube just using faster cheaper codecs?Or am I just getting too fussy all of a sudden?

author: NiHaoMike
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 25, 2019, 03:24:39 am
content: On an 80" screen, even 1080p won't look that good. If you have a decent GPU (at least 1 TFLOPS), you can try playing around with the upscaling settings, but even that will only go so far when the source isn't very high resolution to begin with. (Deep learning upscaling could well be a game changer but that's still years away at least.)Code:# This is a config file for mpv, an open source media player.# Optimized for high video quality on a 4K display with a GTX 970 GPU.# Version: 20181225# Content used for subjective testing/tuning provided by CaitlinV3, Joanne Chiang, Naomi Wu, Nerdphilia, and TastyPC.audio-device=alsa/iec958:CARD=PCH,DEV=0audio-stream-silence=yesaudio-wait-open=1hwdec=nvdechwdec-codecs=h264,vc1,wmv3,hevc,vp9force-seekableframedrop=decoder+vovd-lavc-dr=yesvd-lavc-threads=6vo=gpuscale=ewa_lanczossharpcscale=ewa_lanczossharpdscale=mitchelltscale=oversamplecorrect-downscalingdebandsigmoid-upscalingopengl-pboscaler-resizes-onlyinterpolationinterpolation-threshold=0.01swapchain-depth=8video-sync=display-resamplevideo-sync-max-video-change=3dither-depth=autogamma-factor=1.1cache-default=500000audio-channels=stereoforce-window=yesontopautofit=1920x1400geometry=1920:200video-align-y=-1sub-font-size=24

author: BrianHG
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 25, 2019, 03:39:18 am
content: Quote from: NiHaoMike on August 25, 2019, 03:24:39 amNot what I've said. I've been on an 80 inch screen for years now. Youtube uploads @480p & 720p since the beginning of June or July have become chunkier with motion an more smeared. Older ones are far more refined, closer to my old studio Hi8 player and DVD player. Now 480p looks like an old youtube 360p video.

author: Whales
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 25, 2019, 03:45:01 am
content: Yes, I think so too.1080p on a 1920x1080 looks blurrier than I remember. 720p and 480p seem surprisingly similar now.Curious sidenote: I'm watching a video being recorded of a Win2000 desktop at the moment. When I scale down the video the scrollbars start getting moire patterns. But they're supposed to be a solid colour, this shouldn't be possible! Zooming in reveals lots of very HF noise being added at some point between the source and my screen; even to completely static areas of the image (that have not changed for minutes of footage).

author: NiHaoMike
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 25, 2019, 04:17:35 am
content: I would guess that 480p and 720p are more for mobile users with limited bandwidth nowadays so that lower bitrate would actually be better for that use case. (Every Raspberry Pi can play 1080p, with the Pi 4 also able to play 4K.) If you want quality, use 1080p or above. (What I would really like to see is "master quality" that's basically the exact file that has been uploaded, but I suppose that would be easier done by the creators themselves using another service like Bittorrent.)

author: Whales
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 25, 2019, 04:33:36 am
content: Quote from: NiHaoMike on August 25, 2019, 04:17:35 amI suspect most of the world is on a much slower internet connection than you. If anyone else is in my house watching any videos then I can't watch 1080p youtube, and this is a "first world" country.Additionally: in-browser video decoding is often not properly hardware accelerated. Lots of small laptops tear and drop frames like hell on 720p videos already.

author: NiHaoMike
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 25, 2019, 04:45:27 am
content: Quote from: Whales on August 25, 2019, 04:33:36 amDownload it then play it with a proper player like VLC or mpv. That's how I get the best quality available with the upscaler fine tuned to make good use of a desktop GPU.

author: BrianHG
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 25, 2019, 08:48:41 pm
content: Quote from: Whales on August 25, 2019, 04:33:36 am(dropping frames) I've tried a few browsers on Windows and Linux, Mozilla FireFox drops the fewest frames if any at all when playing youtube videos.

author: BrianHG
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 25, 2019, 08:52:14 pm
content: I've tried to scan network activity, but unfortunately, there are such huge gaps then small bursts in data transfer when playing youtube videos in an effort to check actual playback bitrate. This is tough to judge.I think youtube recently cut their bitrate by 25-33% recently on all video formats. I guess this would save them a ton of money in storage and bandwidth considering the number of bytes they transmit every second.

author: MyHeadHz
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: August 25, 2019, 09:40:23 pm
content: Quote from: BrianHG on August 25, 2019, 03:39:18 amIn short, no- there have not been any significant changes lately. They do change a lot of things all the time, but there has been no real change in video quality for years. The only things they have done is add better 4k integration, but not that much. I really wish they would add better audio and take out the hz cutoff, but that's wishful thinking. They did add additional formats for a while, but it seems they have stopped doing that lately, but those didn't change existing mp4 and webm and other versions.The only annoying thing they've done lately is changing framerate for portions of videos to decrease file size. But that is only for *some* new videos. It happens infrequently enough that I haven't noticed a pattern.Generally, when they have big changes they re-encode previous videos of the same type. For years I have kept a selection of links that I check on a regular basis to check for such things. There have been no notable mass rollout (re-encoding) changes, and no notable changes to new videos.If you are talking about a particular channel or video, the youtuber may be testing things out, or he or she may have screwed something up and not bothered to re-upload it. Sometimes they do this to save on upload time when using multiple platforms.One likely scenario is that you have been watching 4k or blu-ray movies lately and now compressed 1080p looks noticeably worse. This happens when you go down in quality, but not usually when going up. It's a psychology thing.Another possibility is your ISP may be screwing you over to save bandwidth. If you have a land line this is unlikely. If you use a wireless carrier for your Internet connection, many carriers compress video and send out low quality versions via various services to save on bandwidth, regardless of which version you requested.Another possibility is that you have been randomly selected for testing by google and they are serving you with more compressed videos, trialing new systems for potential wider rollout. This does sometimes happen, but I have not heard anything lately about current trials. People usually figure it out quickly.TL;DR: Nothing has changed at youtube's end. It's either all on your end or nothing at all.

author: NiHaoMike
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 25, 2019, 11:56:32 pm
content: Quote from: BrianHG on August 25, 2019, 08:52:14 pmDownload it and use the mediainfo app.Quote from: MyHeadHz on August 25, 2019, 09:40:23 pmMost likely that would be done by limiting bandwidth from select IP ranges and can be "defeated" (worked around) by downloading the video. There are also VPNs or Tor that can be used to defeat more advanced ISP trickery. (That does bring up the point of the VPNs themselves doing that sort of trickery, but you can try multiple to see if there's any difference.)

author: BrianHG
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 26, 2019, 06:36:14 pm
content: Found it. When I use 'Intel integrated Graphics' on my laptop, the Youtube's playback is far superior compared to when using the internal ATI High Performance GPU accelerator. By a long shot. (This isn't an up-scaling issue, the graphical smears and blocky chunks around the skin tones really shows.)The reverse happens when in 3D accelerated applications. By a long shot.This isn't a problem with my normal video players since I deliberately use an all CPU software codecs for my .h264/5 video players where both video cards playback at full studio video quality. I cannot choose a playback codec with Youtube, so I must use the slow GPU if I want youtube to look good.Though my laptop is just over 3 years old, I wonder if NVidia based laptops have the same drop in quality.

author: Whales
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 26, 2019, 10:30:32 pm
content: Curious. What OS + browser, if I may ask?If there is a noticeable difference then somewhere along the line something has really been stuffed up.

author: BrianHG
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 26, 2019, 10:36:35 pm
content: Quote from: Whales on August 26, 2019, 10:30:32 pmWin 7. FireFox, HP Pavilion laptop with ATI Radeon and Intel integrated low power graphics.Everything running on HDMI out at 1080p.I think the ATI might be trying to enhance the video and just fudging things up even though I just disabled all the video enhancement processing settings.

author: NiHaoMike
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 26, 2019, 11:18:12 pm
content: Quote from: BrianHG on August 26, 2019, 06:36:14 pmMobile Nvidia GPUs are nowadays basically the same as the desktop versions, the only difference being clock speeds and "skew" of chip.It's (not so) nice to know that AMD isn't doing too well for image quality and Nvidia remains the top pick for high end HTPCs. (Quite a shame for the open source purists out there who prefer AMD for the open drivers, unless of course it's something that can be fixed driver side.) Out of curiosity, what series GPU is it? Maybe the newer ones are better... It would also be interesting to see what the oddball Intel CPU with AMD graphics does, since I recall that still uses Intel IP for 2D, with the AMD IP handling 3D and GPGPU.Also check the antialiasing settings. Nowadays, many video players render to an OpenGL texture and thus are considered 3D apps by the graphics driver, even when playing 2D videos! The antialiasing smoothes out the harsh edges of computed images, but applying the same to a video that doesn't need it just makes it look blurry. (I have even seen that happen on the desktop if compositing is enabled. Needless to say, it's not obvious that an incorrect setting in the graphics driver is to blame.)

author: BrianHG
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 27, 2019, 12:46:34 am
content: Quote from: NiHaoMike on August 26, 2019, 11:18:12 pmNo, the problem is mpeg blocks and missing shades from the playback image. Not the upsampling filter technology type.As for the video card, it is a Radeon HD 7690MXT.I think it's just the way it mixes the chroma subsampling when upsampling the 4:2:0 image. I'll play with the ATI controls which the Intel video control panel doesn't have.

author: NiHaoMike
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 27, 2019, 03:32:46 am
content: Quote from: BrianHG on August 27, 2019, 12:46:34 amThat's a pretty old GPU and probably isn't representative of a more modern one. In particular, the higher end Ryzen APUs theoretically have enough processing power to do 4K upscaling very well and thus should be a good choice for a HTPC. I haven't researched it but I'm sure some HTPC builder would have noticed if the video quality couldn't match a Nvidia GPU.The chroma upsampling is an interesting point and the mpv documentation suggests that it's upscaled separately, with the option of using different settings or even a different algorithm.https://mpv.io/manual/stable/#gpu-renderer-optionsAlthough I haven't tried it, there's a Firefox extension to play videos in mpv without downloading them first.https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/ff2mpv/

author: BrianHG
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 28, 2019, 12:16:25 am
content: For those interested, here is ATI decoding Youtube VS INTEL integrated graphics.Look at the tie and the whites, on the ATI side, complete colors are missing in the tie while the lines in the whites are have nicks and chunks:The source was 480p upsampled 2x.I wonder if modern graphics accelerators have the same issue?

author: NiHaoMike
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 28, 2019, 01:34:28 am
content: If you're using the open source drivers, might be worth a try sending that to the devs. Not sure if any of them would be interested in debugging a GPU from 2012, however.

author: BrianHG
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 28, 2019, 02:14:50 am
content: Quote from: NiHaoMike on August 28, 2019, 01:34:28 amWe'll see what happens when I get a new laptop next month. At least I know what to look for.An yes, that decoding crap appears in 720p and 1080p.And the Integrated Intel drivers are so old, they don't have accelerated decoding other than image scaling the viewport. So they use all software mpeg decoding.

author: Whales
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 29, 2019, 05:42:24 am
content: Open source drivers? He's on Win7, not Linux.