Sound quality comparison between Youtube and Vimeo

[phcorrigan]

---deleted

[ac]

Downloaded video files--compared:

YouTube
*** Audio Track(s) Parameters
*** Audio Track #1***
- Format: AAC - MPEG-4 audio
- Size: 1016.8 KB (4%)
- FourCC: aac
- Profile: Low Complexity
- Bitrate: 128 Kbps
- Bitrate mode: Constant
- Rate: 44.1 KHz
- Channel(s): 2 (stereo)
- Position: Front: L R

Vimeo
*** Audio Track(s) Parameters
** Audio Track #1***
Format: AAC - MPEG-4 audio
Size: 2.01 MB (5%)
FourCC: aac
Profile: Low Complexity
Bitrate: 253 Kbps
Bitrate mode: Variable
Rate: 48.0 KHz
Channel(s): 2 (stereo)
Position: Front: L R

[Doug Young]

Interesting. What tool did you use to get this info?

[rick-slo]

Youtube certainly better than 128 Kbps (at least if your upload resolution is decent).

Here is my recording on youtube
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6YsXIx7lnQc

and the same recording as a wav file on my web site:
http://dcoombsguitar.com/Guitar%20Music/Rebecca.wav

[Doug Young]

Originally Posted by rick-slo

Youtube certainly better than 128 Kbps (at least if your upload resolution is decent).

Here is my recording on youtube
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6YsXIx7lnQc

and the same recording as a wav file on my web site:
http://dcoombsguitar.com/Guitar%20Music/Rebecca.wav

You Tube at least used to vary by video type. SD videos were even forced to mono, while HD would stay as stereo. It's a moving target, and hard to keep up with what's going on. If there's a tool that actually shows what's being streamed, that'd be very useful.

[rick-slo]

Originally Posted by Doug Young

You Tube at least used to vary by video type. SD videos were even forced to mono, while HD would stay as stereo. It's a moving target, and hard to keep up with what's going on. If there's a tool that actually shows what's being streamed, that'd be very useful.

https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/91449?hl=en

In my youtube video I linked to you can vary the playback quality by clicking on the little gear icon.

[Doug Young]

Originally Posted by rick-slo

https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/91449?hl=en

I meant a tool that actually measures the stream, showing a breakdown as posted above. I know users can select different qualities (I have mine set to 4K by default), but what exactly do we get as far as audio when we do that? Also keep in mind that even the "official" docs often don't keep up with the actual changes in these platforms - so I'd rather see what's really streamed than any possibly-out-of-date web page that claims to know.

[rick-slo]

Originally Posted by Doug Young

I meant a tool that actually measures the stream, showing a breakdown as posted above. I know users can select different qualities (I have mine set to 4K by default), but what exactly do we get as far as audio when we do that? Also keep in mind that even the "official" docs often don't keep up with the actual changes in these platforms - so I'd rather see what's really streamed than any possibly-out-of-date web page that claims to know.

It would vary. If of practical listener concern just compare your recorded sound to what youtube does to it. It is close as I demoed in my example.

[keith.rogers]

I also wonder how you capture the bitrate of the streamed audio, though I'm sure it's something I might dig out - just faster to ask

In YouTube, after you upload, at least for a while they give you the option of downloading your video. It is, of course, their compressed version. With the 1080p FLAC file I uploaded earlier, the downloaded video contained 720 content and 127kbps stereo audio. The resulting file was 10% the size of the original upload. (Now, my video and audio were both probably not harmed by the drastic compression, but, still, you should expect they're not giving you free disk space and bandwidth unless you're making them lots of money, if there's a criteria at all...)

[rick-slo]

Originally Posted by keith.rogers

I also wonder how you capture the bitrate of the streamed audio, though I'm sure it's something I might dig out - just faster to ask

In YouTube, after you upload, at least for a while they give you the option of downloading your video. It is, of course, their compressed version. With the 1080p FLAC file I uploaded earlier, the downloaded video contained 720 content and 127kbps stereo audio. The resulting file was 10% the size of the original upload. (Now, my video and audio were both probably not harmed by the drastic compression, but, still, you should expect they're not giving you free disk space and bandwidth unless you're making them lots of money, if there's a criteria at all...)

127kbps audio would be pretty poor audio. Your saying for example the audio in this was 127kbps?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XvvWs1ukwNo&t=23s

[Doug Young]

I hadn't tried downloading my own video, but just did. I still suspect we don't know what's really going on... My video can be played at 4K, and you tube claims that resolution is 2160p. But when I download it from my dashboard, I get 1080 and 128 kb/s audio. I also have a program, 4KDownloader, which claims it's downloading 4K, tho the file size is a fraction of the original (but way bigger than You Tube).

Here's what I see:

My Original (12G on disk):

MyOriginal.jpg

4KDownloader file (244M on disk)

4KDownloader.jpg

Downloaded directly from my You Tube "Studio", 23M on disk!

YouTube Download.jpg

So we've gone from 12G to 23M in file size, and the audio's gone from 48Khz, 24 bit wav to 128kb/s AAC. And the 4K download got me 32 bits of audio when I only uploaded 24! So clearly some conversion going on, and we can't trust that it's actually just taking what You Tube's giving it.

Still no idea what actually gets streamed if, for example, I pick the 4K or even the 1080 settings.

[rick-slo]

Converted Rebecca file to 128kbps
http://dcoombsguitar.com/Temp/Rebecca128.mp3

Here is my recording on youtube
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6YsXIx7lnQc

the original wav file :
http://dcoombsguitar.com/Guitar%20Music/Rebecca.wav

The 128mp3 has gotten rasty.

However youtube uses Opus compression which is apparently a more efficient compression
algorhythm (more quality sound for the same bit rate) than mp3 is.

[keith.rogers]

Originally Posted by rick-slo

127kbps audio would be pretty poor audio. Your saying for example the audio in this was 127kbps?
...

No, it was that one earlier in this thread - just a URL link. But, I think the same thing happens with any uploaded video. They give you something that's pretty much their lowest res stream, and it appears to be 127-ish kbps. Maybe if you're watching at a higher resolution, and that particular video may not have one, you get higher def audio, too.

Probably their real HD streams have better video, but I guess the short answer for at least one question (kind of) raised here is to give them the best audio, preferably non-lossy, because they're going to squash the crap out of it.

Now, the Vimeo vs. YouTube quality question is not totally resolved, because we don't know what was uploaded. I did downloads of both uploads (from the previous thread) I did, and they were different, but I didn't upload the same audio file in both cases. I wouldn't be surprised if YT has a bit better handling of audio content, so best to follow their guidance, or do better, probably, and keep within loudness and peak standards, is all I can do.

[rick-slo]

I believe youtube high resolution playback (video + audio) options depend on the video (or photo in my case) resolution so I use high resolution ones.