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Topic: YouTube downloading MP4, Webm and FLV? (Read 55398 times) previous topic - next topic
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YouTube downloading MP4, Webm and FLV?

Hi I am new here and I don't know much about codecs and stuff so I came here to get somethings straight.

So I am downloading couple of videos from youtube via keepvid and I have a couple of option I don't know which to choose from, one of the videos I am downloading is available in FLV 480p, MP4(480p Max) and Webm 480p...

The MP4 one is about (173MB), the FLV (240MB) and Webm about (330MB) my question is webm best since Webm has the largest file size?


Accourding to Wikipedia here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/YouTube#Video_technology , the webm has the highest video bitrate which is 1 and FLV is 0.8-1...

I want to know which has the highest quality in terms of video and audio.


YouTube downloading MP4, Webm and FLV?

Reply #1
Between MP4 and FLV: FLV for 360p and 480p (there's no MP4 at 480p). MP4 for 720p and up.
For MP4 vs. Webm it all comes down to codecs. H.264 vs. VP8 to be precise. Numerous tests have shown VP8 to be inferior to H.264. But in your case, the 330MB Webm file might even be the one of highest video quality due to the higher bitrate.
Although AAC has a slight edge, 128Kbps AAC and 128Kbps Vorbis are quite on par with eachother according to recent listeningtests.
Webm[VP9+Opus] would be really interesting in the near future.

YouTube downloading MP4, Webm and FLV?

Reply #2
Although AAC has a slight edge, 128Kbps AAC and 128Kbps Vorbis are quite on par with eachother according to recent listeningtests.
Webm[VP9+Opus] would be really interesting in the near future.


I have reason to believe that youtube doesn't use the good encoders (iTunes or Nero), I think they use libfaac since their backend is using ffmpeg. (can anyone confirm?)

general listening of Youtube has always been less than desirable for me, so I would highly recommend not to download from youtube and acquire your files from something else.

Consider that most stuff is probably converted about 3-4 times before it gets to you.

but if you have to acquire them from youtube, I would put my bets on H.264/flv for video and webm/vorbis for audio, and remux the files together.

YouTube downloading MP4, Webm and FLV?

Reply #3
I have reason to believe that youtube doesn't use the good encoders


TOS#8 aside, there are some videos out there that are really full of artifacts, but that may be due to the original user uploading a lossy which is then transcoded. Two encoders are not better than one.

YouTube is the place to go if you miss the generation loss of good'ole tapetrading.

YouTube downloading MP4, Webm and FLV?

Reply #4
Hi CoRoNe, YellowOnion, Porcus,

Wow you guys are amazing ... know your stuff.

I actually did a test few minutes ago for myself before getting to this post ... comparing the same video with MP4 and FLV ... FLV remuxed to MP4 with No changes did have a Better Picture Quality (a tad better) and Audio was already higher bitrate.

For me The problem with WebM is that I have to go thru complete Conversion since my Stand-Alone TV Media Player (Netgear EVA-9100) will Not play Vorbis Audio or the Video.

Q: or is there an easy way of making WebM files playable on Stand-alone Media Players?

Thanks!

G!

YouTube downloading MP4, Webm and FLV?

Reply #5
As you can see on this website, FLV, Webm, VP8 and Vorbis aren't among the supported media formats. So it's best to download Youtube videoclips in MP4[H.264+AAC].

YouTube downloading MP4, Webm and FLV?

Reply #6
^^^ Thanks CoRoNe!

G! 

YouTube downloading MP4, Webm and FLV?

Reply #7
The vast majority of stuff on YouTube is there as FLV files.

a small percentage is mp4 files

For the most part if you are "downloading" any You Tube video as anything else it is likely your download
program of choice is converting it on the fly...

I could be wrong about this... but I'll be really surprised if I am.

YouTube downloading MP4, Webm and FLV?

Reply #8
Compatibility might be the important thing here, rather than absolute quality. Do most media players handle webm? I've usually selected MP4 because it is a familiar format.

As for quality, YouTube's okay for a quick listen, but it's impossible to know the provenance of the original file and what's been done to it prior to uploading. My main gripe with YouTube is that so many users have such little regard for correct aspect ratio. Thank God for the VLC media player!

Re: YouTube downloading MP4, Webm and FLV?

Reply #9
Just in case you haven't tried this, changing a WebM to MKV (matroska) can sometimes help certain software players to play them.  Do this by simply renaming it from "movie.webm" to "movie.mkv". 

WebM's are a special strict type of MKV made of VP-8(?) video OGG audio and some other technical restrictions.  If your player can play MKV's but not WebM's this might do the trick without losing any data. 

I know this works for xine on Linux. 
Be a false negative of yourself!