Talk:YouTube/Archive 17

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Pending changes

This article is one of a small number (about 100) selected for the first week of the trial of the Wikipedia:Pending Changes system on the English language Wikipedia. All the articles listed at Wikipedia:Pending changes/Queue are being considered for level 1 pending changes protection.

The following request appears on that page:

However with only a few hours to go, comments have only been made on two of the pages.

Please update the Queue page as appropriate.

Note that I am not involved in this project any more than any other editor, just posting these notes since it is quite a big change, potentially.

Regards, Rich Farmbrough, 20:52, 15 June 2010 (UTC).

Running costs/ revenues

It is a pity to have an article about a company the size of YouTube, and to have so little reliably sourced material about its running costs and revenues. The question posed in this article, Does YouTube actually make any money? has proved almost impossible to answer because of Google's strict secrecy. External estimates of YouTube's running costs are essentially original research that cannot be verified. The news source cited at [1] is very tentative in its wording, so it is not really a reliable source on this issue.--♦IanMacM♦ ^{(talk to me)} 05:54, 26 June 2010 (UTC)

Seeing as you are essentially curating this article, I should point out that there are quite a few other estimations in the article trying to guess these types of things. Gary King (talk) 06:18, 26 June 2010 (UTC)

The issue here was essentially related to the source. The opening sentence says "YouTube may pay less to be online than you do, a new report on internet connectivity suggests." The use of the words "may" and "suggest" makes this far short of a factual statement. The figure of $1 million a day for the bandwidth in 2008 has been widely cited, but it is hard to comment on its accuracy. This could be removed from the article without a great loss. The figure of 24 hours of video uploaded per minute comes from YouTube's fact sheet [2], so this is not an estimate. The figure of YouTube using more bandwidth in 2007 than the Internet in 2000 is reliably sourced, and is an estimate. The main point here is that YouTube's bandwidth requirements are huge. It is hard to put an exact figure on what they are, or what they cost.--♦IanMacM♦ ^{(talk to me)} 06:33, 26 June 2010 (UTC)

Regional variations

Re: this edit. To make life confusing, the YouTube interface offers two forms of regional variation to the user: Content location, with "Choose which country's content (videos and channels) you would like to view. This will not change the language of the site." and language, with "Choose the language in which you want to view YouTube. This will only change the interface, not any text entered by other users." Some of the choices, eg Hungarian, Danish and Finnish appear in the language choices but not the content choices. The table in the article has become slightly confused on this issue, and it should probably be pruned back to the content locations rather than the language versions.--♦IanMacM♦ ^{(talk to me)} 08:30, 1 July 2010 (UTC)

This has been cleaned up to ensure that the content locations are not mixed up with the languages of the interface.--♦IanMacM♦ ^{(talk to me)} 13:54, 1 July 2010 (UTC)

World Cup Easter egg

There is currently a soccer ball button on youtube videos that, when pressed, will cause a vuvuzela sound to play over the top of the video. Is this noteworthy? dR (talk) 12:07, 27 June 2010 (UTC)

Yes, there is a button in the bottom right hand corner of the player which plays a vuvuzela. There is a WP:NOTNEWS/WP:RECENTISM issue here, because it is unlikely to have long term notability. Fun while it lasts, though.--♦IanMacM♦ ^{(talk to me)} 12:20, 27 June 2010 (UTC)

Isn't this similar to the April fools jokes? Could we change that section to "jokes" or "easter eggs" and include this? 86.26.220.216 (talk) 19:39, 5 July 2010 (UTC)

Missing information from the text (Language)

In the 29th of April Youtube added a new language to it's system. But the article didn't mention the Hungarian Language update. I wanted to suggest to fix the article because even without one information it's partly incorrect. Thanks for listening. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 78.92.210.90 (talk) 22:29, 10 July 2010 (UTC)

See the section "Regional variations" above. The table in the article with the national flags refers to the localized channel versions, where different content may be available. Hungarian, Danish and Norwegian are among the languages offered in the interface, but these do not have a local channel.--♦IanMacM♦ ^{(talk to me)} 06:16, 11 July 2010 (UTC)

The article has been expanded to mention the language versions in the "Localization" section. Danish, Finnish, Hungarian and Norwegian do not have a flag in the table, because they are not content channels, only language versions.--♦IanMacM♦ ^{(talk to me)} 07:05, 11 July 2010 (UTC)

Flagging

Apparently, some people have begun filing fake copyright claims on fair use game guide videos (someone claimed to have ownership of someone else's VOICE). The victims promptly (an unfairly) have their accounts suspended by youtube. should we note that youtube doesn't actually check to see whether flagged videos were legitimately flagged? Basically, they block first, ask questions later. Here are my sources: http://bulbanews.bulbagarden.net/wiki/False_copyright_claims_suspend_Chuggaaconroy,_others_from_YouTube http://www.zeldauniverse.net/gamingnintendo-news/chuggaaconroy-others-suspended-from-youtube-by-false-copyright-claims/ --Chaos of Air, ONLINE (talk) 17:25, 20 July 2010 (UTC)

This is covered in more depth in Criticism of YouTube. There have been complaints about frivolous or bullying DMCA takedown notices in the past, but at some point the complainant would have to provide hard evidence of ownership of the video. Anyone who has a video taken down for copyright reasons can appeal against the decision.--♦IanMacM♦ ^{(talk to me)} 17:34, 20 July 2010 (UTC)

UK Launch date

Please can someone correct the UK launch date of 19th July 2007 as I myself have been a registered user since before that date (2006). It appears that somebody has erroneously specified the France launch date, or so it would seem from the reference hyperlink. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 94.8.95.74 (talk) 21:54, 9 August 2010 (UTC)

The information in the article seems to be correct. YouTube was launched in 2005, and people could sign up for accounts, but the first round of regional versions was launched in June 2007, which included the UK, France and several other countries.[3] The main purpose of the local versions is to offer local content specific to the country involved.--♦IanMacM♦ ^{(talk to me)} 06:26, 10 August 2010 (UTC)

Time limit removal experimentation

I believe that YouTube is currently cherry-picking YouTube users who are in good community guidelines and copyright standing to try uploading videos longer than 10 minutes since February 2010. However, I don't know much else about it. mechamind90 19:32, 20 July 2010 (UTC)

Despite repeated requests from some users, YouTube has stuck with the 10 minute limit for ordinary accounts since March 2006.[4] Without sourcing, it is hard to say anything about the suggestion above in the article. Only partner accounts (or the rare and obsolete director's accounts) can upload videos longer than 10 minutes.--♦IanMacM♦ ^{(talk to me)} 19:49, 20 July 2010 (UTC)

http://youtube-global.blogspot.com/2010/07/upload-limit-increases-to-15-minutes.html Mikus (talk) 09:52, 12 August 2010 (UTC)

Interlacing

What does YouTube do with interlaced sources? Mind you, I'm in PAL country here, and if I upload a 25i 720x576 file, what I get is a 25p 480p with no interlacing artefacts from re-scaling. Now, this might not be much of an issue, but the apparent deinterlacing process seems to generate some issues particularly with NTSC. For one, but that's just a vague guess, it seems that far more NTSC videos on YouTube exhibit blurred fields, while on the other hand, all the NTSC videos I've downloaded from YouTube are 30fps, not 29.97fps. The difference is crucial even if no blurred fields are visible, as it can cause issues with encoding to an NTSC MPEG-1 or MPEG-2 for a DVD as those versions of MPEG don't support 30fps sharp, only 29.97fps, so many encoders will just plain refuse to encode these files (MPlayer's Mencoder does for me, for instance, telling me that 30fps is not supported by the official MPEG specs). Plus, there are some people (that I don't belong to myself) that cry after the increased temporal resolution you lose by getting rid of each second field by whatever means. --79.193.23.200 (talk) 20:11, 20 July 2010 (UTC)

First, there is no NTSC and PAL anymore as these are analog standards. 60Hz digital video can be shot, loaded and displayed as either 30.00fps or 29.97fps. I haven't tried uploading 25i, but 30i videos are definitely deinterlaced with blending fields, resulting in blurring, ghosting and combing. I deinterlace my videos myself with "single field" method. I don't think that YT is more intelligent when it comes to 25i, or that 25i is easier to deinterlace than 30i. I might do some experimenting, but what is the point? I will be blamed in OR. Mikus (talk) 00:18, 13 August 2010 (UTC)

Table

It is difficult to squeeze all of the resolutions into the table and guarantee that it is up to date. The bit rates were removed because they were qualified with a note saying that they were only estimates, which makes them at best a piece of WP:OR. The aspect ratio part of the table could do with some clarification, but it is complicated when some of the formats are capable of playing at 4:3 and 16:9.--♦IanMacM♦ ^{(talk to me)} 07:47, 12 August 2010 (UTC)

I put bitrates back. It is important piece of info, please do not delete. If you like, I can search for more links. Yes, my original modification included some OR because I have downloaded quite a few of YT videos in different resolutions. But I've heard about 2Mbps for 720p and 3.5Mbps for 1080p long before I started using MediaInfo myself. Mikus (talk) 09:54, 12 August 2010 (UTC)

The bit rates are important, but the problem is running into original research. It is not ideal to have to qualify the bit rates by saying that they are based on OR and are only approximate estimates, which reduces their value as a reliable source. As you point out, it is hard to pin down the exact bit rate of YouTube videos with MediaInfo, because it does tend to vary according to the content of the video. People have carried out their own experiments like this in the past, but they have a strong element of OR which is against Wikipedia guidelines.--♦IanMacM♦ ^{(talk to me)} 10:32, 12 August 2010 (UTC)

Nothing can be done about knowing exact rates because of variable coding that depends on content. But knowing average rates is possible and is valuable. There is a difference between (1) 1 Mbit/s or below, (2) 2 Mbit/s and (3) 3 Mbit/s or above. There are quite specific ranges of bitrates that are used for different types of content. Anyway, I provided some links for you not to pin OR on me. Mikus (talk) 16:11, 12 August 2010 (UTC)

I changed Aspect Ratios to 4:3 and 16:9, because Max Aspect ratio makes no sense to me. Embedded player sometimes has 4:3 DAR, while players on YT site have 16:9 DAR. Any video with non-standard DAR is fit into either of these players. So you can have video in Cinemascope, but the player will still display it in 16:9 window. In fact, since delivery format uses square pixels, video AR does not really matter. You can make video with 20:1 AR, but it still will be played in one of the standard windows (4:3 or 16:9) with either pillarboxing or letterboxing. YT does not restrict videos to a specific AR, it just pads it with black bars to fill the player window. Video AR can be any you like. Mikus (talk) 21:30, 12 August 2010 (UTC)

Here is another thing regarding max resolution -- this is a multiple of two numbers, how do you calculate maximum of it? Just multiply one by another? This does not make sense. YT works differently. It has two player sizes: 16:9 on their site, and embedded 4:3 (I hope they change it to 16:9 as well). Anyway, YT fits video into one of these players, preserving original video aspect ratio. This means, that when widescreen video is played in 4:3 player it will be letterboxed, when 4:3 video is played in widescreen player it will be pillarboxed. For each quality mode there are limits how wide and tall a video can be in pixels. A particularly visible case is fmt=5 - you can have 400x226 for 16:9 video, or 320x240 for 4:3 video. The table used to specify 400x226 as max aspect ratio. Now, say you have a video in wider format than 16:9 like cinemascope. Check this one: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A3u7qhv2epE. You can see it is letterboxed, the player still has 16:9 AR and preserves video's original AR. In 720p the player reports 1280x546, in 480p it reports 854x364, in 360p it reports 640x272, etc. The original player was 320x240 with 4:3 AR, and this is it. If you uploaded video that was not 4:3, YT would stretch or squish it to fit 320x240 frame, so it looked ugly. You had to do hard letterboxing, meaning that if you had widescreen video, you would export it as 4:3, scaling it down and adding black bands on top and bottom, or cutting off the sides. If you look at some older videos like this one http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I2C7W3AFVrQ you can see that it is fully boxed, because it was originally shot in widescreen and uploaded for 4:3 frame with "hard" letterboxing. I hope this makes sense. Mikus (talk) 01:35, 13 August 2010 (UTC)

Resolution example

I have issues with the image used to represent YT resolution. First, I don't appreciate the subject. Second, the image has technical issues. It is a widescreen video. but low-res variants are labeled as 320x240 and 480x360, which means 4:3 DAR, not 16:9. I am fully aware of video formats with non-square pixels, but YouTube does not use non-square pixels in its delivery formats, it uses square pixels. One can easily find this out by downloading widescreen YT videos and running MediaInfo or another analyzer on them. So, the standard def images must be at least re-labeled as 426x240 (or is it 400x225?) and 640x360. This is my third gripe, because I cannot verify actual resolution of the source video, because the image does not refer to it, it refers to the whole White House channel.

All in all, I would like to replace this image with something more neutral. NASA images usually work great, and they are free to use. Or I can shoot something myself in 1080p with my own camcorder. I would also align frame grabs horizontally to avoid protruding the image into consecutive sections. Mikus (talk) 18:46, 12 August 2010 (UTC)

This image was done by user Old Guard on Commons in March 2009. Although it is broadly accurate, in the last twelve months it has become hard to keep up with all the 4:3 and 16:9 formats used on YouTube. Strictly speaking, the image is repeating what is already in the table. If the image was dropped altogether, it would not be a great loss, because it would be too complicated to try and summarize all the current formats in a single image.--♦IanMacM♦ ^{(talk to me)} 18:57, 12 August 2010 (UTC)

Fine, then I am going to remove that image for now. I will come up with something different... I hope it will be better and less... um... political. Mikus (talk) 21:11, 12 August 2010 (UTC)

It was not intended to be political. It was chosen because the White House channel had public domain videos, and was one of the few channels with 720p videos at the time.--♦IanMacM♦ ^{(talk to me)} 07:04, 13 August 2010 (UTC)

The image YouTube-resolution-comparison.jpg is too big and not really helpful to an average reader. My own preference would be to avoid an image of this kind altogether, as it has become too complicated to explain all of the formats on YouTube with a single image. Readers should be told that there are several different quality levels on YouTube, but YouTube videos are usually watched at 360p, 480p, or 720p. The article should avoid complicated data that makes it hard to see the wood from the trees.--♦IanMacM♦ ^{(talk to me)} 10:05, 13 August 2010 (UTC)

Monetizing content

Please note that per WP:NOTHOWTO, Wikipedia articles should not go into excessive detail about how to do something. YouTube is a large subject area, and anything detailed should be left to an external link. The article should be within readable length and interest for an average reader.--♦IanMacM♦ ^{(talk to me)} 18:49, 13 August 2010 (UTC)

It is not about how to do something, it is about options available for content owners as well as about YouTube's own ways of profiteering on user's videos. I will remove stuff about product placement and such if you want, but I will keep other things in. Here, this is an image I am going to use in the section about Partnership program. This is taken from my own video, but I edited video name out because I don't want to advertise myself.

I am not going to write an essay on how to monetize. I want to list the options and discuss the financial side of YouTube. This is different from posting a link to YouTube guidelines. Please, reconsider. Mikus (talk) 19:35, 13 August 2010 (UTC)

Lists are rarely good Wikipedia writing style, it is best to stick to readable prose. There is scope for discussing how YouTube makes money from showing videos, but a brief paragraph with links giving more details should be enough.--♦IanMacM♦ ^{(talk to me)} 19:44, 13 August 2010 (UTC)

Deinterlacing

Web video is always progressively scanned, so if someone uploads an interlaced video to YouTube, it will automatically be deinterlaced prior to streaming. Because of the way deinterlacing works, this may cause some loss of picture quality. This is beyond YouTube's control, and YouTube does advise uploading deinterlaced videos where possible. On the question of sourcing, the sources here and here cannot be used as reliable sources, because they are from forums, which are self-published. Anyone can say whatever they like in a forum and there is no peer review, so they are unsuitable as sources in Wikipedia articles. The question of how to deinterlace a video is also specialized and beyond the scope of this article. By wikilinking the terms Deinterlacing and Progressive scan, it is possible for the reader to click on these links and find out more about the subject.--♦IanMacM♦ ^{(talk to me)} 07:47, 15 August 2010 (UTC)

Great, so let us just say that, instead of that short an uninformative sentence that you've left. Mikus (talk)

There are WP:TOPIC issues here. Deinterlacing is not a major issue on YouTube, and the average reader might not be very interested in the details. The reason why the issue is worth mentioning is because Flash Video is almost invariably progressive. In the table, "360p" means that the video has 360 lines and is progressively scanned. It is not really YouTube's fault that picture quality can be lost during deinterlacing , and YouTube does suggest deinterlacing the picture yourself prior to uploading if this is an issue. I have given the wording in the article a slight change to reflect this.--♦IanMacM♦ ^{(talk to me)} 07:29, 16 August 2010 (UTC)

In fact, deinterlacing IS a major issue on YouTube, I already suggested you to search forums for "jaggies" or "strange lines" or any other terms users invent when they first see badly deinterlaced video. It is a real problem, and I see badly deinterlaced videos all the time. Here is an example uploaded by the NASA: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ONvJ0xXT2xY This is not a "side issue" as it is said in WP:TOPIC, it is directly related to quality of streamed videos. It IS partly YouTube's fault that it cannot deinterlace correctly, because after all all consumer TV's can do this reasonably well. Until recently, most consumer camcorders were interlaced only, and if YouTube wants to support ordinary users, it has to have robust deinterlacing. Obviously, little can be done if an uploader deinterlaced incorrectly himself. Mikus (talk) 13:47, 16 August 2010 (UTC)

It is not a great secret that deinterlacing can produce "jaggies". Here is an example of the BBC's coverage of Wimbledon in 1080i producing obvious problems with jaggies. In May 2006 both the BBC and Sky in the UK decided to use 1080i for their HD broadcasts.[5] Adobe recommends converting video to a deinterlaced format before conversion to Flash Video eg here (Interlaced video should be deinterlaced before encoding.).--♦IanMacM♦ ^{(talk to me)} 14:14, 16 August 2010 (UTC)

It is not a great secret for those who know about this. Interlaced video must die, but until it have not, attention should be drawn to its proper conversion into progressive, and to the fact that YouTube streams progressive-scan videos only. I don't think this is a "side issue". The mere fact that the BBC makes the same mistake does not mean that this is a good practice. The CNN stretches its SD videos to fill 16:9 player on its website, is it a good practice too? Until they -- all of them -- are whipped, they won't care to improve quality of their videos. Also, with YouTube working on Rentals program, it will contain more film-based material, which does not require deinterlacing and is monetizeable. So, there will be less and less incentive for YouTube to care about deinterlacing of videos uploaded by non-partners. Mikus (talk) 15:05, 16 August 2010 (UTC)

Yes, but we have wandered off topic here. The European Broadcasting Union was very clear about preferring progressive to interlaced scanning in the famous report here in January 2005, but this is beyond the scope of the Wikipedia article YouTube. The position of YouTube is clear: Please upload videos in a progressively scanned format, otherwise we will do it for you automatically.[6]--♦IanMacM♦ ^{(talk to me)} 15:16, 16 August 2010 (UTC)

This is a video hosting service! It is about video. Saying outright, that both interlaced and progressive videos are accepted is not offtopic. Saying that automatic deinterlacing may introduce artifacts is not offtopic too. I don't insist on saying WHICH artifacts may be introduced, linking is fine by me. But I want to mention the mere possibility of artifacts, so a reader would be more inclined to click on "Deinterlacing" link.Mikus (talk) 23:17, 16 August 2010 (UTC)

Storage Space

What is the total Hard drive space used by YT or the total space taken up by one full set of the videos online? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 27.33.223.16 (talk) 08:19, 24 August 2010 (UTC)

Interesting question, but the famous Google/YouTube secrecy comes into play here. There are no current figures for how many videos there are on YouTube, the storage space required etc. Back in 2006, Forbes estimated that YouTube was streaming 40 million videos and 200 terabytes per day, but that was a *long* time ago.[7] Now we know that YouTube streams over two billion videos per day [8], but the server stats would require a lot of conjecture.--♦IanMacM♦ ^{(talk to me)} 08:39, 24 August 2010 (UTC)

Deinterlacing - 2

The image has "bad quality" because it is badly deinterlaced. It is relevant, because it is about "video technology" of YouTube. It is not "original research", because there is nothing to research about it, this is just a part of a frame from a video everyone can watch themselves. Bad deinterlacing is a problem, it is a plaque of many YouTube videos. Mikus (talk) 15:07, 27 August 2010 (UTC)

Fine, but please provide reliable sourcing for this addition. As discussed at User_talk:Ianmacm#YouTube, there is a need to provide reliable sourcing for this type of addition.--♦IanMacM♦ ^{(talk to me)} 15:17, 27 August 2010 (UTC)