Why You Probably Should Not Use YouTube to Publish Your Videos
Problem
We love Youtube, but three years ago, we faced a problem: YouTube's compression algorithms are too aggressive. The difference between the mp4 files and videos uploaded to YouTube was huge: pixelation in gradients and blurred details. For anyone who saw the original footage, the equivalent YouTube video looks corrupted entirely. I'm talking about standard 1080p footage at 30 or 60 frames per second.
We love Youtube, but three years ago, we faced a problem: YouTube's compression algorithms are too aggressive. The difference between the mp4 files and videos uploaded to YouTube was huge: pixelation in gradients and blurred details. For anyone who saw the original footage, the equivalent YouTube video looks corrupted entirely. I'm talking about standard 1080p footage at 30 or 60 frames per second.
No option?
After reading help-articles and forums, we came to the conclusion: YouTube has no options to increase the bit rate. Bit rate is a term that describes basically how many bits are processed or transmitted in every second of your video. The higher the number of bits, the better the video quality. This rule works for every kind of encoding (compression) algorithm. From our experience, you will get a good quality of 1080p video when your bit rate is higher than 16 Megabits per second (Mbps). There is also such an option as a variable bit rate (VBR). Google it if you need to dive deeper.
After reading help-articles and forums, we came to the conclusion: YouTube has no options to increase the bit rate. Bit rate is a term that describes basically how many bits are processed or transmitted in every second of your video. The higher the number of bits, the better the video quality. This rule works for every kind of encoding (compression) algorithm. From our experience, you will get a good quality of 1080p video when your bit rate is higher than 16 Megabits per second (Mbps). There is also such an option as a variable bit rate (VBR). Google it if you need to dive deeper.
Alternatives?
We tried alternative video-hosting services like Vimeo, Wistia, etc. But no platform offered a bit rate higher than 8 Mbps. That's why we decided to try to send video files directly to our clients. But there was a catch. The basic option to send a file is using cloud storage like Google Drive or Dropbox. But all of them allow viewing the uploaded video without the need to download. How do you think the cloud storage will do with video viewed online? Exactly, it creates a compressed low-quality copy of it. Despite what we asked, nobody tried to download the file. They just watched the video in the lowest quality online. We tried to archive the video in a ZIP file and upload it. It helped, but no one was happy that they needed to download the ZIP file using a laptop and unpack it. People want to watch videos on their phones.
We tried alternative video-hosting services like Vimeo, Wistia, etc. But no platform offered a bit rate higher than 8 Mbps. That's why we decided to try to send video files directly to our clients. But there was a catch. The basic option to send a file is using cloud storage like Google Drive or Dropbox. But all of them allow viewing the uploaded video without the need to download. How do you think the cloud storage will do with video viewed online? Exactly, it creates a compressed low-quality copy of it. Despite what we asked, nobody tried to download the file. They just watched the video in the lowest quality online. We tried to archive the video in a ZIP file and upload it. It helped, but no one was happy that they needed to download the ZIP file using a laptop and unpack it. People want to watch videos on their phones.
Your own... personal...
Server
Server
We rented a virtual private server (VPS $10/month) and uploaded our videos as files. Now we could give just a link to the video, and our client could immediately watch it online with source quality.
But this was not the end of this story.
Our server was located in the US. Some of our clients are in Europe and the UAE. The download speeds were not so good for them. After research and tests, we decided to go with a special content delivery network (CDN) for video content. It's a group of servers that are located in different countries. Copies of our videos are stored on each of them. The speed of downloading has increased.
But this was not the end of this story.
Our server was located in the US. Some of our clients are in Europe and the UAE. The download speeds were not so good for them. After research and tests, we decided to go with a special content delivery network (CDN) for video content. It's a group of servers that are located in different countries. Copies of our videos are stored on each of them. The speed of downloading has increased.
Is this a good solution?
Only if the quality of the video is critical for you and your business. Please, pay attention: even by using CDN, your clients will need at least a good 4G connection to watch videos without delays. But this is the price for good quality. You can compare it for yourself. One video is stored on our CDN, and the other was uploaded to YouTube:
Only if the quality of the video is critical for you and your business. Please, pay attention: even by using CDN, your clients will need at least a good 4G connection to watch videos without delays. But this is the price for good quality. You can compare it for yourself. One video is stored on our CDN, and the other was uploaded to YouTube:
Video placed on our CDN:
YouTube:
Our clients (architects and designers) choose our CDN, because we store all of the videos we made for them on our CDN for free and help to integrate videos to their websites.
JUNE, 20 / 2020
Text author: Dmitry Kudrin
