YouTube in 4K - Safari might be lying to you

[DB Moto]

Good morning, Thrill Seekers. I hope you're having a killer day, wherever you are in the world.

I thought I'd share a little wisdom with you. I've recently started my channel on YouTube, and even though I've had prior uploads for non-vlogging purposes, this is my first run-in with 4K60p. I found that my video was stuck on 1080p60 after days and days... and days of waiting, both YouTube Studio and the YouTube video listing (publicly) reported that it was limited at that resolution.

It turns out that Safari was lying to me, and I needed to run Chrome to even see what the max available resolution was. YouTube wasn't the issue after all...

Happy vlogging!

 

[Hippo-Drones]

YouTube will favour Chrome as they are all under the Google umbrella. It is a bit sneaky, but I prefer Chrome to ie and don't have any other browsers on my PC's

 

[DB Moto]

YouTube will favour Chrome as they are all under the Google umbrella. It is a bit sneaky, but I prefer Chrome to ie and don't have any other browsers on my PC's

True, they will, and it makes sense from a business perspective. I suppose it just seems a little cheeky from a customer's perspective, and doesn't really bode well with me in the way that they don't tell you that your video will show up as an incorrect quality in YouTube Studio. Hmm...

 

[WheelyPerd]

In order to see what video stream you are actuallly watching, right click the video and click "Stats for Nerds", this shows you the resolution thats being streamed as well as the codec used.

Youtube definitely works better with Chrome! 4K through the web is weird and not fully supported by all hardware or browsers. To be more technical, 4K playback is a muthaton of pixels and requires a muthaton of processing power.

 

[DB Moto]

In order to see what video stream you are actuallly watching, right click the video and click "Stats for Nerds", this shows you the resolution thats being streamed as well as the codec used.

Youtube definitely works better with Chrome! 4K through the web is weird and not fully supported by all hardware or browsers. To be more technical, 4K playback is a muthaton of pixels and requires a muthaton of processing power.

Thanks! That's eventually how I discovered that I was definitely watching a dumbed-down version of what I expected. Good suggestion!

People are quite cynical about the VP9 codec, I must say!

 

[Hippo-Drones]

The VP9 codec works well for me so far!

 

[DB Moto]

The VP9 codec works well for me so far!

Just out of curiosity, do you use it for anything other than viewing YouTube? Do you explicitly encode anything with it?

 

[Hippo-Drones]

Just out of curiosity, do you use it for anything other than viewing YouTube? Do you explicitly encode anything with it?

I never use it personally, I just trick YouTube to give it to me for all my uploads!

 

[DB Moto]

I never use it personally, I just trick YouTube to give it to me for all my uploads!

Now that's the trademark of a very cunning individual. I like how you work!

 

[Hippo-Drones]

Now that's the trademark of a very cunning individual. I like how you work!

It is why my videos are all 4k, yet I seldom record higher than 1080. @R-Rated also does similar!

 

[DB Moto]

It is why my videos are all 4k, yet I seldom record higher than 1080. @R-Rated also does similar!

Is that for the purposes of greater popularity on YouTube, or am I missing something here? Is there some advantage to an underlying 1080 (upscaled) being advertised as 4K?

 

[Hippo-Drones]

Is that for the purposes of greater popularity on YouTube, or am I missing something here? Is there some advantage to an underlying 1080 (upscaled) being advertised as 4K?

There is a thread on here about it somewhere, but TLDR GoPro records 1080 at roughly 45,000kbps YouTube only gives 1080 videos 12,000kbps so compressed your video by a factor of 3. If you upload a 4k video to YouTube, you get the vp9 codec which allows up to 60,000kbps iirc so an upscale 1080 video will have no compression on YouTube. Even if it is viewed by the audience at 1080 it will still look a world better than if it was uploaded at 1080.

 

[DB Moto]

Now that's some serious pro tip right there! I presume you're about to start your own tech vlog, then?

 

[R-Rated]

It is why my videos are all 4k, yet I seldom record higher than 1080. @R-Rated also does similar!

Sure do. Even if I did shoot true 4k, YouTube nerfs the bandwith. So using a few editing techniques I get the full bandwith of 1080p60.

 

[R-Rated]

Now that's some serious pro tip right there! I presume you're about to start your own tech vlog, then?

Shhh, we share our trade secrets on motovlogger forums so as not to have to compete with 4k pet videos.

 

[R-Rated]

Now that's some serious pro tip right there! I presume you're about to start your own tech vlog, then?

Here is the presentation I made showing it. I will let my Tea Totaling Time cohost post his.

Guide - Making 1080p60 look like 4K by getting YouTube's bigger bit rate

To followup with Hippo-Drones video crediting me with the theory, I made a video showing a bit more of the process. I made this just for small YouTube creators so I may not be releasing the instructional video public anytime soon. Additionally, I loaded the end result videos to YouTube each on...

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