gt500

I just got done with a test of about 30 different encodes of the same 13 second video (lots of motion running around in a field) using different programs/containers/codecs/etc, and here's what I've learned: YouTube will always reencode your video, no matter what container or codec you use, and no matter what your encoding settings are. Satisfying YouTube's recommendations for encoding settings has no real effect on video quality vs ignoring them completely (Xvid video and AC3 audio in an AVI container = ignoring them completely, as does Theora video and OGG audio in a Matroska/MKV container). YouTube seems to encode with a bitrate of around 4500 Kbps for 1080p video, which is why things with lots of detail look terrible (especially when in motion). You can use filters in your encoder to smooth out the detail to reduce the appearance of the distortion on high-motion scenes, however this destroys the quality of low-motion scenes even more than YouTube normally would. Applying a "sharpen" filter to the video makes it look amazing (especially with DayZ video), however once YouTube is done processing the video it looks considerably worse than it would have without the "sharpen" filter (I didn't play around with changing the sharpen settings, so it may be possible to reduce that effect). You can encode the video in H.264, Xvid, Theora, or VP8 at 60,000 Kbps and the end result will always turn out the same on YouTube regardless of which one you used. If you encode the video in Theora at 30,000 Kbps then it has the same effect as using a filter to smooth out the detail, as the Theora compression causes enough distortion during high-motion scenes that the distortion caused by YouTube's excessive compression is more difficult to see, however low-motion video quality is worse than it would have been had a better codec been used (H.264 or VP8 for example). YouTube does such a bad job of compressing video that it can be difficult to tell the difference between something I encoded in 6,000 Kbps in H.264 from something I encoded in 60,000 Kbps in H.264 once the videos are on YouTube. If I manage to think of anything I left out I'll add it later, but I guess the conclusion of all of this is I'm going to continue doing what I've been doing since I can't seem to come up with anything better.

The quality is exactly the same with the .MP4 container: The container used shouldn't have any bearing on the quality of the video or audio.

There should be no need for conversion, since .MP4 is a container, and you put the same video and audio in it that you do in .MKV (you can just copy the video and audio to a new container without reencoding it). Granted YouTube isn't the brightest thing in the world...

.MP4 is a container, and YouTube doesn't handle it any better than .MKV (trust me, I did numerous tests with the same video and I get the same quality regardless of bitrate or container). I started using .MKV because YouTube handles it better, however it looks like they are no longer having problems with .MP4 video. I'll try one more test with an .MP4 container, a constant framerate, and "Decomb" turned off (I thought that was off already) and see what it looks like. I really expect to see the same results though.

Hmm... I noticed something in my third screenshot after posting. I have Handbrake set for "Variable framerate". A quick Google search found this topic where it is stated that YouTube has issues with this. Will try another test, and see how it turns out.

I've been having issues with video quality on YouTube when I record gameplay from DayZ Standalone. Technically I have it with all games (YouTube just destroys 1080p video quality for some reason), however it is really bad with DayZ Standalone videos. Here's an example: That video was recorded in 1920x1080 using Fraps, transcoded into H.264 video (bitrate of 60,000 Kbps) with AAC audio (bitrate of 192 Kbps) and saved in a .mkv (Matroska) container with a final file size of 1.15GB, then uploaded to YouTube. I did a number of tests, with different bitrates (such as 15,000 Kbps), different containers (MP4 for instance), and even tried capturing with Dxtory to see if videos captured from it worked better. The quality appeared exactly the same in every test video once it was on YouTube, regardless of how good or bad it looked before it was uploaded. I've seen videos from others that don't look terrible like my videos do, so I am wondering if anyone has some suggestions for me. Here's some screenshots showing my encoding options:

Is anyone else having issues with the Steam version and getting stuck on "Retrying Authentication" over and over again? I am in the process of completely reinstalling my server because I thought I had botched the update somehow, but now I'm thinking it may have been an issue with the Steam version of the client files.

I'm using Pwnoz0r's DayZ Private Server Pack, which apparently does not include any sort of script to delete vehicles that have been left outside the normal boundaries of the map. I had asked on OpenDayZ.net about this, but the thread isn't getting any attention, so I figured I'd ask here as well. Pwnoz0r's DayZ Private Server Pack uses a script in the MySQL (technically I think it calls itself InnoDB but everything seems to treat it as MySQL) database called pCleanup to perform certain cleanup functions on startup, and this script is called from pMain which handles spawning of vehicles. Vehicle locations are stored in a format that looks like this: [239,[4896.77,10135.8,0.081]] What I need to be able to do is modify the pCleanup to check the 'Worldspace' column for each vehicle in the database, determine if the vehicle is outside of the map (presumably by checking if the X or Y are negative), and then delete a vehicle where that returns true. I guess the basic syntax would be something like this: DELETE FROM object_data WHERE <vehicle is outside of map> Obviously I have no clue how to write the part where it determines if a vehicle is outside of the map, so if someone could give me a hand with that, then that would be awesome. ;)

Perhaps this has been asked already, but why would an update be pushed out to Steam before it was posted on the homepage and news feed? It's always been difficult to follow what the current version is by just reading this forum, so I think a lot of us rely on the homepage or the news feed to find out what the current version is.