Saturday, June 06, 2009

Comparison of video types available on YouTube: HQ18, HQ22, HQ35, HQ37, FLV, MP4, HQ, HD, etc.

Update (12-Jul-10): YouTube has recently added support for 4096*3072 ("ultra-high") resolution videos, as reported here.

I frequently download videos from YouTube, using Mozilla Firefox and Video DownloadHelper extension. However, DownloadHelper shows that many YouTube videos have multiple versions available, labeled as HQ18, HQ22, HQ35, HQ37, etc. There does not seem to be any official explanation of these different versions.

So today I set out to
  1. Understand the difference between these video types
  2. Identify the version with the highest quality
I started with this video (Check out E3 Spotlight) (screenshot below), as it was available in all versions that I've seen on YouTube so far.

Click image to view in full size

The findings are below

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Schema Details
[Video Type]: [Container]; [File Size]; [Ratio]; [Relative Quality]
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
  1. Basic / Normal: FLV; 718 KB; 1x; Low
  2. HQ18: MP4; 1.4 MB; 2x; Medium
  3. HQ22: MP4; 4.5 MB; 6.4x; Very high
  4. HQ35: FLV; 2.7 MB; 3.9x; High
  5. HQ37: Container?; Size?; Factor?; Super
What it shows: HQ22 (and now HQ37 - an even higher-quality video) has the highest quality on YT, if file-size is used as an indicator of video-quality. Additionally, for HQxy, a higher value of xy doesn’t necessarily mean an increase in video-quality over a lower xy value.

Verification of the above findings: The above findings have been found to hold true for all 5 of the following videos (except for HQ37 - which is known to have higher-quality than HQ22, but this has not been verified yet)
  1. Windows Gaming at E3
  2. Gaming for Everyone
  3. Introducing Google Squared
  4. Google Health - Product Overview
  5. Nokia Booklet 3G first video
Result of My Memory Test

17 comments:

  1. Great, pretty useful info.

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  2. thank you , i was looking for that info

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  3. thank u for the info! :)

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  4. It's about different video formats. Each type, in turn, compresses the file size its way.

    HQ35 = FLV
    HQ18, HQ22 = MP4

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  5. Thank you. You have helped us.

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  6. @Daniel

    I think frame sized aren't fixed... but am not sure...

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  7. Thank you. Saved me half a day of experimenting.

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  8. Rishabh,

    thanks for your work

    Raphael BERNA (France)

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  9. Wow...the higher the number....the higher the quality, ZOMG!

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  10. From VDH preferences

    HQ6 flv 480x270 mono
    HQ18 mp4 480X360 stereo
    HQ35 flv 640x360 mono
    HQ22 mp4 1280x720 stereo
    HQ13 3gp 176x144 mono
    HQ17 3gp 176x144 stereo
    HQ34 flv 320x240 mono
    HQ37 mp4 1920x1080 stereo

    Warezinho

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  11. Hey Anonymous,

    Thanks for contributing data from VDH preferences :)

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  12. Hello Rishbah,

    I asked myself the same question but I remembered that, at that time, I had discovered the following. Hope this help!
    ------------------------
    -Video formats supported by DownloadHelper?

    ---Go to Tools, DownloadHelper. Right-click the DownloadHelper icon and select Preferences.
    ---Select the Capture tab, then the sub-tab YouTube.
    ---The main window shows clearly the list of video formats that are available.
    By selecting a greyed video format, I can enable it and move it up or down. Same for any other video formats.
    What I did is to select and move up the video formats that were of the highest resolution and that had their audio being stereo.

    —I PUT THIS SUMMARY BELOW ON A BOOKMARK SO THAT I CAN READ IT QUICKLY WITHOUT HAVING TO OPEN THIS WORD DOCUMENT:
    HQ37, MP4, 1920x1089, stereo || HQ22, MP4, 1280x720, stereo || HQ18, MP4, 480x360, stereo || HQ35, FLV, 640x360, mono || HQ6, FLV, 480x270, mono || (DownloadHelper video formats I enabled) (Celine Dion - My Heart Will Go On. In HD) [I used a great youtube.com link at the same time!]
    ------------------------
    See also the following.
    ---Go to Tools, DownloadHelper. Right-click the DownloadHelper icon and select Preferences.
    ---Select the Capture tab, then the sub-tab Network that should already be selected by default.
    ---Under "File extensions on requests" are listed the following file extensions:
    flv, ram, mpg, mpeg, avi, rm, wmv, mov, asf, mp3, rar, movie, divx, rbs, mp4, mpeg4.

    There seems to be a big number of file extensions supported.
    ------------------------

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  13. @Anonymous

    Thank you for the information :)

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  14. thx soooo much

    I have ever wanted to know this...^^

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