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Apologies for this subject: it is truly hideous and I feel mildly nauseous in writing about it, but I have searched in vain for a solution (see my other post...),,both here and elsewhere, so perhaps somebody may have a strong enough stomach to help...

 

I have just made a video for YouTube. I am happy with it. The audio is a wav file and sounds fine. When I render it in Power Director 15, it becomes an MPEG 4 file and the sound is compressed to AAC. At that point the sound becomes hideous. Distorted, scratchy, horrible. I cannot bear more than a few seconds of it.

 

The program has a terrifying number of options regarding formats, but my understanding is that it must be an MP4 for youtube. And for that, Power Director makes the sound AAC - which I assume is some butchering compression format.... (No alternative offered to that). I tried another format called MKV and it came out sounding just like it should, but everything I have read seems to indicate that this will not be accepted by youtube.

 

Is there some way that I can make an MP4 file have acceptable sound? I am horrified that so much effort seems to go into good pictures while so little is spared for the sound....

 

Thank you.

"Turn your fingers into a dust rag and keep them keys clean!" ;) Bluzeyone
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Agreed. Typically start with a wav in the editing process. 48k is typical for video so if you are recording audio of your performance separate/in addition to your camera (like with. Zoom H4 or something) set it for a 48k wav. YouTube is going to compress your audio in the upload. So the better quality you have to begin with, theoretically the more accurate the YouTube version.

Yamaha CP88, Casio PX-560

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AAC is an Apple-owned encoding format similar to MP3. So it will compress your audio somewhat (YouTube will anyway) but it shouldn't be destroying it that way. There may be some setting where it is lowering the bitrate, or using an overly aggressive data compression setting to encode the audio...

 

But if you don't want to play with all these things (I get paid to do that, you don't :wink:), and you're happy with the way the MKV file turned out, try uploading that to YouTube before anything else. It's not listed as an officially supported format, but I've definitely uploaded MKV files to YouTube before. Unless they've tightened restrictions, I think that format is similar enough to MP4 in the way it's processed that YouTube will take it.

Samuel B. Lupowitz

Musician. Songwriter. Food Enthusiast. Bad Pun Aficionado.

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Just use the original .wav file as part of the video upload to You Tube...

You Tube will automatically re-encode and mangle the audio anyway, so you might as well start with the best quality audio ......and it is one less quality dropping audio conversion to worry about

Yamaha - YC61 - P105 - MOX6 - HC2 -- Neo Vent 2
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There are many formats available to fit in the container MP4, and also in the .mkv container there are a variety of formats for video, audio and more. Youtube will accept .mkv for sure already for years, and you can even upload uncompressed .flac audio files as part of the matroska container format, even up to stereo 96kHz sampling frequency and 24 bit accuracy. You need to instruct the sound and video file "multiplexer" to create a recent mkv with sub-formats YT will accept, and it will with the mp4 format often complain that a certain streaming property would be prefered, but it will upload. The converter you use from .wav to another compressed format (.flac is lossless compressed for example) is probablyt he reason for the sound failure, which sounds like it could be you use a floating point audio format, such that you need to normalize before you encode the sound track for the video file, to prevent distortion. Also, it could be your sound compression factor is set to very low bit rate.

 

T

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I've always just used 32-bit or 24-bit WAV audio. I'm not sure what iMovie converts it to when I export a completed video (or if it even does).

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I've always just used 32-bit or 24-bit WAV audio. I'm not sure what iMovie converts it to when I export a completed video (or if it even does).

 

 

When you export from iMovie it typically creates a .mkv with aac audio - regardless of whether you choose a 720 or 1280 iOS device. I"m not sure about iMovie but Final Cut lets you output a high resolution 'master' file in the .mov container (Apple ProRes 422) keeping the 48k PCM audio (in its original bit depth) from your editing stage. This may be the best point to start from, letting YouTube do what"s going to do from that point - which will be compression of both video and audio into their delivery format.

Yamaha CP88, Casio PX-560

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Below are total list of the options I use when I export ("share") an mp4 from the video editing software I use (VideoStudio).

I had to tweak the options to get it to use "256 Kbps" on the last line, as opposed to a lower setting (such as 128 Kbps or 192 Kbps).

 

MPEG-4 Files

24 bits, 1920 x 1080, 29.97 fps

Frame-based

H.264 High Profile Video: 5000 Kbps, 16:9

48000 Hz, 16 Bit, Stereo

MPEG AAC Audio: 256 Kbps

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Below are total list of the options I use when I export ("share") an mp4 from the video editing software I use (VideoStudio).

I had to tweak the options to get it to use "256 Kbps" on the last line, as opposed to a lower setting (such as 128 Kbps or 192 Kbps).

 

MPEG-4 Files

24 bits, 1920 x 1080, 29.97 fps

Frame-based

H.264 High Profile Video: 5000 Kbps, 16:9

48000 Hz, 16 Bit, Stereo

MPEG AAC Audio: 256 Kbps

 

I'll do the same for you Ann,

 

Video: MP4, 1920 x 1080, 25 fps

Audio: 48000Hz, AAC, Bitrate 384K b/s

 

These are the recommended settings my video editor (Shotcut) uses for YouTube.

 

As quite a few others have said above, YouTube will compress your audio to some degree anyway but I'm always satisfied with the overall result.

 

Also, picking up on Sam's point, it is certainly possible to upload many non-recommended file formats to YouTube, so you might give that a crack too. Sometimes it just means the uploading and processing sequence takes longer.

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Start with as high a quality audio and video as you can then output using the preset for at the streaming service you want to upload to.

 

I have been editing video for 25+ years using Premiere, FCP, and lately Da Vinci Resolve which is free and imo it is better than FCP and Premier, what is not to like it is Pro grade not like the cheapo $50-$100 home editing software like Power Director or Magix.

 

Mpeg1 is an early AV industry standard and MP3 is a part of that standard

 

Mpeg 2 is DVD

 

Mpeg 4 gives us Blu-ray, MP4, Mov, AAF, AAC etc and a good leap in quality

Col

 

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I would render out the highest quality you can from Power Director, and then use Handbrake to make your MP4. Handbrake is free, BTW.

 

Any questions, feel free to PM me.

 

Many thanks Skinny - handbrake looks excellent. :)

"Turn your fingers into a dust rag and keep them keys clean!" ;) Bluzeyone
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AAC is an Apple-owned encoding format similar to MP3. So it will compress your audio somewhat (YouTube will anyway) but it shouldn't be destroying it that way. There may be some setting where it is lowering the bitrate, or using an overly aggressive data compression setting to encode the audio...

 

But if you don't want to play with all these things (I get paid to do that, you don't :wink:), and you're happy with the way the MKV file turned out, try uploading that to YouTube before anything else. It's not listed as an officially supported format, but I've definitely uploaded MKV files to YouTube before. Unless they've tightened restrictions, I think that format is similar enough to MP4 in the way it's processed that YouTube will take it.

 

The annoying thing about Power Director is that it does not give you any freedom to adjust the audio settings. You are stuck with its butchery.

But...... I took your advice and tried uploading the MKV and YouTube did accept it (to my amazement.....I am not used to having any luck in my dealings with technology...). Many thanks for the suggestion! :)

"Turn your fingers into a dust rag and keep them keys clean!" ;) Bluzeyone
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?

Just use the original .wav file as part of the video upload to You Tube...

You Tube will automatically re-encode and mangle the audio anyway, so you might as well start with the best quality audio ......and it is one less quality dropping audio conversion to worry about

 

Hi Rogs. Your suggestion is puzzling me a little. How can you upload the audio separately from the video - surely you need to render them together first in order to make sure they line up correctly, don"t you?

"Turn your fingers into a dust rag and keep them keys clean!" ;) Bluzeyone
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There are many formats available to fit in the container MP4, and also in the .mkv container there are a variety of formats for video, audio and more. Youtube will accept .mkv for sure already for years, and you can even upload uncompressed .flac audio files as part of the matroska container format, even up to stereo 96kHz sampling frequency and 24 bit accuracy. You need to instruct the sound and video file "multiplexer" to create a recent mkv with sub-formats YT will accept, and it will with the mp4 format often complain that a certain streaming property would be prefered, but it will upload. The converter you use from .wav to another compressed format (.flac is lossless compressed for example) is probablyt he reason for the sound failure, which sounds like it could be you use a floating point audio format, such that you need to normalize before you encode the sound track for the video file, to prevent distortion. Also, it could be your sound compression factor is set to very low bit rate.

 

T

Hi Theo. Thanks - that is all very helpful! (That is possibly the first post of yours which I have read and understood.... ;) ) I took care with my file to make it -0.3 db and it sounded good in the MKV format, so I am certain that there is a huge problem with Power Director's rendering to MP4 files. And, as I mentioned to Sam, they do not offer any opportunity to adjust the compression settings.

"Turn your fingers into a dust rag and keep them keys clean!" ;) Bluzeyone
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When you export from iMovie it typically creates a .mkv with aac audio - regardless of whether you choose a 720 or 1280 iOS device. I"m not sure about iMovie but Final Cut lets you output a high resolution 'master' file in the .mov container (Apple ProRes 422) keeping the 48k PCM audio (in its original bit depth) from your editing stage. This may be the best point to start from, letting YouTube do what"s going to do from that point - which will be compression of both video and audio into their delivery format.

 

Sorry for this quick derail but it's kinda related to what you posted. The audio in my imported video clips is 44.1. In FCPX I make sure the project info pane says 44.1K audio. My master file'a audio exported by FCP is 48K. I'm sure there's an explanation â I just don't know what it is, maybe someone here does. ProRes 422 must always be 48K maybe? BTW the audio sounds fine to my ears, I guess there's SRC going on during the export. xKnuckles, "hideous, distorted, scratchy, horrible" means there's something broken â most compressed audio formats can sound decent (unless you're Neal Young I suppose!).

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When you export from iMovie it typically creates a .mkv with aac audio - regardless of whether you choose a 720 or 1280 iOS device. I"m not sure about iMovie but Final Cut lets you output a high resolution 'master' file in the .mov container (Apple ProRes 422) keeping the 48k PCM audio (in its original bit depth) from your editing stage. This may be the best point to start from, letting YouTube do what"s going to do from that point - which will be compression of both video and audio into their delivery format.

 

Sorry for this quick derail but it's kinda related to what you posted. The audio in my imported video clips is 44.1. In FCPX I make sure the project info pane says 44.1K audio. My master file'a audio exported by FCP is 48K. I'm sure there's an explanation â I just don't know what it is, maybe someone here does. ProRes 422 must always be 48K maybe? BTW the audio sounds fine to my ears, I guess there's SRC going on during the export. xKnuckles, "hideous, distorted, scratchy, horrible" means there's something broken â most compressed audio formats can sound decent (unless you're Neal Young I suppose!).

 

It"s because in the audio world 44.1k became standard. However in the video world they adopted 48k as standard. When I shoot video of music I usually run a zoom H4 at 48k Wav along side my phone or camera and swap that audio track for the one captured by my phone/camera. I edit high quality picture and audio - but for delivery to audience on YouTube they compress both. However the audio remains at 48k throughout.

Yamaha CP88, Casio PX-560

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I believe w Power Director 15, the AAC audio quality is a known problem, so much so that CyberLink released a hot fix and posted to the CyberLink community forum here.

 

In addition, I found a YouTube discussing how to properly extract and install the fix:

 

[video:youtube]

 

Full disclosure, I don't use Power Director, and haven't tried this hot fix myself. But perhaps it's a fix that may rectify your problems, as some report it improved things significantly for them.

 

Hope this helps some.

 

Tim

..
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Sorry for this quick derail but it's kinda related to what you posted. The audio in my imported video clips is 44.1. In FCPX I make sure the project info pane says 44.1K audio. My master file'a audio exported by FCP is 48K. I'm sure there's an explanation â I just don't know what it is, maybe someone here does. ProRes 422 must always be 48K maybe? BTW the audio sounds fine to my ears, I guess there's SRC going on during the export. xKnuckles, "hideous, distorted, scratchy, horrible" means there's something broken â most compressed audio formats can sound decent (unless you're Neal Young I suppose!).

 

It"s because in the audio world 44.1k became standard. However in the video world they adopted 48k as standard. When I shoot video of music I usually run a zoom H4 at 48k Wav along side my phone or camera and swap that audio track for the one captured by my phone/camera. I edit high quality picture and audio - but for delivery to audience on YouTube they compress both. However the audio remains at 48k throughout.

 

Interesting. I use my iPhone's stock camera to shoot video, and the audio in those clips is always 44.1 â so Apple doesn't seem to be on board with "in the video world they adopted 48k as standard." I also record my VIs on my computer at 44.1. When I import into FCP, into a project I set at 44.1, the audio from my VIs drifts. The easiest way to fix it is to re-time the video track but it's still a PITA â and with everything (presumably) at 44.1K, I wonder why I see drift in the first place.

 

I think I will try Filmic Pro on the iPhone (where I can set the SR at 48K), use 48K on my Mac's VI tracks, and start my FCP projects at 48K. Just keep everything 48K from start to finish. Hopefully that will eliminate the re-timing step and potentially give me slightly better audio quality as there shouldn't be any sample rate conversion going on (although as I said, my audio always sounded fine). I save a master ProRes version of my projects and use Handbrake to downsize for youtube, Dropbox, etc.

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?
Just use the original .wav file as part of the video upload to You Tube...

You Tube will automatically re-encode and mangle the audio anyway, so you might as well start with the best quality audio ......and it is one less quality dropping audio conversion to worry about

 

Hi Rogs. Your suggestion is puzzling me a little. How can you upload the audio separately from the video - surely you need to render them together first in order to make sure they line up correctly, don"t you?

 

In your first post you said... 'I have just made a video for YouTube. I am happy with it. The audio is a wav file and sounds fine' ..... so I assumed the original audio that is already part of the video is a .wav file?

 

I can't see why you need to 'render' it before you upload to You Tube?... just upload it as it is, in its raw form. That will minimise the loss of quality that you will inevitably get with every format change ..

 

In short, there is then only one audio conversion involved - the one that You Tube does itself - That is the one you can't avoid.

Yamaha - YC61 - P105 - MOX6 - HC2 -- Neo Vent 2
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Start with as high a quality audio and video as you can then output using the preset for at the streaming service you want to upload to.

 

I have been editing video for 25+ years using Premiere, FCP, and lately Da Vinci Resolve which is free and imo it is better than FCP and Premier, what is not to like it is Pro grade not like the cheapo $50-$100 home editing software like Power Director or Magix.

 

Mpeg1 is an early AV industry standard and MP3 is a part of that standard

 

Mpeg 2 is DVD

 

Mpeg 4 gives us Blu-ray, MP4, Mov, AAF, AAC etc and a good leap in quality

Cheers Biggles. I am going to look into Da Vinci resolve as I am pretty fed up with Power Director (Although it is enjoyable to use...)

"Turn your fingers into a dust rag and keep them keys clean!" ;) Bluzeyone
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..... xKnuckles, "hideous, distorted, scratchy, horrible" means there's something broken â most compressed audio formats can sound decent (unless you're Neal Young I suppose!).

 

Ha ha! It certainly seems that way Rob: nobody would want their videos sounding like this. Wish I had known before I bought Power Director (henceforth to be reffered to as Growler Director!... :rawk: ) ..

Stilll....at least the MKV format sounds ok......for now....

"Turn your fingers into a dust rag and keep them keys clean!" ;) Bluzeyone
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When you export from iMovie it typically creates a .mkv with aac audio - regardless of whether you choose a 720 or 1280 iOS device. I"m not sure about iMovie but Final Cut lets you output a high resolution 'master' file in the .mov container (Apple ProRes 422) keeping the 48k PCM audio (in its original bit depth) from your editing stage. This may be the best point to start from, letting YouTube do what"s going to do from that point - which will be compression of both video and audio into their delivery format.

 

Sorry for this quick derail but it's kinda related to what you posted. The audio in my imported video clips is 44.1. In FCPX I make sure the project info pane says 44.1K audio. My master file'a audio exported by FCP is 48K. I'm sure there's an explanation â I just don't know what it is, maybe someone here does. ProRes 422 must always be 48K maybe? BTW the audio sounds fine to my ears, I guess there's SRC going on during the export. xKnuckles, "hideous, distorted, scratchy, horrible" means there's something broken â most compressed audio formats can sound decent (unless you're Neal Young I suppose!).

 

It"s because in the audio world 44.1k became standard. However in the video world they adopted 48k as standard. When I shoot video of music I usually run a zoom H4 at 48k Wav along side my phone or camera and swap that audio track for the one captured by my phone/camera. I edit high quality picture and audio - but for delivery to audience on YouTube they compress both. However the audio remains at 48k throughout.

 

I wonder if maybe this is part of my problem... I recorded at 44,100 (no option to go higher...) Do you think I should have converted it to 48,000 before putting it into power director?

"Turn your fingers into a dust rag and keep them keys clean!" ;) Bluzeyone
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I believe w Power Director 15, the AAC audio quality is a known problem, so much so that CyberLink released a hot fix and posted to the CyberLink community forum here.

 

In addition, I found a YouTube discussing how to properly extract and install the fix:

 

Full disclosure, I don't use Power Director, and haven't tried this hot fix myself. But perhaps it's a fix that may rectify your problems, as some report it improved things significantly for them.

 

Hope this helps some.

 

Tim

 

Tim that was very kind of you to take the trouble to look this up! Thank you so much. :) I did in fact come across it last week after I realised how bad things were sounding (but I only came across it by accident whilst searching elsewhere for related things - the availabilit of that 'fix' is not overly visible on the power director site)... I did the fix following the video carefully but I don't think it has helped very much. Maybe a little - not sure. But I am 100% certain that the problem persists.

"Turn your fingers into a dust rag and keep them keys clean!" ;) Bluzeyone
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?
Just use the original .wav file as part of the video upload to You Tube...

You Tube will automatically re-encode and mangle the audio anyway, so you might as well start with the best quality audio ......and it is one less quality dropping audio conversion to worry about

 

Hi Rogs. Your suggestion is puzzling me a little. How can you upload the audio separately from the video - surely you need to render them together first in order to make sure they line up correctly, don"t you?

 

In your first post you said... 'I have just made a video for YouTube. I am happy with it. The audio is a wav file and sounds fine' ..... so I assumed the original audio that is already part of the video is a .wav file?

 

I can't see why you need to 'render' it before you upload to You Tube?... just upload it as it is, in its raw form. That will minimise the loss of quality that you will inevitably get with every format change ..

 

In short, there is then only one audio conversion involved - the one that You Tube does itself - That is the one you can't avoid.

 

Ah....looks like we both confused each other. Apologies for being unclear. I always record my audio on a separate device if possible, in order to get better quality ....

(I also have invested heavily in shares in irony.... ;) )

"Turn your fingers into a dust rag and keep them keys clean!" ;) Bluzeyone
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I recall PD from a long time ago when editing videos on computers was getting there aside from pro workstations only for forerunners, and from the looks of it it might be worth it to upgrade to a more professional work flow when it concerns overall quality. The are a some free and cheap options (I use free and Open Source Cinelerra, Free (not OS) DaVinci Resolve, Sony-I-forgot-the-name (came free with a handycam) and have worked with for instance Adobe Premiere/Cocoa, etc on windows and Linux, probably it's best to convert as little as possible with a tool you like based on solid video processing software, which for free users of most popular formats probably is ffmpeg (handbrake's based on that for instance) x264 and some optional components like aac for ffmpeg.

 

Depending on how you shoot video and audio, processing might be desirable to prevent long up load times concerning video (4k at 30megabit/s might strain your internet connection) and optimizing for audio (YT can handle 96kHz/24bit but not surround, will downgrade with the various settings for the quality the video player ends up using, doesn't do "normalizing" at all normally (hurray!) and doesn't prepare your signal for any particular DAC or listening situation).

 

Video conversion are seldom improvement (there are some pro methods that make low bit rate much better viewable which includes transcoding), usually make your PC work hard (make sure it doesn't overheat, see if the graphics card can help) and usually cost accuracy, so it usually is to reduce bit rate. Audio conversion can include sample rate but there's not software norrnally available that will let you do that to a desirable level of scientific quality, so not recommended if you don't need it it, unless for a normal studio path like going from 96k to 44.1 for YT. YT wants 44.1 and not DAT reate (48k), and I suppose mostly players on PCs or devices will work best with it, even though it is possible to even get 96k playback under good circumstances. To my knowledge even with high quality (works possibly with explicit "HD" or higher quality) there's no built in flac decoder in the player software, so compression will have been used before you hear audio. It used to be so a lot changed with respect to sound when you'd play back a YT but currently most processing appears to be off by default. Just like "anti-shake" for video has been cancelled in favo(u)r of leaving the (time and compute power intensive) processing to the video producer.

 

T

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....... I always record my audio on a separate device if possible, in order to get better quality ....

 

Yes, me too!...I posted a short You Tube video a while back in response to someone who had recorded a video using the camcorder microphones, and had been disappointed (understandably) with the results.

 

I used free video software (Virtualdub) to replace the audio with a .wav file recording made on a separate recorder, and uploaded the video file with it's new .wav audio track to You Tube

 

(The clip is here:

- only about a minute long - sorry about the keyboard playing! :blush: ) )

 

The audio has thus only been converted once from its .wav original -- by You tube itself

 

It's not that difficult to replace the audio track on a video - It is made a lot simpler if the original video and the separate audio track have a 'clapper' reference at the start .( 'clapper boards' are pretty standard in the film industry , where the audio is nearly always recorded separately).

 

As I say I use the free video app. Vitrtualdub to do it.

Yamaha - YC61 - P105 - MOX6 - HC2 -- Neo Vent 2
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