Comments (105)
Margus Meigo Waffa Jan 12, 2018
Really well put information,
So according to here: https://yd.3dyd.com/help/youtube_formats/
the 144p when downloaded 3gp is 24 Bitrate, kbps.
Keep this table updated, on same URL, looks good and neat info! Comes up in search at first on top related to Youtube audio quality search
Susie Ferrari Dec 12, 2017
How can I get this app
Nobir Hossain Jul 14, 2017
Can you give me your php file ?? please reply
Clayton Macleod Apr 19, 2017
Is this broken? https://www.h3xed.com/blogmedia/youtube-info.php
Mauricio Guevara Apr 13, 2017
I have a question, let's say I want yo download audio from a YouTube vdeo in the best posible quality, Audio only streams is a 63 kbps AAC file, while the one contained in the mp4 file is 125kbps AAC. Since this post says that YouTube streams audio and vdeo separately and combines them informacin the fly, does that mean the 64 kbps AAC file is reencoded to 125 kbps?. There is Also the option of 128kbps OGG Vorbis.
riks Razguajevs Nov 24, 2016
Around march 30th 2016 (if I remember the month correctly) Youtube stopped using 192AAC in HD videos? so now opus became the best quality
David Carlstrom Oct 05, 2016
The YouTube Video Info tool is superb, but it gives a error, "An unknown error occurred. Please try again in a few seconds." on some YouTube URLs while it works fine on others. For the ones that fail the error repeats.
Florian Chevallot Sep 23, 2016
For the best audio quality, from a lossless audio file you encode an AVI file set to PCM uncompressed sound, you also set the frame rate at 1/sec (for the sole purpose of audio listening, your video is a still image!) otherwise your file will be huge and very long to process. I use Videopad to do this. Hope this can help...
Fahad Fadhi Aug 23, 2016
Thanks for sharing here is free youtube to mp3 converter you can use this site for youtube video converter with high speed downloading and fast server https://ytformp3.com/
Alexander Ge Aug 12, 2016
Hey, coud you get your video info tool working for livestreams? Would be very nice.
Luke Usherwood Aug 11, 2016
Cool tool! I found some WebM / VP9 videos that come with 4 "audio/webm" streams, which seems to suggest "audio bitrate is not affected by video quality" may not always be true (anymore)? There seem to be 2 audio streams at a similar bitrate (Different codecs? The tool doesn't seem to list them) and then 2 at lower bitrates. I would be interested in how those lower bitrates match up with the video bitrates. Also nice to see Opus in mainstream use. An awesome good-for-everything codec! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a5uQMwRMHcs&index=5&list=PLSbDLF8wQ3oKcstd9ybCSv2lNm_8NTYkI
Kilo Monaghan Jul 30, 2016
You would not want to try to play these YouTube video's over your Hi-Fi sound system because they would sound distorted due to low audio bandwith right? Problem is, due to the Loudness war the audio CD's of these artist sound just as bad as the youtube audio or worst! Would seem to be that CLEAR CD Audio sound is dead. Why pay $29.95 for distorted sound?
Petr evk Apr 17, 2016
Daniel Hill SoundCloud uses 128 kbps mp3 lame 3.99, so I don't get the reason why you prefer it.
Matej Skullsk Apr 02, 2016
So do you wanna say Audio quality in 1080p and 240p is same?
Dennis Laurent Jan 14, 2016
So this means that less popular videos, where video and audio are not separated, might have a higher audio bitrate at 192kbps, while more popular videos only have a maximum audio bitrate of 170kbps? This is at least what I found. Weird youtube policy...
Craig N Carla Fletcher Jan 03, 2016
I'm not exceptionally tech savvy, I made a basic video in Windows Movie Maker MSWMM (still pic, with lyrics superimposed on it) and audio made up of music and vocal imported as a wav file from Cakewalk Home Studio (think Sonar). I converted this to mp4 using Any Video Converter AVC and uploaded this to Youtube YT. Playback from YT loses the vocal component of the audio but not the music on mobile devices iPhone and Android, but plays it on desktops and TV. Where did my vocal go?
Willson Law Dec 13, 2015
IF YOUTUBE UPGRADED THE QUALITY... HOW CAN MUSIC STORES SELL THEIR HIFI SOUNDTRACKS :/
Christian Buntrock Nov 23, 2015
Nick Vogt So by upscaling you just mean "writing wrong bitrate info into file metadata"? Because it doesn't seem to do a transcoding/conversion (at least it looks like to me). => Link gives error :( Thanks!
Nick Vogt Nov 23, 2015
The bitrate shown on that tool is directly from YouTube. If a downloader is giving you a 256kbps option, it is probably just upscaling. The information comes specifically from this URL: http://www.youtube.com/get_video_info?video_id=
Christian Buntrock Nov 23, 2015
This is really strange. It always just shows about ~128k as maximum audio bitrate. But I try several tools (e.g. jaksta) and they offer me 256k downloading with conversion?!
Christian Buntrock Nov 23, 2015
Everyone who lands on this page is... ;)
Christian Buntrock Nov 23, 2015
EXACTLY what I searched!!!!!!!! Will you share the source for that checker tool? Thanks!!!!
Mina William Michael Oct 24, 2015
awesome info!!!! Just what I needed to know :D :D Audiophile eh? ;)
Dylan Marriott Oct 15, 2015
Thanks man!
Nick Vogt Sep 28, 2015
Gio Pietra That video shows as 132 kbps for mp4 audio or 121 kbps for Opus/WebM audio (I guess the Opus bitrate can be lower than 155). The audio bitrates are never exactly 126 kbps, but usually range by a little in either direction.
Gio Pietra Sep 28, 2015
Nick Vogt https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9FXBBdAL7Kk This video seems to be at 256 kbps using your YouTube video info tool. However videos more popular are still at 128 kbps. I can't understand why...
Nick Vogt Sep 28, 2015
Could you give me an example of some videos with 256 kbps audio? Google encodes videos into the WebM format with Opus audio after a video has gained enough popularity. The Opus audio format can provide very good sounding quality and also doesn't have the downside of being patented. As far as MP4 vs Opus at the same bitrate, I'm not sure which sounds bettet, but Opus probably costs Google less in licensing fees.
Gio Pietra Sep 28, 2015
Hi, I don't understand why some videos (the most) are played with an audio bitrate 128 kbps but others are played at 256 kbps. What makes the difference?
Christian Stoehr Sep 25, 2015
So going the route of the MFiT by using a very high grade Sample Rate Conversion which brings the master down to a standard 44.1kHz sample rate, but outputs it in a 32-bit floating file, and then taking that 32-bit floating file, and encode it into Apple's AAC format without any additional dithering wouldn`t make much sense, since Youtube probably applies its own dithering at all times ?
Dennis Ehlers Aug 28, 2015
Nick Vogt ah I see the problem, I accidentaly commented on the wrong article. This was meant to be posted on your youtube-info page ._.
Dennis Ehlers Aug 28, 2015
Nick Vogt Thats logical. I meant why the given bitrates at "youtube-info" are different compared to what they actually are. It says 19 mbit for my 1920x120050fps VP9 videos But thats wrong. That video has only ~10 mbit bitrate. Max you would get on that quality level would be 15 mbit, but 19 mbit is completely wrong. Same with the other given bitrates. It says too high bitrates. Maybe youtube-info reads just the peak bitrate and not average?
Nick Vogt Aug 27, 2015
YouTube compresses the bitrate down so they take up less file size than what was originally uploaded. Their compression is good so that not much audio quality is lost but the file size is reduced.
Dennis Ehlers Aug 27, 2015
This reduces your video quality though, because their VP9 encodes look much better than their h.264 ones. Also this disables you the possibility to watch HFR at 1440 / 4k if available, because they are only available as vp9.
Dennis Ehlers Aug 27, 2015
And why are the bitrates different to the real ones? Any reason for this?
Mahasin Raihan Farras Aug 16, 2015
Thank you very much! Great article!
Papai Pequeno Histrias e Filmes Aug 11, 2015
Just checked here. The 218kbps file is a WebM. So it looks like 165kbps is the maximum for mp4.
Papai Pequeno Histrias e Filmes Aug 11, 2015
Interessante essa ferramenta para testar bitrate dos uploads no youtube
Papai Pequeno Histrias e Filmes Aug 11, 2015
Hello Marcelo, I've got 218kbps on a 3840x1920 video file. Don't know if it's cause I have a youtube partner account or the uploaded file was a huge 110mbps video.
Edward Smith Jul 27, 2015
Great article, thank you. I use Complete YouTube Saver, a Firefox extension to download videos or only the audio track from YT in original quality. It works fine :)
Edward Smith Jul 27, 2015
Muhammed Ali Lakhwaira This AAC 250K according to Complete YouTube Saver Firefox extension.
Matthew Tong Jul 23, 2015
where does it display 160kbps ??? I can't seem to find it...
Marcelo Oberauer Jul 22, 2015
So, in 2015 the max bit quality is 165kbps, even for 2160p?
Pandu E Poluan Jul 21, 2015
Alternatively, download Foobar2000 and install the "ABX Comparator" plugin. Add the two tracks into the Playlist, select them both, then Right Click > Utilities > ABX Tracks. You'll have to download the tracks first, of course.
Diego Humanes Jul 15, 2015
I disable webm in firefox about:config because I prefer aac for the sake of compatibility. x264/aac is a proven standard already and there are free implementations like Cisco/ffdshow, no need for webm reencoding pushed on by Google.
Mirko Rastovi Jul 08, 2015
Nick Vogt You're very welcome. Also, thank you; I learnt a great deal from your post quite some time ago, so I thought it'd only be fair to tell you about this when I stumbled upon it.
Nick Vogt Jul 08, 2015
Thank you. I've been doing some research into this and you're right. I did some testing with ffprobe and several different videos to learn about how YouTube uses MPEG-4 vs WebM. I am going to update the post with these new details in a little bit.
Mirko Rastovi Jul 08, 2015
According to "Stats for nerds" info, YouTube now plays Opus audio 160 kbps (itag 251) where available in HTML5 player and if the browser used supports "MSE & WebM VP9" (https://www.youtube.com/html5). In Firefox 'media.mediasource.webm.enabled' setting needs to be set to true in order for it to work, Chrome and Opera support it by default, it seems. Try https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BPgEgaPk62M edit: I've listened a couple of songs and I'd say there really is an audible difference, especially in the high range.
Jason Julian Jun 24, 2015
For the best sound on YouTube you set your encoder to uncompressed 16 bit PCM audio and upload. Not all video editing software give you this option. It is possible if you upload your video as a .mts file. The audio sounds subjectively cleaner because it suffers only one generation of lossy compression (at YouTube).
Marc Milton-Talbot Jun 20, 2015
Very informative,cheers.
Bryan Jackson May 31, 2015
I always get the 144p resolution when I watch youtube vids, but your chart shows that you don't go below 240p.
Will Cao May 14, 2015
This was incredibly useful. Thanks!
Nick Vogt May 14, 2015
Unfortunately I don't have the script anymore. It was very simple. Just two HTML5 audio elements. JavaScript starts them at the same time and alternates volume between them every couple seconds.
David Jones May 12, 2015
126 kbps might sound like a low bitrate, but the compression YouTube uses is very good. I compared it to a 192 kbps version and had a hard time telling the difference (two audio streams playing in tandem audio> elements with JavaScript flipping between them seamlessly). I would love to compare the audio myself in the studio. Do you have the files and JS that we could try out? Would also be cool to compare with 320 and WAV audio
Peter Haralanov May 04, 2015
Very useful, thank you for all the work on this article! (y)
Josh Grolemund Apr 25, 2015
Hi, if I'm uploading a video for the sole purpose of listening to the audio, what is the best format to upload? Should I dither my 44.1 16 bit master to an mp3 or upload the final master as is? I'm looking for the best audio quality I can get on YouTube. Thanks, Josh
Keshav Kumar Apr 25, 2015
great job brother from an other mother. salute you
Nick Vogt Mar 26, 2015
I hadn't looked at it like that before, but I'm sure you're right.
Don Joe Mar 25, 2015
"My findings are counter to what Google has published in this article, which has this bitrate table" That article is about the recommended parameters of the files to be _uploaded_ to YouTube, it doesn't say anything about what you'll be getting when you play back the videos after upload and processing.
Matthew Winfree Feb 17, 2015
Nick, so I'm curious: you found that ALL audio is transcoded down to approximately 126kbps, but is there also a frequency filter added to what is transcoded? I tried to upload a video today that contained a sample of audio that played a sine wave at 16KHz. No audio was heard. Also, with the knowledge that 126kbps is the cap, should others disregard the cap and continue to render in high quality audio, allowing Google's transcoding machines to resample the audio, or rather from any original content, simply render in 128kbps?
Maneesh Chauhan Jan 21, 2015
Nice !! Kudos for the scientific effort !!
Muhammed Ali Lakhwaira Jan 20, 2015
Hi! I use an application called JDownloader which, amongst other things, shows each separate stream (audio/video) in various bitrates. You can choose whatever bitrate you need on each and the software (using FFMPEG an encoder for video/audio files) merges your selection into one file. I always see an option for 256kbit audio files - these are usually double the size of the 128kbit variant and I'm curious to know: is there a way I can determine the actual audio bitrate of the source file. I feel that the 256kbit option just artificially upscales and encodes the file. Here's a picture from Jdownloader to illustrate what I mean: http://i.imgur.com/R0S7B5w.png
ukasz Zibiski Jan 19, 2015
big thanks for the article
Scott Ramsay Dec 30, 2014
So does this mean everything uploaded now no matter how high the quality video selected, will have the same low 126-128 bitrate? Will existing videos keep their higher bitrates? Because so far, I still hear the better quality when getting to 720 and 1080p.
Dhananjay Kulkarni Dec 23, 2014
Fantastic post! Thanks a lot for the information!
Ciprian Ionu Dec 19, 2014
This is awesome work! I wondered if there were any differences in audio bit rate related to video quality. Thank you!
Kavin Chinnasamy Dec 06, 2014
Thanks man
nder Bakrta Dec 05, 2014
You deserve a medal for this post.
Andrew Posfai Dec 03, 2014
Great article, this saved me a lot of time and effort!
David Nicholas Nov 16, 2014
Hello! How did you arrive at the quality of 192 kbps? I found this google support page which mentions bitrate qualities up to 384 kbps: https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/1722171?hl=en Cheers.
Kerry Mazhindu-Page Oct 26, 2014
I suspected something had changed, at first I thought it was just my pc.
Kev More Aug 31, 2014
Thanks for this info. I've noticed that some youtube to mp3 converter sites are providing downloads at higher rates than 192kbps (different sites providing different rates for the same file, strangely). Are you saying that 192kbps is the maximum available from youtube files? Could it be that the converters are extracting higher quality audio from the original upload, or is something else going on?
Tom Berthold Jun 12, 2014
Exactly provides the answers my questions. Thanks for the detailed info!
Vassilis Papadimitriou Feb 25, 2014
Great article, best one I've found on the 'net, thanx a lot! ---QUESTION: what about the audio quality of the new resolutions? ---1440p? ---2160p? ...I also found this..: https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/1722171?hl=en Has youtube up-dated it's sound quality..?!
Thaveesha Cruz Oct 11, 2013
I wanna know if I download music from YouTube and convert it into 192b mp3. Will it be bad quality to play in gigs in occasions??
Jerec TheSith May 30, 2013
This article is outdated. http://support.google.com/youtube/bin/answer.py?answer=57407&topic=2888648&ctx=topic
Daniel Hill Apr 24, 2013
Why did they add "Original Quality" when barely anyone has the bandwidth or monitor size to benefit, perhaps the first thing to do would be increase the bitrate, the "720p" is pretty poor quality for 720p, but I guess you need the users to upload video in a comparatively higher quality, which is the main reason why uploading a 128mp3 sounds better than half of YouTube's "HD" stuff, Transcoding is killing the quality. With that being said, It would be nice if they also had a 50/60hz options, I watch a lot of esports and the higher motion helps, but only Twitch supports 60hz.
Tal Jerome Apr 10, 2013
Nice article, thanks.
Taylor Orr Mar 28, 2013
hanks for posing this. Most youtubers don't understand that uploading a song to youtube lowers the sound quality.
Heinz Dieter Becker Mar 11, 2013
what about mp3 320kbps? does it improve the video quality?
Aldrin Rimong Mar 07, 2013
This is great cause nowadays I'm streaming 1080p instead of the normal 720p . better audio quality means better SRS surround quality
Gaspar Machado Feb 23, 2013
Nice post! Something I don't understand tho is, that if you listen to this http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gqWxd0L4Gs4 , there's a huge difference between 360p and 480p and in this post you say that the compression in 360p and 480p for audio is the same, which doesn't make sense at all. Any idea?
Sarawuth Mingkhwan Feb 18, 2013
Excellent article. Thank you.
Ariel Demian Oct 31, 2012
Thanks man! Clear and simple, just what I wanted to know.
Jakub Celniak Oct 13, 2012
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=g-upl&hl=en&v=BDJGymw4ulc&=&gl=US
Ross Bailey Oct 05, 2012
Thank you so much you put it so clearly appreciate it.
Schtals Kristaps Sep 27, 2012
I made 640x360px video 30fps, 192kbps ACC 44kHz video and have only 360p vailable. Is it because of the movie dimensions?
Joo Graa Sep 25, 2012
This is an impressive article. Just answer this one question, how can it be that there is a noticeable audio improvement from 360p to 480p? From your tables there shouldn't be. But there is, and it's a lot (not on laptop speakers, but on phones or reasonable speakers). Thanks in advance.
caballo Sep 15, 2012
ASTRO LIMA .- Lo importante es la velocidad de un video a 240p es mas veloz en cargar que un mp4 algunos videos de asiaticos estan en 240p pero parecen de 480p osea mas nitidos sera que le ponen mas bitrate quizas pero si flash macromedia antes cuando se actualizaba los videos iban a mas velocidad quiere decir que flash trabaja en actualizaciones mas para trabajar con videos flv en vez que con otros formatos es mi parecer pero me apoyo en las comprobaciones hechas por mi que ver videos youtube a 240p en flv corre mas que en mp4 para saber que tipo de video estas viendo pongo
Anonymous Sep 08, 2012
high resolution is better but internet
Telmo Pinho Aug 26, 2012
Excellent article! Gongratulations.
Fareed Marco Hassan Jul 28, 2012
is this still apply?
Rolf Dergham Jul 28, 2012
Thanks
Lukas Vokrinek Jul 25, 2012
Great article too bad its not 256kbps, of course 320 would be awesome. but lets get somewhere first... its time for 192 already...
Cesar Nakashima Wong May 26, 2012
really thanks a lot, mind cleared ;))
Anonymous May 07, 2012
Awesome, thanks for the info! But what's with the lack of non-facebook comments?
Nahum Bolt May 01, 2012
Great article, very informative :)
Vaggos Val Apr 14, 2012
awesome info...
Andy Silcock Mar 22, 2012
Interesting Stuff, cheers!
Redouane Sardi Jan 25, 2012
i need how to get Full Screen with 360p
Rtour Supanack Jan 11, 2012
helpfull article, muchos gracias to the author :)
Jordan McFadden Dec 31, 2011
ima derp
Oliver Skrzynski Dec 15, 2011
It's still lagging behind. It should be 320kbps for 720p and 1080p
Forrest Allison Dec 11, 2011
What an excellent article. Thank you so much for sharing this useful information!
Elsa Rose Dec 08, 2011
Time for my input: Download MediaInfo! (version 0.7.51, Graphical User Interface with installer, for Windows, 32 bits, 2 MB) Pazera Free Audio Extractor Release date: 12.09.2010 Language: English, Polish License: freeware System: NT/98/Me/2000/XP/2003/Vista/Win7 File size: 3.6 MB It's evident, i'm taking a smaller HP recommended file. No offense Nick, I love you just the same.
Elsa Rose Dec 08, 2011
Thanks for "Pazera Free Audio Extractor" can't wait to try it. And wow amazing man, wiki is like a robot, but your like human, I'm glad you are a "nitty-gritty" guy. Nick is officially a crazy man. THIS IS A COMPLIMENT. I'm reading the comments and found HP is another brilliant! I'm going to try "http://mediainfo.sourceforge.net/en" now.. Bless you HP for "the flv is 128 kbps" Nick is a great person. Just and subtle. You may reach me at fan.focus[at]gmail[dot]com
