Topic: SVPtube mp4 DASH and mpc-hc fix suggestion

Hi,

currently, there is a problem with youtube videos in mp4 dash format playing in mpc-hc, because mpc-hc does not recognize its actual video length when starting to buffer. I recently found the following site: http://www.h3xed.com/blogmedia/youtube-info.php. It shows each available format for youtube and a direct link to the file for streaming. Interestingly, when you select the mp4 1080p DASH format and open it in mpc-hc, this error does not occur any more. The video length is correct and it plays fine, although it takes a wee bit longer to open the stream.

I tried comparing the video URLs form that site and from SVPtube (1.2.5a) and see, why the link from the site works and the one from SVPtube did not. My goal was to rewrite the URL in a wsf script to make it compatible with mpc-hc. Unforftunately, I cannot for the life of me find the difference. There seems to be one parameter, 'pl', that has consistently the value pl=22 in URLs from that site and the value pl=36 in URLs from SVPtube. But when I just change that value to pl=22 in an URL form SVPtube, mpc-hc cannot load the file.

Could you implement the same video URL extraction as the site above and offer it as an alternative in SVPtube? That would eliminate that buffering issue, which drives me crazy!

Cheers!

Re: SVPtube mp4 DASH and mpc-hc fix suggestion

Just a quick FYI, this issue doesn't occur with VP9/WebM, so you may want to use that in the meantime.

Re: SVPtube mp4 DASH and mpc-hc fix suggestion

I've no idea how they do this, but their URL still give an incorrect video length - i.e. 13 mins vs 1 h 20 mins.
On the other hand SVPtube's and youtube-sl's URLs show valid MediaInfo in the video properties while their URLs just show "No information available" on the MediaInfo tab.

This's strange...

Seems like the problem is MPC-HC doesn't take enough time to extract all needed info before starting the playback.
And for some reason LAV splitter's "Stream analysis duration" value doesn't affect anything.

Re: SVPtube mp4 DASH and mpc-hc fix suggestion

@Nintendo Maniac 64: Yes, VP9 is an alternative and I usually use it if possible. But not all videos have VP9. As far as I can gather, only popular videos are converted to VP9, although I don't know exactly, how many views a video needs to be considered "popular".

@Chainik: About the length, I haven't tested it with that long videos. All 30 min videos did report the correct length. But I just tried a 1 h 20 min video (with the links from the site above) and the length in mpc-hc was just over an hour. So as you say, it seems to be an issue with how mpc-hc handles mp4 streams. The better your internet connection is, the better mpc-hc can handle large files. But since my internet connection is quite good, I did not notice the problem with 30 min streams. So I guess, even those links don't work correctly in mcp-hc.

It's a pity mpc-hc development team, or more specifically the LAV developer, are not doing anything about the issue (see https://trac.mpc-hc.org/ticket/5498).

Thank you for the info and support.

5 Reply by Nintendo Maniac 64 (edited by Nintendo Maniac 64 08-06-2016 20:33:30)

Re: SVPtube mp4 DASH and mpc-hc fix suggestion

Your link to the MPC-HC bug tracker is borked; here's the correct link:
https://trac.mpc-hc.org/ticket/5498

Also, regarding videos that don't have VP9/WebM encodes, you could always try the non-DASH 720p MP4 format.  Up until a few months ago, said format was actually higher quality (though not higher resolution) than even the 1080p MP4 DASH format, so if the video isn't a recent upload then that would be a good fallback.

Re: SVPtube mp4 DASH and mpc-hc fix suggestion

In my opinion, the 720p videos are blurrier than the 1080p when scaled to full screen on a bigger than 720p monitor. And recently I bought a 2560x1440 screen for which I prefer the videos in that resolution (although those are still quite rare). Also, I enjoy 60 fps videos more than the 30 fps variants and I regularly watch a few channels, that have such content. But these are personal tastes and everyone should find their own sweet spot.

On a more on topic note, I found an alternative that actually streams and plays mp4 dash formats really well: mpv with youtube-dl using the firefox extension Watch with MPV. This has been able to handle anything I have thrown at it until now (although I haven't done extensive testing). The down side is, it's a bit more hassle to set up and you have to configure and learn the keyboard shortcuts for a new media player, that is very minimalistic in design, which I incidentally like!

7 Reply by Nintendo Maniac 64 (edited by Nintendo Maniac 64 08-06-2016 22:57:53)

Re: SVPtube mp4 DASH and mpc-hc fix suggestion

If it's a recent video, the non-DASH 720p will be the same quality as DASH 720p, otherwise it will be quite a bit better.  Here's an example video where the non-DASH 720p is the best quality of the AVC/MP4 formats:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dj8wZoM-w1c
(I've also attached two screenshots that were saved as Q100 4:4:4 chroma JPEG; PNG was too large)
Even if you don't think non-DASH 720p looks better, the fact that it's even that close to 1080p DASH should be enough for it to be a valid alternative.


Regarding 60fps, I find that 60fps videos without VP9/WebM is quite rare, and those that I do find are usually just because the upload is so new that it doesn't even have VP9/WebM versions yet.

Post's attachments

1080p DASH.jpg 1.42 mb, 206 downloads since 2016-06-08 

720p non-DASH upscaled to 1080p via Lanczos3.jpg 1.33 mb, 201 downloads since 2016-06-08 

Re: SVPtube mp4 DASH and mpc-hc fix suggestion

>  I found an alternative that actually streams and plays mp4 dash formats really well: mpv with youtube-dl using the firefox extension Watch with MPV.

SVPtube 2 is even better big_smile

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Re: SVPtube mp4 DASH and mpc-hc fix suggestion

No problem with mp4 video. Use MPC-BE and LAV Splitter Source in external filters.