Serious 4K 60fps Frame Dropouts on Recent YouTube Uploads

[Ken Ramsley]

Anyone else seeing this? ...

I edit Evo footage with Cyberlink Power Director 16, and I typically upload 4k 60fps 100 Mb/s to YouTube. For over a year, this has produced results with beautiful YouTube playback.

Suddenly my latest files are unwatchable... 'nerd' mode in YouTube reports a host a fame drops (10-15%).

Nothing on my end has changed in over a year -- same Evo drone, same editing computer, same editing software and version, same production settings.

Older uploads still play as clean as a whistle on YouTube -- zero frame drops. It's the new uploads that are bad.

Exploring the problem -- I tried uploading all sorts of bitrates 30-100 MBs -- and playing at 4K 60fps, I'm still seeing 10-15% frame dropouts in every case.

I even had a friend upload and play some of my test files -- same thing for him.

Best wild guess for now -- Cyberlink (or Autel?) quietly updated something, and YouTube can't handle it.

[EDIT Sept 6, 2019]
To close the mystery (not solve it) -- YouTube is suddenly playing all of my recent 4K-60fps videos without frame drops. I changed *nothing* in my computer, and I may never know why I was having a problem -- or why it went away. Samples linked in posts above are cluttering my YouTube channel -- and have been deleted (no need for test files anymore).

 

[Ansia]

Have you tried creating a video and keeping it in your HDD then later upload it to youtube for comparison? To me it seems Youtube changed the algorithm in what you can upload and run that video, but leave the old grandfathered videos alone?

 

[Ken Ramsley]

Have you tried creating a video and keeping it in your HDD then later upload it to youtube for comparison? To me it seems Youtube changed the algorithm in what you can upload and run that video, but leave the old grandfathered videos alone?

Thanks for responding. To answer your question... My workflow saves to disk, then I upload - so, yes.

If YouTube is the problem, everyone should be seeing the same problem (which I have noticed). That's why I suspect Power Director.

The weird part is how previous uploads are fine. This suggests that playback on my PC is not the problem.

My next test will upload video straight out of the drone with no processing. That should narrow this down a bit more.

 

[Ken Ramsley]

To make a long story short... In addition to 4K-60fps videos processed in Power Director across wide a range of bitrates (earlier post), I uploaded unprocessed 4K-60fps video straight from Evo and GoPro microSD cards. In every case, I see the same 10-15% frame dropout rate on YouTube.

Plainly, YouTube is the common denominator -- or more specifically -- my YouTube account. Random 4K-60fps videos uploaded by other people play just fine (zero dropped frames).

FYI - my 4K-30fps and 2.7-60fps videos play without dropouts on YouTube. I don't monitize my videos, so maybe YouTube is sending me a subtle message?

 

[Rubik3x]

Ken, I'm not getting the same issues in YT that you see. At 4K/60, 100 mbps I got only 10 drops in 5000 frames. At 4K/60, 30 mbps I got 10 drops in 8000 frames. I did not notice any of the drops visually. Sometimes I need to reload the video to get sufficiently high connection bit rate to see video without buffering. I need over 40,000 kbps connection speed for smooth viewing of 4K/60. This may require several reloads (using the little loopy symbol in the upper left corner of YT screen). I don't know why the connection speed increases with repeated reloads ?.

 

[Ken Ramsley]

Ken, I'm not getting the same issues in YT that you see. At 4K/60, 100 mbps I got only 10 drops in 5000 frames. At 4K/60, 30 mbps I got 10 drops in 8000 frames. I did not notice any of the drops visually. Sometimes I need to reload the video to get sufficiently high connection bit rate to see video without buffering. I need over 40,000 kbps connection speed for smooth viewing of 4K/60. This may require several reloads (using the little loopy symbol in the upper left corner of YT screen). I don't know why the connection speed increases with repeated reloads ?.

Thanks for the feedback. Did you view any of the samples I linked above? If you can see any of those clips okay at 4k 60p -- that will suggest a playback problem on my PC, not an upload problem.

 

[Rubik3x]

Thanks for the feedback. Did you view any of the samples I linked above? If you can see any of those clips okay at 4k 60p -- that will suggest a playback problem on my PC, not an upload problem.

Yes. Viewing your samples in 4K/60. Nice shots, BTW.

 

[Ken Ramsley]

Yes. Viewing your samples in 4K/60. Nice shots, BTW.

Thanks! That's *big* clue -- if you can see them okay -- that says my -viewing- connection is the problem. Why these particular videos (and not everything else on YouTube)? Life was never meant to be easy...

 

[Rubik3x]

Thanks! That's *big* clue -- if you can see them okay -- that says my -viewing- connection is the problem. Why these particular videos (and not everything else on YouTube)? Life was never meant to be easy...

That is interesting. I have noticed that not all 4K videos of the same frame rate require the higher connection speed. It's possible that YT has changed their processing. Or there is a difference in the way they handle AVC (H.264), HEVC (H.265) and XAVC-S. Lately, I always use XAVC-S.

 

[DroneHome]

Could it be a difference in browsers or apps? I know Chrome was updated recently and created some problems for several apps and web sites we use at work.

 

[Ken Ramsley]

To close the mystery (not solve it) -- YouTube is suddenly playing all of my recent 4K-60fps videos without frame drops. I changed *nothing* in my computer, and I may never know why I was having a problem -- or why it went away.

Samples linked in posts above are cluttering my YouTube channel -- and will be deleted soon (no need for test files anymore).

 

[Rubik3x]

To close the mystery (not solve it) -- YouTube is suddenly playing all of my recent 4K-60fps videos without frame drops. I changed *nothing* in my computer, and I may never know why I was having a problem -- or why it went away.

Samples linked in posts above are cluttering my YouTube channel -- and will be deleted soon (no need for test files anymore).

Don't you just hate it when a problem goes away without any apparent change? Or, just be thankful your posts play smoothly for you now.