Hate the days when everything is always on fire.

Apparently with all the changes over there in the last couple of months with changing the way everything looks, they have now decided to tinker with the processing/encoding and uploading aspect of things, thus introducing oddities in videos that I have been uploading since the night of January 11th.

Keep in mind, I have had barely little problem uploading videos during my whole 4 year or so stint on the site, which the last 2 have been mostly in HD via AVCHD format or close to.

In the last week, things have gone to fine to complete bullshit. At first I ended up with one video that was playing in complete slow motion regardless of the resolution setting on their player, which at the time I thought it was a processing or uploading error and their decoder read the time signature wrong on the file. I re-uploaded it and it appeared fine the 2nd time, but it then occurred on another video post upload, only when being played back in HD. It slowly crept to some other videos that I uploaded that same night, as well as a 2nd copy of the video mentioned about it only being in HD, only this time, it was in slow motion in any resolution on the player and the time counter was doubled from what the actual video time was on the original video.
It’s spread itself to others that I uploaded that night, that were previously fine. Everything prior to that night that I have uploaded appears to be fine, but I would not leave that as fact, as I don’t have time to watch my 200+ videos in full, so there is truly no telling. All I know is that I have not changed anything on my end that I have not already been doing for almost 2 years now, and all of the sudden this crap is occurring, due to them screwing around with the encoding / rendering post-upload process.
All in all, right now, I have about 11 videos that are sitting on my account as unlisted, due to this nonsense. 9 of them are a concert for a local band, which 3 of them are playing in slow motion, but the other 6 are completely fine. The other 2 videos are 2 copies of a discussion at a horror convention from last year, one of which plays in slow motion only when HD is selected, and the other has the time counter doubled and plays in slow motion regardless of the resolution…the same file was uploaded twice, with different results as mentioned.

Some people have been stating the same issues as myself on the help forums, which are pretty much worthless to post in, as the actual employees or any real help is few and far between, with no real resolutions or solutions to anything, especially my issue…but this is Google we are talking about. They wanted to buy this site, and they don’t support it in any form other than constantly coding on it, trying to get as much income as they possibly can from the influx of idiots that are partnered with them, turning them in to YouTube stars that no one gives a shit about…blah the ranting.

Anyway, so unless I re-encode said videos, or convert to another format I have no solution unless they fix the problem, which it’s already been a week…I won’t hold my breath. However, this issue only causes problems:

I am currently trying to upload material that is in AVCHD at 1920x1080, and that is what my camera natively shoots. The only modifying that is occurring pre-upload, after the material is dumped to my hard drive, is that I join the files all together as one long video or split them up as I need to, which is completely lossless, and I go in and demux the video, do some minor audio editing to do a matrix from another audio source, and then I remux the streams back together (go look up the terms, I’m not being Dr. Video here). This results in the same format as what was on the camera, with just better audio. I have been uploading in this EXACT same format for the last 2 years almost…there is absolutely no reason that this issue should be occurring on my videos; nothing has changed on my end. Furthermore, if it was an issue with MY videos, why is it ONLY affecting “SOME” of my videos, when they are ALL in the same format.

Some people are claiming to just convert to 720p…sorry, NO. That’s not an answer or a solution. Some people are saying, change the bit rate, it’s too high…if it’s too high, then why does YouTube list 50MBit available for pro videos or even 30MBit for non? Not only that, but why is it that videos encoded in other formats at even higher bit rates showing up completely fine? Sorry, but 24MBit is hardly “high”, and if it’s so “high” then where has this issue been for the last 2 years? I think the only thing that is “high” is the people coming up with the random, worthless answers, when I doubt they can even author a DVD without Nero or even use a video editor outside of Windows Media Encoder, but oh, low and behold, videos uploaded in WMV format are not reporting any problems! Good for them, because last I checked, my camera doesn’t record in WMV format, so go fuck yourself WME users.

So why is it again that I should HAVE to convert my material, causing it to look worse? Regardless, converting is a pain for me at the moment. My fastest system has overheating problems when it comes to games, video and other intensive instances, so I’m left to just let my system that runs 24/7, that I use as a file server, to encode the material, which even though it’s a dual core Intel Atom system, it takes a almost a day to re-encode material into DivX or some of the other formats that people are stated as having said working. I already tried converting the discussion video to another variant of MP4 (AVCHD is h264), and it took almost a day and at 12MBPS, which ended up having detail and quality loss, quite possibly due to it pretty much being the same format as what the camera shoots in, just lower bit rate. I only did this as a test since the file size was half the size, and it pretty much went on par with it ending up being half the quality. I’m going to try DivX, however all this does is add time to the already somewhat long process of syncing up the audio, as the file size ends up being the almost the same as the original file, and what then if it doesn’t work? Then what?

If Vimeo free was better, and actually gave you some bandwidth that was worth a damn, I would totally be all over their site. 5GB a week even on their pay account is nowhere near enough space…I won’t bother going heavily into their very limited free account specs, which is 1/10th the uploading bandwidth of their paid version, as well as limited to 720p, 1 HD video a week, and other things. I did a bandwidth calculator and the longest video you can do in 720p on there a week, under the free account is about 15 minutes at 5Mbit…of course I could drop the bandwidth settings and get something a bit longer, but yeah.

Update: trimmed the discussion video by 3 seconds, re-uploaded it and as soon as it got finished HD processing, slow motion again. All this is doing is stressing me out, wasting my time, and overall is just a bunch of bullshit. There is no reason in any way, shape, or form, why this should be occurring, as there are thousands of users that upload straight from their cameras that would be or are getting the same results I am getting, but yet no support by any employee, because Google doesn’t give a shit to support the site, they just want the income off of it. I am doing NOTHING new that I have not been doing close to 2 years and all of the sudden this is occurring because they have their shit wrong.