YouTube getting 5.1 support?

QuadraphonicQuad

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ac3 and eac3 will sound identical in this particular application.
Yes, I agree. Some of the TV stations in our area are transmitting 5.1 AC3 at 128 kbs levels but still sound pretty good. I am amazed that they can sound that good with that low a bit level but they are managing to get up to 6 different digital TV signals now in the 6 mhz limit for US TV Stations & still look pretty good which is even more amazing. HDTV was never intended to be this compressed when it was started.

Rog
 
Do you know whether there are similar inaccuracies in the details listed for the 1974 Yes KBFH show? It claims to be from a "Discrete 4-channel Quad Reel," but all other conversions I've seen call the source an SQ-encoded reel.

I would take any claims like that with a big grain of salt.


JEMS is some sort of concert tapers' archive/collective, by the way; a bunch of their stuff has shown up at Big O/roio, including a clandestine stereo audience recording from the Oct 6th, 1978 Inglewood show. (Not Oct 5th--although that night was also recorded by the same taper, supposedly, and there's a Discogs listing for a bootleg CD, possibly sourced from that recording. A different, non-JEMS, recording of the Oct 6 show is also up on the Internet Archive.)

Authentic October 5th and 6th audience recordings are available at Forgotten Yesterdays.

Recordings labelled 'Oct 5' are usually Oct 28 (including 'Periphet', the old vinyl boot)

Recordings labelled Oct 6 (or occasionally 16) are often the broadcast Oct 28th show. This is because King Biscuit, back in the day, erroneously announced that the show was from the 'LA Forum, Oct 6', when they broadcast it in the USA in November 1978.
 
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How about kooling the attitude here please.
How am I the bad guy here Sal? You aren’t asking any of the the other posters to play nice.

I stated a hypothesis which I noted was probably wrong, I get random responses that didn’t have anything to do the hypothesis or the question & when I point that out, all the cool kids pile on.

So excuse me if I put on my Mr. T act and have a bad attitude.
 
I got it to work for me! Here's my first (and so far only) 5.1 mix from 2016:



The "5.1 Surround" option is available when I play this on my LG TV's YouTube app, and "Stats for nerds" shows the audio codec as AC-3. As expected, the playback volume is very low. Compared to most YouTube videos, I had to raise the volume by a whopping 20dB+ to achieve a comfortable listening level. This is similar to my experience with surround and immersive formats from other video streaming services.

The mix was done in Pro Tools six-and-a-half years ago when I was a student at Pyramind in San Francisco. At that time, they had a Meyer single-plane surround monitoring system with at least nine full-range channels (including massive LCRs) and two subs. The channel configurations were handled by a pair of Meyer Galileo processors that could be set up for 5.1, 7.1, SDDS, and more. The bounced audio from that session (actually printed internally to a new 5.1 track) was uncompressed 6-channel 24-bit/48kHz WAV in SMPTE channel order: L, R, C, Lfe, Ls, Rs. (I believe AC-3 uses a different order, but YouTube automatically mapped the channels correctly when encoding the stream.) To make the WAV YouTube-friendly, I created a static video of the same length in iMovie, then used ffmpeg to "pass through" the 6-channel audio as-is to the .MOV file.

Let me know if it plays back correctly for you, and what you think of the mix! Constructive criticism welcome in this thread.
 
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Please take a listen to my 5.1 mixes when you get a chance as I have feedback that people really like them. Since this is a new channel for YouTube, they now have a new policy so they are limiting my uploads to about 7 songs per 24 hours so I have to wait a few more hours to add any more songs. This will go away after 2 months if I have no issues with my channel they say.

Rog
Listening to these mixes and really, really liking them. Very clear and discrete. So far the Who, Donnie Iris, Cars, Yes, and Chris Isaak have all been excellent.
 
For all that are trying my new YouTube surround channel, I just found out how you can actually download my songs in very good sounding full surround flac files! First download "FireDM-GUI" at https://www.softpedia.com/get/Internet/Download-Managers/PyIDM.shtml & install it. If you want like I did, make a shortcut of the exe on your desktop. Then run the exe to bring up the program & set the download folder location first in the settings. Then you are ready to try it -- select one of my Surround mixes on my channel & copy the URL -- it should appear in the Top box of the program & if it does not, paste it there & it will start the download. After the download is completed, you will see all the streams associated with the song file. I usually grab the flac under Audio by double clicking on it -- then it will download a high quality 5.1 24 bit flac that is sounds virtually identical to my upload file!
I am actually amazed at how well my downloaded files sound. The waveforms look identical but the spectrum does have a 16 khz cutoff compared to the 22 khz CD quality I usually upload but my ears & most I think can not tell the difference in sound.
There are others now uploading 5.1 songs on YouTube & I found this one that is uploading a lot of songs now that sound pretty good at https://www.youtube.com/@5.1MusicChannel/videos Maybe he is a member of QQ?
Rog
 
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For all that are trying my new YouTube surround channel, I just found out how you can actually download my songs in very good sounding full surround flac files! First download "FireDM-GUI" at https://www.softpedia.com/get/Internet/Download-Managers/PyIDM.shtml & install it. If you want like I did, make a shortcut of the exe on your desktop. Then run the exe to bring up the program & set the download folder location first in the settings. Then you are ready to try it -- select one of my Surround mixes on my channel & copy the URL -- it should appear in the Top box of the program & if it does not, paste it there & it will start the download. After the download is completed, you will see all the streams associated with the song file. I usually grab the flac under Audio by double clicking on it -- then it will download a high quality 5.1 24 bit flac that is sounds virtually identical to my upload file!
I am actually amazed at how well my downloaded files sound. The waveforms look identical but the spectrum does have a 16 khz cutoff compared to the 22 khz CD quality I usually upload but my ears & most I think can not tell the difference in sound.
There are others now uploading 5.1 songs on YouTube & I found this one that is uploading a lot of songs now that sound pretty good at https://www.youtube.com/@5.1MusicChannel/videos Maybe he is a member of QQ?
Rog
This looks great, but I'm ending up with a bunch of html files and nothing else right now in Windows. Is there something else I need to do in the FireDM program?
Thanks
 
This looks great, but I'm ending up with a bunch of html files and nothing else right now in Windows. Is there something else I need to do in the FireDM program?
Thanks
Are you running the exe file for the "FireDM-GUI" program -- it must be run from the file that contains all the other downloaded parts to run correctly? Then copy ONE of my YT URLs & it should show up at the top of the program & automatically start downloading it. Then just double click on the file type you want -- I use flac & it will download the song in 5.1 flac format.

Rog
 
Are you running the exe file for the "FireDM-GUI" program -- it must be run from the file that contains all the other downloaded parts to run correctly? Then copy ONE of my YT URLs & it should show up at the top of the program & automatically start downloading it. Then just double click on the file type you want -- I use flac & it will download the song in 5.1 flac format.

Rog
I'm running the exe file for the FireDM-Gui, from a folder all the files have been extracted to correctly. I'm using one of your urls, which shows up at the top of the program, but it does not then download automatically. A manual download results in a small html file.
 
Note that this FLAC generated is fake: YouTube does not store any lossless audio, and the FLAC file is the result of a lossy to lossless conversion.
Yes, you are correct -- the flac generated is from the lossy YouTube AAC file with the surround file inside it but it is actually turns out very close in quality to the original 5.1 flac I started with amazingly.

Rog
 
I'm running the exe file for the FireDM-Gui, from a folder all the files have been extracted to correctly. I'm using one of your urls, which shows up at the top of the program, but it does not then download automatically. A manual download results in a small html file.
Not sure what issue you are having as the program should show the download happening in a couple of circles moving & when finished, it should show the many streams available of both Video & Audio. I then double click on whatever stream I want (usually flac) to get the download in your selected download folder in your selected format type.

Also, the low volume issue is also fixed somehow when converted back to a flac file so that low volume issue is definitely caused by how YouTube is converting the file.

Rog
 
Yes, you are correct -- the flac generated is from the lossy YouTube AAC file with the surround file inside it but it is actually turns out very close in quality to the original 5.1 flac I started with amazingly.

Rog
There is a command line tool which will get you the original format choices (aac, ac3, eac3, ect.) that YT offers, so no conversion is necessary.
 
There is a command line tool which will get you the original format choices (aac, ac3, eac3, ect.) that YT offers, so no conversion is necessary.
This "FireDM-Gui" is a GUI over a command line tool as you likely know so easier to use I would think & Python based so what is the commend line tool you are suggesting? Rog
 
Not sure what issue you are having as the program should show the download happening in a couple of circles moving & when finished, it should show the many streams available of both Video & Audio. I then double click on whatever stream I want (usually flac) to get the download in your selected download folder in your selected format type.

Also, the low volume issue is also fixed somehow when converted back to a flac file so that low volume issue is definitely caused by how YouTube is converting the file.

Rog
I had to select youtube dl over yt-dlp in the settings to get this to work. Also do not update the FireDM file, as the later version does not work. Good to have flac available as an option, thanks!
 
I had to select youtube dl over yt-dlp in the settings to get this to work. Also do not update the FireDM file, as the later version does not work. Good to have flac available as an option, thanks!
Good that you got it going now ok. Rog
 
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