YouTube streams video and audio separately and the web player/app combines them on the fly. Due to this, the audio bitrate is not directly affected by video quality like in the past. Rather, YouTube can stream the video and audio it deems appropriate for a given device and connection. It can also adjust one during playback without affecting the other.The audio you hear during a YouTube video will usually be 126 kbps AAC in an MP4 container or anywhere from 50-165 kbps Opus in a WebM container. Changing video resolution (360p, 720p, etc) in the video settings will probably not impact the audio stream, but it is likely that your connection performance will. YouTube recommends that uploads be in the MP4 video format with AAC audio. So where does WebM and Opus come from? YouTube will automatically encode a WebM/Opus version of a video once it becomes popular, and stream that format during playback whenever a person's browser supports it. How popular a video needs to be before it gets a WebM version is difficult to say. I have some 900-view videos that have WebM versions but other 1000-view ones that don't yet.Learn more about WebM and Opus audio here I created a YouTube video info tool that gives readable details on the streams YouTube has available for a given video, and allows you to download the individual audio streams for analysis.This tool works for most videos, but not VEVO or other copy-protected videos (if you get a blank screen or empty download that is probably why).The info that the tool provides comes directly from Google Video. Enter a YouTube video URL and hit enter. Thesection contains the individual video and audio streams YouTube picks from during playback. Thesection contains complete video files with audio that can be downloaded directly from YouTube. These Stream Maps are usually what YouTube Downloaders access when you want to download a YouTube video, but are not used by the YouTube player.Once a video or audio stream is downloaded from the Adaptive Formats section, you can use ffprobe (part of ffmpeg ) to analyse the file and obtain the real bitrate, which may differ a little from what is listed in the bitrate section on the tool.To make sure YouTube isn't streaming some other file than what is shown above, I analyzed network traffic to see just how many bits are really being transferred. I did this for both MP4 and WebM videos separately using Chrome and Firefox's Developer Tools. For more details on the http requests involved in a YouTube stream, please see this technical post I created a 2160p test video with 320 kbps AAC music. Since it is new it doesn't have a WebM version yet. After uploading to YouTube and allowing it time to process, I analyzed the network traffic during playback and found that it was 126.886 kbps audio/mp4, which matches up very closely with what is reported by ffprobe on the downloaded file from Adaptive Formats in the info tool.I analyzed a music video that had enough views to have a WebM version. I found that is was playing 156.188 kbps audio/webm, which also matches up very closely to what ffprobe reports.YouTube didn't always have separate audio streams. In 2013 and earlier, YouTube would play a specific audio bitrate depending on the video resolution selected. For example: 240p would get 64 kbps MP3, 360p would get 128 kbps AAC, and 720p would get 192 kbps AAC. For a full list of the legacy bitrates that YouTube used, see these tables:From July 2012 to some time in 2013, YouTube used these bitrates, as long as the originally-uploaded video had a high-enough bitrate or was lossless.Prior to July 2012, YouTube used these audio qualities:Prior to May 2011, YouTube used these audio qualities:Prior to March 2011, YouTube used these audio qualities for several years:

Please note that this post is over a year old and may contain outdated information.

Comments (161)

Agent3554 Aug 22, 2020

JDownloader 2 is a good alternative for the said site which was currently not working. Not only you can download videos/audios/thumbnails/subtitles you desire, but you can also check its information through Link Crawling feature (must be enabled in settings). With a little configuration (LinkGrabber, and YouTube PlugIn), you can check its original content info and change it (for downloading) by your desire. I would recommend using JDownloader2, but beware of sites that contains installers with malware! r/Piracy (Reddit) has links to the clean version, not sure if it's already taken down. For anyone looking for portable version (which you can simply open it in windows PC), install the clean version, archive it, and you're good to go!

Agent3554 Aug 22, 2020

@Salila I tried going to that site... Auto-detected + Blocked by ESET Web blocker tool It says: "This web page contains potentially dangerous content." "Threat: HTML/ScrInject.B trojan" "Access to it has been blocked. Your computer is safe."

Salila Jul 30, 2020

Hey everybody... There is a solution to this! I was waiting for ages for this to be fixed too but instead I found a way to get the exact same thing via a video download site... Since I don't know if links are permitted here, I will just leave the name of the site in this way... Go to: vdyoutube dot com, enter your yt link (like you once did on the tool that isn't working) and you'll get the exact same link options.. Choose the desired video quality and RIGHT click the green download button and click - Copy link location, then paste it to VLC, then do the same for the audio. It works perfectly!

3Ab3Azim Jul 15, 2020

The tool doesn't work. It posts "An unknown error occurred. Please try again in a few seconds." I use Microsoft Edge (Chromium based).

loki Jun 26, 2020

is this info still accurate? 6/2020

Someone May 18, 2020

The source which was used to get the info is no longer working guys!

Wolf May 05, 2020

Yeah- it's not working again. I even tried removing the https and the www to see if that would help, but no

Araldur Elgas May 03, 2020

Nick, Your tools doesn't seem to be working anymore. Any chance of it getting fixed? Best wishes

Agent3554 May 01, 2020

[May 02, 2020]: Still awaiting for update Output showing error message: "An unknown error occurred. Please try again in a few seconds."

Asino Apr 23, 2020

any chance that the tool is going to get fixed some time in the future? It's very useful

Anon Apr 21, 2020

It's gone !!

exploxe Apr 18, 2020

youtube info NOT WORK.

Raoul Feb 04, 2020

Don't know what youtube is doing but it's not been working for quite sometimes now. Nick are you there?

Sebastian Jan 02, 2020

Unfortunately the tool is currently broken again. "An unknown error occurred. Please try again in a few seconds." Regards

Emanuel Dec 17, 2019

Thank you for fixing it Nick, your tool is awesome! I didn't get the chance to thank you before, I only asked for a fix, so thank u. Your tool is the only way I can enjoy 1440p@60fps or 4k@30fps on my under-powered hardware. I don't understand how Youtube runs so bad compared to VLC.

Shaishav Dec 15, 2019

it does not work now. not even in other browsers...please fix that

Emanuel Dec 15, 2019

One of your tools doesn't work anymore. I've been trying to use Youtube Info (https://www.h3xed.com/blogmedia/youtube-info.php) for the past week but all the videos I submit return the "An unknown error occurred. Please try again in a few seconds." error. It worked fine some days ago but now it fails for every single video I have tested.

Mandra Dec 14, 2019

Hi Nick, not sure if it's the right place but I try. About the audio of YouTube: when I upload a song with tunestotube and I compare it to another channel which has uploaded the same song the same way...mine sounds like if It was duller and lifeless... It's like if mine was a mp3 and his a wav (it's an image but if you re an audiophile, you ll hear that) Keep in mind that we have exactly uploaded the same mp3 file, free downloaded from his video's link. And as the Mp4 files is encoded online on tunestotube, both uploaded video have exactly been encoded the same way online but maybe encoded differently by youtube. What could explain that difference of audio quality? Mine :https://youtu.be/IxmBSFV-jSI His :https://youtu.be/JKzwl2funVo

Raoul Dec 13, 2019

Ah sh!t here we go again

Lloyd Dunamis Nov 30, 2019

Actually nevermind my earlier post; it works even with https. Just that, it working may be intermittent or something.

Raoul Nov 26, 2019

Thanks Nick for the fix whatever happened? Might as well post a bitcoin address for the generous people who enjoy your much appreciated work?

daveclark Nov 26, 2019

Avdshare Video Converter is just the most powerful 720P to 1080P converter.

Max Nov 23, 2019

Nick, we're need you! Heelp us, fix this great tool :(

Mike Nov 22, 2019

Nick, fix it please =(

Raoul Nov 17, 2019

Broken since friday :(

Markus Oct 31, 2019

A great tool, thank you for your work. Yesterday I found out that Youtube also outputs 6 channels Audio, my Receiver shows "Dolby Digital". And with your tool I could see 6 channels there, and I am also able to download the m4a File. Really awesome :)

Tintin Sep 11, 2019

Hi! How can I download the audio? I canțt find any button or any alternative sollution. Thank you!

hamza Aug 28, 2019

thank you

Avadhutji Aug 06, 2019

Yes, it is broken again. Please do fix it Nick.

Tinh Jul 11, 2019

It looks like the YouTube video information tool has temporarily been broken once again. The tool did work during the previous day, so either the tool is down or Google may have changed YouTube's code such that it broke the tool.

Dave Jul 06, 2019

Thanks Nick!

Raoul Jun 25, 2019

Thanks Nick you da man. I see you updated the font too.

Nick Jun 20, 2019

I apologize for taking so long to get the tool up and running again. It had some very old code accessing non-secure data (http) from YouTube, which Google disabled completely a couple months ago. I updated it and it appears to be working again.

Ravel Jun 18, 2019

Yup same issue here. Tool no longer works smh!

Garry Jun 05, 2019

Perhaps Youtube have blocked the tool. It no longer works... also on videos that it did only a few weeks ago.

Raoul May 29, 2019

Damn who broke it ?

Dave May 29, 2019

Similar to Mick below, it seems the tool has stopped working. Any updates? Thanks.

Mick May 27, 2019

Tool had been working great! However it appears that it no longer works. I only recently used it a couple of weeks ago. Same video that worked then now also fails (fails to get info error).

Creep May 14, 2019

Only tool i can find that actually still works ! thanks man

Rob Apr 13, 2019

Your tool rockz! Thanks a lot man!

Reticuli Apr 07, 2019

So they're still doing this BS where they transcode streams and change it based on video resolution? I've been streaming 48khz/192kbps MP4 and it's showing up as 44.1/144kbps audio. Yet I streamed previously 44.khz/128kbps that are archived 48khz/188ish kbps! Stupid waste of their processing to even change it, not to mention there's no benefit to upping the lower stuff and their bit depth conversion and sample rate conversion on the former, more recent experience sounds like ass!

Clothem Jan 23, 2019

I recommend upload a Uncompressed AVI to get the best audio quality. I use Adobe Premiere Pro for this, Here is my settings 1080p, 1fps, Uncompressed AVI (v210), Audio 16-bit / 44100 You will get a huge file size, you need fiber optic like me for upload that faster

Tarno Dec 13, 2018

What do those clen, init, index, itag mean? (the value) Specially the index. Mostly it shows 266-1 or 266-2

Jackson Dec 06, 2018

I am using wonderfox free hd video converter factory to download youtube videos, besides, it can choose video formats and video quality, resolution and more. Just have a try.

Burt Dec 04, 2018

Thanks, man! Highly informative and interesting to read. YouTube just changed all of a sudden the quality of my uploaded music videos from 1080p to 144p since somewhere from the middle of August 2018. Couldn't find anything from the Google help forum — as usual. But, again: many thanks to you, sir!

test Sep 07, 2018

well, i respect that you approved my previous comment despite it making you look bad. that at least gives me more faith. still would like to see the backend, after researching, im assuming its just youtube-dl you're feeding the php with.

test Sep 07, 2018

any chance we can get a peak of that backend on the .php page? or are you just datamining everyone?

Nasko Aug 07, 2018

Florian Chevallot, thank you so much! I downloaded Videopad and started creating files exactly how you suggested. This is what I have been looking for. I was struggling to find the best way to upload Flac to Youtube with minimum compression. Your post was a blessing!

James Mar 17, 2018

My phone camera works fine

sandy price Mar 08, 2018

I am using bandicam. i just downloaded the newest version, and although my videos come out fine, once uploaded to youtube, the audio doesn't play. the bandicam people said to use one of the YouTube presets, but i see that the video stream upload is 360p, which is also one of the youtube presets. And it sounds like, from what you said above, that the video stream isn't going to have anything to do with the audio. Can you venture a guess as to what audio setting I need to adjust so the visual and audio will both play? Thanks! Here's a link to the video. https://youtu.be/-nYUQWnWaS0

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