[FFmpeg-user] ffmpeg wav lossless to youtube mov?

[Moritz Barsnick]

On Fri, May 24, 2024 at 02:23:16 +0200, Ferdi Scholten wrote:
> > what is this supposed to be?
> > 16 Bit with 44,1 kHz (CD) are sufficient.
> > So, we have PCM_S16BE and PCM_S16LE.
> >
> > Whats the exact command to get it done?
>
> Youtube simply does not accept lossless audio in a video (at all). You have
> to encode according to their specifications. They explicitly say to use AAC
> in .mov containers, so do not use anything else as it will be not be
> accepted.

As far as I understand these help pages, this is a recommendation.
Indeed, YouTube also uses ffmpeg (so they say) for processing their
files, and accepts quite a lot. They may reject some formats and codecs
by filter - e.g. to avoid uncompressed input - but it's a matter of
trial and error and experience.

(Streaming to YouTube "live" is even more tricky.)

> You can only upload lossless audio (as .wav or .flac) as extra language for
> an existing uploaded video

Is that so?

BTW, the pages saying that PCM in WAV is accepted may either be
enormously outdated, or referring to YouTube Music. You really need to
be careful with trusting search results.

> this lossless audio will be converted to a lossy
> format by Youtube that will fit the videostream (usually AAC or Opus).

THIS is the important point. While providing lossless input in order to
not lose quality even before submission is nice idea (if it works), you
will never get lossless formats back when playing the media from
YouTube.

And lossless video is not really bandwidth-friendly anyway, but that
wasn't the question obviously.

Cheers,
Moritz