YouTube Aspect Ratio "Squeeze" Issue and HQ Stereo Playback

[reksub10]

you tube are not interested in their users anymore ,all they are interested in is keeping the advertisers happy ,as they are corporate now...i have pillar boxing and letter boxing aswell when it meant to be in wide screen ..you tube should give people to the change back to the old player for people who havent the state of the art home equipment ,it was very presumptuous of you tube to think that

[Zaranyzerak]

@Freeleacher This isn't an issue anymore. Nowadays I render everything straight out of Vegas. 1280x720, XviD video, mp3 audio. Works great.

[chaiTV]

fascinating and boring all at once!

[dcromleyyt]

I'm watching a BBC video ?v=NPD4Ep_J81k

which is squished horizontally -- people look too thin.

My monitor is 1024x768. Do you get this? Thanks, Dave

[whiterottenrabbit]

This problem occurs not only on youtube, where all kind of amateurs can upload all kind of poorly made videos. As a video and movie fan it literally pisses me off that the aspect ratio is messed up even when it is safely to expect some professional standards: on TV and DVD productions. I also saw still pictures in magazines and newspapers, which clearly don't have their original aspect ratio anymore. The sad thing is: many people don't even notice that! I could stab them in their brain for that!

[whiterottenrabbit]

I should add, that I neither know nor I fully understand all the difrferent aspect ratio formats and technical expressions for them. All I know is there is something fucked up, when the picture is squeezed or stretched.

[Evi1M4chine]

There is no "frame size". Much less a 4:3 one.

Hell, modern codecs wouldn't even know what the original resolution was, if it weren't for the header. Because they are wave function based (fourier transformation), which is independent of a pixel resolution, but depends on the number of variables in the function.

[Zaranyzerak]

No idea what you're talking about, I'm not a tech head. All I know is, when I would upload 16x9 resolution videos to YouTube (at the time when this was posted), YouTube's encoder would distort the image. If I encoded them as 4x3 letterbox, it was fine. This video speaks from my experience with how YouTube's encoder handled various video formats I tried, what worked, and what didn't. I honestly don't care about the technical side, I just want my videos to look the way I intended.

[Evi1M4chine]

OMG, FAIL!!! ^^

That whole "uses the full frame" thing is FAIL. Because, guess what: You can *change* the SIZE of the frame itself. So if you got a 16:9 digital camera, you don't go and squish it to a 4:3 video file frame format, just to squish it *back* when you play it back on a screen with square pixels. Because that would be pretty pointless, and stupid. Because *that* would be lossy, instead of 1:1 pixel-to-pixel transfer.

[Zaranyzerak]

Note WHEN this was posted. At the time, the YouTube player was 4x3 and everything I said was accurate. At the time, YouTube's encoder didn't handle 16x9 formatted videos properly and would instead squeeze or stretch them to fill the frame (hence the subject). The only way to get a properly formatted widescreen image was to letterbox it within a 4x3 frame. Remember, you're watching an OLD video about the way things WERE over a year ago. Things have changed considerably since this was posted.

[IMSODELETED]

Good video am also if your a YouTube partner can you have videos run for 30 minutes if its really funny and good? to some poeple? cuz you can only have 10 minutes max and 2gbs in size for hq vids its crap I can't wait till I'm a partner :)

[Zaranyzerak]

Partners have no time limit, and the filesize limit is 20gigs instead of 2 as well. Though I can't imagine ever wanting to upload a 20gig video...lol

[Kratos87Fan19]

you'd die of old age before it uploaded half!!

[Evi1M4chine]

Partners will most likely have at least proper 100 Mb/s lines. And then it takes (20% overhead included) 32:47 minutes. :)

Aaah, I wish I would have such a line again.

Soon... They are just laying the fiber cables in front of my building. :D

[porcTf2]

I usually use avi, it seems to work quite well.

[urbanr0cker]

Youtube is sucking more and more these days, the pictures are extremely small and this new "Show More Comments" button is irritating as HELL!

[MagiqProductions]

am i the only one that when i press hq the video size gets bigger as if it was in HD?

[Zaranyzerak]

Nope, they increased the size of the viewing window for HQ recently.

[tomsforum]

Thank you for your great advice here. Funny and concise. It would be great if it was possible to organize uploaded videos in the order you want them and not in the order they are uploaded. Youtube has the option under "organizing videos" but it does not seem to work in the new beta channel format. The video thumbnails seem to be displayed in the order they are uploaded even if you try to reorganize them.

[mitchwats]

1280x720 = hd widescreen

640x360 = hq widescreen

[Zaranyzerak]

Correct!  I really need to update this...YouTube went HD and stereo less than a month after I posted it and rendered pretty much everything I said instantly obsolete.

The other thing to remember is to make sure to use a Pixel Aspect Ratio (PAR) of 1.0 to avoid the "squeeze" issue that YouTube's encoder has.

[rgmartin2003]

abooot or about today?

[gman0999]

Thanks for the tips! I have question that I can't seem to find the anwswer to. Lately, when I watch videos on YouTube, (including yours/this one) the playback stops and has to load with the little wheel turning in the middle of the screen. I know that if i pause the video it will catch up or get ahead to where I can watch it uninterrupted for a bit. However, I was wondering if there was something I could do to watch a video straight through without stopping for reloading. thanks!

[Zaranyzerak]

That I don't know. YouTube seems to have it's good days and bad days for buffering speed... What I usually do is just let a video load up COMPLETELY before playing it, then I know there won't be any interruptions (plus playback seems to be a lot smoother when you do it that way)

[timidimit]

Just noticed: my title video finally has an HD button - until today it did not want to enable HD no matter what codec I used. It was frustrating because I could not (and still don't) understand the reason for such behavior. And now, suddenly, YouTube liked my video and gave it an HD button. I should switch to NTSC I guess.

[timidimit]

Good (yet long) video. I wouldn't be able to entertain camera for 20 minutes.

I had a different kind of issue: PAL, 16:9. Tried different codecs and formats, but YouTube kept squeezing it horizontally.

Just recently found a weird solution - up scaling video to MPEG-4 (H.264) using MPEG Streamclip from standard 720x576 to 1024x576 leaving X/Y ratio to 1.

Finally it worked.

[Bryan7Lewandowski]

yeah if u want a 16 9 aspect ratio video file to take up the enitre widescreen formatted window on youtube u can only do so with a low resolution. anything near 640 and so on will not be formatted properly.

[thegetcrunkboy]

How did you get that turn off the lights feature?

[Zaranyzerak]

No idea, it just appeared one day after a maintenance update.

[cookiesowns]

Ya how did you get that turn off the light feature

[chiconet]

Hey can u tell me how can u upload a 21mins video?.. i would appreciate that

[Zaranyzerak]

You need to either have a Director Account that dates back to early 2006, or become a YouTube Partner.

[tobisama]

It 's true, the last 2 videos that i ve upload got that trouble. And i look a little bit fat. I used to upload my videos with xvid 1400kbps and 640*480 and there was no trouble the past year. Now i got the squeeze problem. I was thinking that youtube fixed the videos according to the square pixels, but the result was the same in 720*480. (plus with 720 * 480) the hq option did not appear). That problem is not happening with quicktime.(but i'm not sure bout the quality) I'm gonna try WMV. THX

[Spectrem4n]

Thx very good and informative.

[kyle7rn]

i got a good question for you Zaranyzerak. how come all the audio playbacks on every video for youtube plays in mono?!!! its pissing me off!! mono is junk, stereo is where its at. is there a setting to go to on youtube where you can change it? thanks man.

[RedCatalyst]

I'm having a little trouble finding out how to upload movies from Windows Movie Maker and have the high quality option. I save the movie to my desktop. I used 2mps like you recommended and it says that it's a resolution even bigger than what you suggested.

It plays fine on my desktop, looks awesome, except when I upload it.. It is much worse quality. There is no option to make it better, either.

Is there another step? Or settings I need to change?

[Zaranyzerak]

If it's widescreen, encode it at 1280x720 resolution with a minimum bitrate of 4000kbps with stereo audio, and you will get the HD option with stereo sound.

If it's 4x3, encode at 640x480 with stereo sound with a bitrate of 2000mbps. Then add the fmt=18 extension to the end of the video link to watch the HQ stereo version. Or even better, render it as a 1280x720 pillarboxed video and you'll get the HD option.

The HQ/HD version will appear within about an hour of the Normal version (usually).

[89notes]

i used to use a couple of freeware editors and encode to MP4 .. but have to say ive gone over to windows movie maker & find the options very good. liked your video .. albeit over 10mins??

how did u manage that? ha ha

[asaladbar]

Thanks dude for your tech advice, I'll try it

[DeathcoreDude]

Hmmm i recently uploaded a hq video which had a stereo sound, but no stereo, trying to figure how to get stereo in sound in hq.

[Zaranyzerak]

Did you use a high bitrate for the video and audio?  If the bitrate was below 1000kbps, it won't give you the HQ option. That's why I usually play it safe and use at least 2000kbps for video, and 256kbps for audio.

[AcousticMusicPage]

how do i encode??? i NEED to have one of my vids in stereo please help

[Zaranyzerak]

If it's widescreen, encode it at 1280x720 reoslution with stereo audio, and you will get the HD option with stereo sound.

If it's not widescreen, encode at 640x480 with stereo sound.  Then add the fmt=18 extension to the end of the video link to watch the stereo version.

The stereo version (either the HD or non-HD version) will appear within about an hour of the Normal version.

[DamageIncM]

Hay, did you mean thís video on the aspect ratios then?

I mean, earlier than recommending the BrianWay-one.

Well, I watched it anyway. :D

So you record in widescreen.

But what do you personally do that with?

Do you just have a nice widescreen-camera or is it a webcam of some sort?

Or else, would it be the way you record it with certain software?

[Zaranyzerak]

Hehehe...no, this one was a rant about some issues with the YouTube player a while back, and some info about how I was encoding my videos to display in widescreen.

I actually use a Digital8 camcorder which has a 16x9 recording mode. So my videos are actually all done in anamorphic 16x9 widescreen, then I convert them to 1280x720 for YouTube's HD player. I like the widescreen image simply because it lets me fit more on the screen, and compose more interesting shots than the old 4x3 image.

[DamageIncM]

Ah, yes.

Hm, I don't think, IF I'd make a video, I'd really need it to be any form of widescreen.

But I do also prefer it, especially now YouTube has their video-module wider.

Anyway, I only have a video-camera or photo-camera to record with... or a webcam...

But would it also be possible to like "convert" those images to "widescreen"?

Like, pretty much cutting it down I guess, but if I'd shoot wide enough it might work?

[aspectratiodiva]

I never have had problems with squeezing or squishing on YouTube. I always create files that use square pixel aspect ratio. Either a MOV or MP4 file with the H.264 codec, or a DivX AVI or XviD AVI (also with square pixels). Your safest bet is using square pixel aspect ratio.

The reason (I am guessing) that you don't have problems with WMV is that your export settings are set for square pixels with WMV. But any other codec/format can work, as long as you use square pixels (and a high bitrate).

[Zaranyzerak]

I've heard this before, but let me ask you something - both mp4 and XviD worked FINE for a while, then suddenly stopped working (becoming squeezed). No change to the settings at my end, they just suddenly stopped being encoded correctly when uploaded to YouTube. So why would those settings work fine for a while, then suddenly NOT work? The only times I've had this problem is when YouTube has changed something with the player/encoder. It's their problem, it's not my settings.

[Zaranyzerak]

Anyway, this video is now outdated, since it only applied to the old 4x3 video player.

[aspectratiodiva]

"Anyway, this video is now outdated, since it only applied to the old 4x3 video player."

Yes, true. I'm very happy about the new widescreen format, but now everyone is scrambling to figure out how to make their videos widescreen.

I really appreciat this video, by the way, for making everyone aware of how bad a video looks when it's distorted. (Making your face skinnier or fatter--who wants that?) Your advice to use WMV is good for Sony Vegas and other apps, which export WMV as square pixels.

[Zaranyzerak]

I have a few videos on my favorites list that talk about similar issues, more specifically with people completely messing up aspect ratios in their videos because they simply don't know what they're doing. The mentality that it MUST completely fill the screen at ALL times, thinking they are somehow "correcting" the image by stretching it out to full screen, and not realizing that they are actually distorting the image and ruining it...

[aspectratiodiva]

Oh yes. Yes. Yes. Tell me about it. They have the mentality that it must fill the screen. Or, the video that they use is distorted and they don't correct it. Or (this is probably the most common), they export it at the wrong settings, so everything looks squashed or squished. Apparently some people can't "see" it, and will argue "Nobody cares" or "it looks fine to me." NO, if it is distorted it does NOT look fine, and a certain portion of the audience WILL always care. How is distortion OK? GAH!

[aspectratiodiva]

My guess is that your MP4 and XviD files were also not using square pixels, so you never noticed until YouTube started squeezing, where they didn't before. Your media player was displaying the videos right, so as far as you were concerned, they were correct. (And they were on your end.) But YouTube can't handle unsquare pixels very well. A friend made a video in Windows Movie Maker, and it looks great in Windows Media Player, but it looks squeezed in Quicktime for Mac. Unsquare pixels is it.

[Zaranyzerak]

Bizarre. Well, all I know is they all looked fine (when uploaded to YouTube) until YouTube changed something, then it was messed up. It happened with mp4, and more recently it happened with XviD. Maybe it's the non-square/square pixel issue, I don't know. All I know is, wmv has never failed. But I might run some tests to see if I can get XviD working again. The encoding time on wmv is just SUCH a pain... Thanks for the tips!

[aspectratiodiva]

Yes, I think it's a combo of pixel aspect ratio and YT. What video editor do you use, by the way?

If WMV works for preventing squishing/squashing, then that's what you should go with, until YouTube stops messing up the videos!

[aspectratiodiva]

(continued) I use a Mac for most of my videos (I have over 50 videos on another account) and usually Quicktime for Mac will pick up anything with unsquare pixels. (Not always, though.) It is so frustrating. A video will *look* good in Windows Media Player, and you think it's fine, but another media player (and also YouTube) won't unsqueeze/unsquish the video like it should. The foolproof way around this is to export as unsquare pixels, which I always do, and none of my videos has been squeezed.

[cankarales]

i'm gonna make a tutorial how to make a HD video in 16:9 JUST for youtube.

[Zaranyzerak]

Good idea! I should really update this...it was fine several months ago, but everything's changed now...

[brettdylan0121]

Are you canadian? Just wondering because your "Abouts" sound like aboots...

Nice video, though!

[Seth38101]

this video is in stereo WITHOUT clicking anything, how do you do that?

[Zaranyzerak]

Whoa, weird! That's a new one on me, I have no idea what happened. It seems ti's only automatically in stereo for the Normal quality version, but still mono in the High quality version (unless you click the link in the description). I wonder if they're FINALLY making some changes?

[Seth38101]

I dont know, it happens randomly to other vids I have seen. You are uploading your vids the VERY same way I do, the WMV at 2000 and mine dont do that, Iv seen a few vids go in stereo for no reason at all

[FreskoRisoto]

The sound is STERO, ALEUJA FOR Zaranyzerak

[FreskoRisoto]

News! YouTube has changed upload.

who knows where you change the URL address to add extensions "fmv = 18"

[Zaranyzerak]

You just type it into the address bar on your browser. the only way to directly link to it through your YouTube page is to include a link to the video with the extension in your description (like I do with mine). It's actually "&fmt=18" (without the quotes, of course)

[FreskoRisoto]

I WILL TRY ON YOUR instance

If I Get stereo I promise that I will make SONG about you

[FreskoRisoto]

To me this does not work

Does someone managed to get stereo sound on your site or is this video just for fun?

[Zaranyzerak]

No, nearly all my videos are stereo. You just need to click the link in the description, which takes you to the stereo sound version. If it isn't working, then you may need to upgrade your Flash player.

If wmv doesn't work for you, you can also encode in xvid format. I've actually switched to xvid because it encodes much faster than wmv, and I can preserve the 16x9 aspect ratio by encoding at a resolution of 640x360.

[CruiserLeo2007]

Loved the commentary but am wondering why after uploading 91 videos to YouTube, ONE FINALLY came out in STEREO? So naturally I wanted to upload another in STEREO. So I made the video in the 16x9 ratio(some of my videos are made in the widescreen format), same bit rate as the previous STEREO video: same settings, same everything but the new video(was still in 16x9) was in MONO??? How can 2 videos made EXACTLY the same way and one be in STEREO and the other in MONO? YouTube is stressing me out.

[JENSSCHLAU]

Yeah, cool.

[hannanathan564]

but my videos r not dropping from top 2 bottom its going its chopping it to a third of the video left to right. see one of my old videos to see wat i meen

[hannanathan564]

my videos have been doing it 4 a long time but a few have been fixed outa nowhere but the funny thing is all of them started with a normal size 4 like a month

[thesightofglass]

Enjoyed that - but I take it there's still no easy solution? I'm using Windows Movie Maker (for now) and my camcorder is 16:9 so I really don't want to get away from that aspect ratio.

[Corrupt5358]

Wrong on one main point. If you do not have the high quality option you cannot get stereo sound WRONG!

Check this vid

Stereo Sound Test by gcloudweb

Ironically if you force it to play in mp4 (by adding the &fmt=18 to the url) it will come out in mono, the stereo playback is on the FLV file version NOT the MP4. Im confused a bit as well I only started looking into this today...

[Zaranyzerak]

True enough, as it works on plenty of my old, low quality videos as well. But I've noticed that until it finishes processing the HQ version, the stereo version can't be accessed.

I tried using mp4 for a while, but got the squeeze issue. And I used to encode my videos directly into flv, but found when I did that I would NEVER get the stereo option (unless I forced it with the old low bitrate trick which doesn't work anymore...).

All I know is, the way I do it NOW seems to work every time.

[Zaranyzerak]

I actually realized my mistake shortly after posting the video, I'm surprised it took THIS long for someone to call me on it! :)

Here's a cookie.

[hollywoodnight]

I get it, put the characters on the end of a link in an email url link or on the web.

[hollywoodnight]

Clarification:

Where do you add fmt=18 ?

In the url bar?

Or in some place that permanently changes video link.

Thank you for helping me.

Max

[itsanendlessworld]

you can bypass YTs conversion by uploading flv under 350k/s and keep your HQ stereo like in this video here: TLd9F2yKnFI it has a fake length of 11min so the actual video is over 350kbps

you can also keep the desired aspect ratio by changing the time stamp and adding a thumbnail to your video like this one: TxtUueiJzb8 click the fullscreen button and return for it to display properly

[Zaranyzerak]

I actually used to do that (if you look at my Playlists "The Music of Zaranyzerak" and "Two Guys and An Effects Box" you can hear examples). The problem is the video quality takes a MAJOR dive when you do that (unless it's just a static still such as in the aforementioned music videos), and apparently YouTube has cracked down on the flv/bitrate trick so it actually doesn't work anymore... It still works with old videos that used it, but you can't do it with current videos.

[itsanendlessworld]

on Feb4/08 it became obsolete, but as you can see in the first one i linked, was uploaded on Jul9/08 still works :) we found a way and will continue to.

if the video ACTUALLY is under 350k then yes it will take a dive, but like i said, you can fake the length of the video so that the REPORTED rate is under 350kbps wile its really over 1000kbps like in this video here: fHZUKbIQOnM looks much better then the last one i linked because its under 2min

[Zaranyzerak]

Ah, okay. I've seen that trick around for a while. But honestly, I'd rather just stick with the fmt trick since that way half the video isn't a black screen... Even better, it would be nice if YouTube just made stereo sound the DEFAULT (you know, like every other video site in the universe???) so we wouldn't have to bother with all these tricks to begin with! Grrrr...

[itsanendlessworld]

agreed! but if everyone's videos where HQ stereo by default, YT would get alot of heat from the copyright owners(not that you'd be affected lol). Theres an add-on for firefox called GreaseMonkey that allows you to see the &fmt=18 version by default(if available)

[Zaranyzerak]

Oooh! An actual USEFUL plugin! Methinks I shall have to grab that...

[betterthanayard]

I have a new Mac Pro and I' pretty sure you can't export to WMV format. It sucks.

[Kytt]

12:42

This is where I stopped because I didn't hear my name being dropped.

Your videos need more me.

[MYSTlCALGOD]

What people tend to forget is that you are sending YouTube a master for them to compress, therefore send the highest quality you can, that fits with their limitations.

YouTube is well known for being the busiest video sharing site, but unfortunately YouTube uses the much older Sorenson Sparke codec for their video encoding. This was the "improved" video format for Flash 7 but is based on the very old H.263 video conferencing codec.

I simply used mono for my vids. Check them out on my page.

[counterfeat]

NEWSFLASH !

Stereo playback withdrawn from IE Youtube videos !

Interent Explorer does not allow stereo plaback anymore

Youtube changed the way High Qaulity videos playback on IE. The option for high quality and standard quality is now withdrawn. All videos now playback in HQ by default...adding &fmt=18 to the address bar does not produce stereo playback any longer.

Is it a temp bug or a permanent deafult ?

Solution

Use Firefox browser as it remains HQ, SDQ + Stereo playback.

[counterfeat]

update for IE Browsers

jumping the playback cursor on youtube media player should cause the blue "Watch in Standard Qaulity" to appear below the player...this indicates that the video is curently playing back in HQ.

The stereo option appears to be lost however

[Zaranyzerak]

Yet another reason I'm glad I switched to Firefox many, many moons ago... :) Thanks for the info!

[counterfeat]

If you have Subscribers who are using IE they will not be able to view in youtube in stereo...the stereo links you apply to your deatails window are therefore defunkct for IE users.

If you log on to your youtube account via IE instead of Firefox you will see the problems your IE subscribers Aare facing.

The message here is ..... people sould junp to Firefox youtube browsing for better quality youtube playback.

Will Firefox be targeted by youtube in a similar manner do you think ?

[Zaranyzerak]

Hard to say, I gave up trying to predict what Youtube was going to do next a while back...hehehe.

But I wish they would just stop messing around and make stereo the STANDARD already. This is the only video sharing site I know of that doesn't support stereo sound as the default... It's going on THREE YEARS now, and it's long past time that changed.

[benjamillion]

just wondering... with you having an old account, are you able to record up to an hour of video? i was watching this gameplay video of castlevania and whoever recorded it had up to 59 minutes on it! i can send you the link if you want me to

[Zaranyzerak]

Actually, the running time can be as long as I want, the only limitation is the 1 gig filesize limit. So if I used lower resolution/bitrate, I could make a video several hours long. Now who would actually WATCH it is another story...hehehe

[benjamillion]

oh that's cool ^_^

there's this new thing going around on youtube called "let's plays" where youtube users record their computer screen while playing an emulator, and i thought i'd give it a try when i return home next year. while it would have been nice to record all of the time of the footage of me playing a game, i guess i'll have to put it in parts =P

[EvolutionStratus]

It doesn't convert very well to the 16:9. I have a 16:9 set and I viewed it on the PS3's browser and it's STILL not conforming to it.

[Zaranyzerak]

Well, the problem with that is no matter what you're viewing it on YouTube still uses a 4x3 display window. What I'm talking about is allowing for anamorphic video uploads and displaying them properly within that 4x3 window. Actually, now that I think about it, it would be even BETTER if we had an option to select a 4x3 OR 16x9 viewing window, AND an option during uploading to select 16x9 anamorphic. That would be so many levels of awesome I can't begin to describe...

[goththewolfzero]

wow i never knew wat that whole 16 by 3 thing was until now, are u a teacher? lol u seem like u should do stuff like dat.

[carpenoctem66]

Woo hoo! Thanks for the secret! ...although I don't think ANY of my videos have sound...

[JPPT1974]

Too bad soap operas don't have dvd collections.

[adriantrench]

that is so true

[Zaranyzerak]

Read my reply to that from a few days ago... There's a pretty simple reason why we don't generally see season sets of soaps.

[lightbats]

yeah that is a problem with youtube still,oh p.s. i got my new film studio which means ill have mroe videos lol.its really just my abck room but with a futon,tv,ac,my comp,a desk,and my camera equipment.

[Zaranyzerak]

Hey, sounds like a good studio to me! :) Have fun making vids, I'll keep an eye out for 'em.

[Stoudman]

and eff em tee equals eighteen? :O

[Zaranyzerak]

Indeed.

[jamkidaruen]

can you do a review on G Gundum

[Zaranyzerak]

Sorry, I don't own that one. I can't review what I don't have in my collection...

[FrankySlawsonShow]

Keep the Vids coming man, and good job I really think it's neat to see what you know! I'm trying to do that with my vids too! Franky

[Zaranyzerak]

Hehehe...I tried to get back in the same position, but didn't get it QUITE right!  :)

[Dannyfaye]

also utube vids dont work for awhile aswell and they say they arent available.has utube lost its touch?

[Zaranyzerak]

Well, it DOES take a certain amount of time for the videos to be processed. I know mine take a bit longer than normal because they tend to be huge files. That's not really a problem, just wait a bit and try 'em again.

[Dannyfaye]

it doesnt happen all the time and hav u seen The OC?

[Zaranyzerak]

Nope, never watched The OC. Never been much of a fan of teen/20-something drama stuff like that, too much fluff. The kind of teen drama I enjoy is stuff like Freaks and Geeks, My So-Called Life and the Degrassi shows. Lots of angst! :)

[Dannyfaye]

how come there arent any season sets of soap operas?.and i kinda like The OC,whats ur fave anime?.i like Cowboy Bebop(i only saw the movie and there should season sets)and avatar(even though its not a jap anime)

[Zaranyzerak]

Probably because soap operas produce something like 220 episodes per season (5 days a week, no repeats), so it would be prohibitively huge and expensive. Although, Dark Shadows got a full series release - 5 seasons, 1,225 episodes total. Needless to say, it's a HUGE colection. I odn't really have ONE fave anime, though I love Robotech (and the original Japanese shows it's adapted from), Ghost in the Shell (movies and series') and Akira. Those would probably be my top 3.

[Zaranyzerak]

Dark Shadows was only half hour episodes, though, so they were able to fit 10 episodes per disc at decent quality. Most soaps are an hour, which would mean a max of 4 or 5 episodes per disc. So do the math on that... Say 5 episodes per disc, divided into 220, would mean EACH season would be around 44 discs! Or 4 eps per disc = 55 discs. So you'd be easily looking at around 200 dollars PER season, if not more...

[Zaranyzerak]

But who knows! With Bluray you could easily fit a tons of episodes (12-15 eps for a single layer BluRay, 24-30 on a dual layer - so it would be roughly 14-19 single layer discs or 7-9 dual layer) at standard def quality (since most soaps are standard def), so it may be a possibility in the forseeable future, since that would be a MUCH more reasonable number of discs. But they would probably still be pricey, since they'd have to capture sooo many episodes to begin with...

[FrankySlawsonShow]

I agree man, they need to fix this! Franky

[Zaranyzerak]

Definitely. It's ridiculous they haven't even acknowledged the problem, especially given how widespread it clearly is.