Youtube Video Conversion for 86 Head Unit
 

As I live in Minnesota, I find I have very few *fun* car-related things to do during the winter time as my BRZ hangs out in the garage.

I decided to create a how-to for ripping Youtube videos and also for using Handbrake to convert the files to the correct format while also maintaining the best quality. These videos HAVE TO be played from USB. Our head units to not support video from the SD Card (At least according to the manual). I have not tried playing from the SD personally. There are many ways to download videos from Youtube but this is the easiest I could come up with for those who are not A/V nerds ;)


Reasons for using 640x368..

I realize the maximum resolution is 720x480, but 4:3 looks like shit, IMO. 640x368 is the largest 16:9 format I could get to work and the quality is near flawless. If you dig very large black boxes on the side of your video then use that setting. The quality will still be great.

Let me know if I've missed anything and I will fix it promptly. I suppose this could be moved to the DIY section but since it's Audio related I put it here.



1.) Get Handbrake, install Handbrake!

http://handbrake.fr/



2.) Pick a youtube video

Go to the video that you want and add "ss" after http://www. in the url.

http://i896.photobucket.com/albums/a...ps695b6f4c.jpg




3.) Download the 720p option

When you get to the download page (You will be warned that it's a fishy site, continue past the warning. The site is fine). Chose the 720p option.

http://i896.photobucket.com/albums/a...psba0bc4c2.jpg




4.) Once the video is downloaded, open Handbrake and select the video from the "Source" option.

http://i896.photobucket.com/albums/a...psbe62864e.jpg




5.) Rename the file output correctly. Sometimes by default, Handbrake will name the file with a .mkv extension. Make sure to change it to .mp4 before continuing. Under the picture tab make sure to change anamorphic to "None" and change the resolution to 640x368 (See top of post for reason).

http://i896.photobucket.com/albums/a...pse6ee924b.jpg





6.) Under the Video tab, change the video format to MPEG-4 and choose Constant Framerate, set it to 30. Most youtube videos are 30fps but some are 23fps, you will not notice the difference with the finished product. Also, set Constant Quality to 1 if it isnt already.

http://i896.photobucket.com/albums/a...pse4f04771.jpg




7.) Under the Audio tab, change the codec to be Auto-Passthru

http://i896.photobucket.com/albums/a...ps07b10811.jpg



8.) Hit start and the video will convert quickly. Things to note here, the final video is usually about 100 meg but can be as low as 30. If the quality is bad for some reason, try converting it again. I did have a couple that went low-res for an unknown reason and they should be perfect quality.



Enjoy!

i'm sure a lot of people will find this useful. thanks for writing it up!

I should try this later

Great write up!


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

Good write up, just saying another option for downloading videos from any site, even Facebook is Video Download Helper it's an Add on for Firefox. If they video is uploaded in 720p or 1080p there is usually an option for downloading it in that quality. I won't post a link to it though a simple google search brings it up as the first result.

Yeah, lots of ways to download though. The reason I don't download the 1080p version is that it (1080p nor 480p version) doesn't include an audio stream. Perhaps the other helpers out there are able to grab the audio stream as well?

It needs to be spliced together making much more work and other applications will be needed.

EDIT: I got un-lazy and uploaded the attachments so I could insert them correctly. Yay for easier to read!

does this work with bespoke on frs?

Good question.

I don't know anything about the Bespoke unit but if it supports .mp4 video, my guess is this tutorial will work with some tweaks to the resolution you set on the output video.

Bumping an old thread because I was getting frustrated with the "Resolution Not Supported" with every common resolution.. thanks!

Thanks for the bump, missed this thread the first time around. Awesome stuff.