4k original: Marques Brownlee 1000 reuplods later: Mark ass, brown Lee

Interviewer: So, what are your special skills Marques: Alright So I’m sitting in a room, different from the one you’re in right now....

The Lower the Quality of the meme, the funnier it is!

The compressor stores a temporally uncompressed frame after a fixed interval. These are called key frames. The subsequent frames only contain the delta from the previous frame - areas with motion. Each delta frame is further compressed spacially (like JPEG). Areas without any delta are left uncompressed - they contain the same pixels as in the key frame. That's the reason a high quality frame is seen in the test video after a fixed interval.

My mom: "what are you watching?" Me: "alright, so im sitting in a room, different from the one you are in right now"

So technically this has been compressed 1001 times now.

Imagine if you woke up one day, and everything looked like this But snaps back briefly when you sit still

As an audio engineer, I love the reference to the famous “I am sitting in a room” recording.

So this is why memes are so low quality

MKBHD: I record in 8K KZfaq Compression algorithm: lol k

You didn't talk about file size though, would be interesting to see how much the size shrinked in 1000 times

11:43 ..."kinda look very similar to what they first *look liked* ..." I felt that

“Your internet is not good enough for this” How dare you correctly assume my situation

"Dormamu, I have come to bargain." -MKBHD 2019

I never heard of Marques Brownlee, but oh man I am IMPRESSED. He actually gets right down to his subject, explains everything clearly, and leaves me feeling like I've actually learned something. Thank you, Mr. Brownlee!

When I first saw the video thumbnail I thought it was clickbait, but you really didn't let me down! You're the most honest youtuber ever. That's why I love your videos! I didn't know this would happen.

“In 2010, about a decade ago.” Almost made me feel sick.

Marques: "What are your thoughts" Me: " alright, I'm sitting in a room, different from the one you are sitting in right now"

BOOM! Instant sub, and MAAN did this bring back memories!! Like, from WAAY back: I'm currently still the ripe young age of 59. But 50 years ago, my parents got me my first Lloyd's brand cassette recorder. I was completely fascinated at how you could record something and instantly 'relive' it - even if it was just audio. My dad had a much more robust reel-to-reel machine back then, and it wasn't long before I started my own kinda bizarre experiments, very similar to what you've accomplished here. You KNOW where I'm going with this! I'd record back and forth, waiting to see how many 'bounces' it would take before my voice got so "mangled" my words couldn't be understood. I didn't stop there, I'll always remember one of my 'cooler' experiments (I'd easily win a science fair with this kind of imagination, but I was very private about this train of thought - never shared with anyone until now really) - that experiment, in a very quiet basement with barely any ambience, consisted of having over 50 people applauding, clapping, and cheering at the same time. Meanwhile ... there was ever only one. Who'd have guessed -- I'm now a professional musician, who's built my own audio and video recording facility, which I've branded "Skyward Media" (and this was before I EVER knew, how extreme I'd be sinking into the cinematic, aerial, and FPV photography hobbies that I'm currently in). I'd almost completely forgot about those audio experiments long ago, I'm looking VERY much forward to see what it is you do... and more than anything, I want to thank you for this - and I chuckle about how many in the comments here so far don't have a CLUE why you'd do something like this, and dedicate an entire YT CHANNEL to it - I most certainly do - so thank you very much, kind sir, for stirring those crazy, creative endeavors and MEMORIES that have been locked away for ages. Maybe it's time to come up with something crazy again! Cheers, and best!! - PH

This is brilliant work MKB! Thanks. I didn't think I would make it through the entire video, but you held my interest and attention until the very end!

Dr. Strange: Dormammu I've come to bargain MKBHD: I'm sitting in a room very different from the one you are in right now...

A wise philosopher once said "Alright, so I'm sitting in a room, different from the one you are in right now"

This is fascinating. I was thinking of pulling down a lot of my older videos and re-editing them, but no more. I'll reshoot the topics.

Wow, this is alot of work put into this, big ups man, the time and passion.

Marques slowly but surely turning into Thanos “I used the re-upload to destroy the re-upload”

My nightmares tonight: "Alright, so, I'm sitting in room, different from the one you're in right now...

"alright, so, I'm sitting in a room, a rubber room, a rubber room with rats, and rats make me crazy."

This reminds me of an experiment in my youth, where we made a photocopy at Kinko's, and then made a copy of the copy, and so on. We only took it to 100 copies, but the degradation was still quite intense. I wonder how much better today's photocopiers might perform. More recently, I've grabbed super low-res pictures from the web and subjected them to repeated A.I. up-scaling with Topaz Photo. While the improvement can be dramatic, it has trouble with some things (eyes, in particular), it tends to colorize previously black and white photos, and it inserts sometimes substantially new content (like adding a peach-fuzz goatee on a clean-shaven elderly man). Anyway, great video! Thanks. :-)

This is how my online teacher's webcam looks.

"Your internet's not good enough to do that in the first place..." I feel attacked

It would be interesting to see how KZfaq's various codecs handle this type of stress test nowadays. I don't know when they introduced VP9, but there's AV1 now as well. Would also be curious to see if you could yank the encode parameters from the downloaded file to replicate the effects without requiring the time to upload, download, process, transcode, etc. There has to be a way to create a piped command that would loop any number of times you want, feeding the output back into the encoder so you could set it and forget it.

This was fascinating! I know when I use to do more video editing there would be a point where re-compressing video would actually result in a larger file instead of smaller. So even though the quality would get worse, the file size would shrink on the first few passes of compression, and then slowly get larger until I would have a garbage file larger than the original. Curious if that 26 seccond mark cleans up because it is where you aren't moving much, or because it is at a predefined key frame which is resetting back to a standard. I guess the way to test this would be to shift your video 10-20 frames, and see if the compression ever resets, or if the blurry mess actually becomes a keyframe, which would reset things to that particular state. The background retains quality because it is a static first keyframe which never changes. If you mess with some video utilities, you can filter out to just view the 'new' information of a given frame, and I would bet that the background has a frame at the beginning and maybe another at that 26 sec mark, and is just black nothing for the rest of the video. No changes made, so no data needs to be written. It would take more data to make it worse and write to file, so it just leaves it 'blank'. I wonder if the 2 frame audio shift is maybe the result of some anti-piracy process? I mean... that seems weird that it would shift it at all just due to compression alone. But maybe it is doing it on purpose as a way to validate if content is tampered with from the original? If you download a video and push the audio forward a couple frames could you convince YT that you are the original owner of a video? Or would it break its ability to auto-detect a pre-claimed work? This seems like something that someone more nefarious than me needs to mess with... Lastly, not that I want you (or some poor intern) to go though this download and upload process 1000 more times, but why YT Downloader? That is some sketchey software. You can download direct from within VLC, and retain the original file options. It would be fascinating to see a similar test with more pixels involved as the advantage works in the favor of the compression algorithm the more pixels you have. I rip my movie collection (and yes, they are purchased movies and shows, I'm not just pirating rentals out of respect to the content creators), using a modern compression like h.265 or VP9, you get massively different results based on the original image size even when using the same settings. As an example, a typical 4k HDR movie is ~70GB on disc, and can compress down to ~20GB before the compression becomes really noticeable while just casually watching it (of course if there is a lot of action, or dark scenes your milage may vary). 28.5% the file size before it gets 'bad', and the amazing thing is that is all staying in h.265 compression from disk to rip. A 1080p bluray is the older h.264 and is ~40GB on disk, and using the same settings with a newer h.265 compression will spit out a ~13GB file. So even with newer compression techniques in play using a more modern codec, and not needing to preserve things like HDR, the file gain is a much less impressive 32.5% of the file size and more noticeable losses using the same settings. And DVD starts with mpeg4 480p at ~4.5GB on disk, and will only compress down to ~3GB with similar h.265 settings, which is 66.6% the original file size... they just aren't worth recompressing at that point as you want to preserve what little quality there is on the DVD in the first place! All of that long-winded example to say... I would imagine that downloading and reuploading the 720p file is probably an exponentially worse result than doing the same experiment at 8k simply because modern compression just can't use half of its bag of tricks that it relies on to work correctly. It would probably still look like hot trash after 1000 uploads... but less frame in that hot trash. Fun video! Would love to see you do it again in a few years to see how/if anything improves!

Marques Brownlee but everytime he says "I´m sitting in a room" it loses quality

Some dude: _posts highest quality meme ever_ Community: ight imma ruin this man’s whole career

You should make this test again to see how the compression changed over these years. Keep up the good work!

Cool project dude, loved it!

"I'm sitting in a room, different from the one you're in right now" *I felt that*

“Your internet’s not good enough to do that in the first place” Ah, humor of the mere mortals.

Fun fact: We actually watched the 1001st upload

bro turned so purple he wanted to make animatronics

Low quality Marques is kinda scary....

“Your internet is not good enough for that in the first place” I feel offended that you’re not wrong

Dude, I ran into your channel like, 2 days ago. The BEST videos on KZfaq right now. Informative, crisp, sexy, funny; like, I love your content dude. Man.

9:50 turns into thanos*

Marques: "Hey, I need someone to download then upload a video a 1000 times" Intern: ...

"I'm sitting in a room, different from the one you are in right now." **Checks behind me to make sure no MKB in my office** *Confirmed.*

Love your videos man , I'm financial not great so watching your videos I'm always in time with technology. Thanks

11:05 was literally the audio quality of our teacher on zoom

Alternate title: KZfaq compression reveals the Man behind the Slaughter.

3:16 Alright, so, I'm sitting in a room, different from one you're in right now Me: *Bold of you to assume that*

I love that you quoted Alvin Lucier, man. Great video!

Clean up all that noise for you. Rewatching it again and again, i thought something is wrong with my eyes. Good Stuff Marques.

Therapist : Thanos Marques isn't real, he can't hurt you Thanos Marques : 10:57

I’m feeling some custom merch with the quote on the front: “I’m sitting in a room, different than the one you are in now.” But in the back it’s blurry and pixelated. I’d buy it.

This was fascinating! I found myself smiling a lot near the end.

7:22 I like how the video is all soft and it sharpens for few frames and goes back to extremely soft in less than half a second

Dormammu: You cannot do this forever! Marques: Alright, so I’m sitting in a room. Different from the one you’re in right now.

Literally loads of meme pages do this and it's annoying

FINALLY!!!!! ive been wanting to see what would had happened and you read my mind!!

The fact that it lasted 20 cycles before the effects became obvious is pretty impressive. Then again, this is a relatively gentle test case since the background is simple and never moves. If you tried this with a video of a bike ride in a forest I suspect the entire picture could collapse completely within 10 cycles or so.

"Your internet's not good enough to do that in the first place" Me : is that kind of personal attack?

“2010, a decade ago” ... that slapped me in the face

It's also worth noting that KZfaq also keeps your raw upload file around. I've done GDPR data review requests with Google Takeout and they contain original files even with the original filename. That also makes a lot of sense, because storing these files isn't too big of a problem for KZfaq. It's only the streaming to millions part that requires transcoding the videos. That also means, Marques, keep uploading highest quality videos. KZfaq will be able to serve versions closer to your original file in the future, when technology, data transfer rates, video compression algorithms and so on improve.

I swear I learn so much from you everyday than I do in an entire year of school and I love that about you

Marques: Who are you 1000th Marques: I'm you but better

*Me watching in 144p:* Understandable have a great day.

Just wow..man this dude brings new content everyday

Alvin Lucier's "I'm sitting in a room" recording was an influence on audio, and Philip K Dick's text translation over various languages was also a major influence in context, for everybody getting into repeated recordings

All I see here is a standard skype conversation.

Therapist: Thanos Marques does not exist, he can’t hurt you. Thanos Marques: 11:50

Yep Marquez I am LITERALLY watching on lowest settings, Still appreciate your effort some day I might see your vids at 4k

This is brilliant but simultaneously incredibly painful to watch.. I love it!!

Dr. Strange: dormammu i've come to bargain.. MkBHD: Hold my camera

He is transforming into the man behind the slaughter

Ok this might have earned my sub. Thank you for being honest about how long that took you lol

this is a lot of time, work and effort. just wanted to acknowledge that because it deserves acknowledgment and i respect it.

Me watching in 144p: *"THEY ALL LOOK THE SAME!!"*

“Your internet is not good enough to do that in the first place” , unprovoked attack of the century.

This makes perfect sense. As interesting as it is, I have to wonder if Google Drive uses the same compression method since some of my older videos would look blurry?

I think this was a great way to prove a point.respect

5:11 Left side: MKBNOTHD Right side: MKBHD

MKBHD: "WHO ARE YOU?" 144p MKBHD: "I am you but reuploaded 1000 times"

I'd be curious. Is there a way to watch the non-youtubified versions of those videos? I would love to see just one. Those cameras and your editing has to be an insane combo

Man this must of taken SO MUCH TIME, this was super interesting, holy crap. This is essentially what happens to all the meme's you see all the time thats why they look so bad lol

This feels like a movie with the whole “I’m sitting in a room”

"Was it a giant waste of time? Uhhh no, someone had to do it" - Marques Brownlee

I like how you can see the noise at 1:00 , gives a appreciation for your efforts

Nice clear explanation on the reason behind KZfaqs reason for 1080p

Marques: " Your internet is not that good." Me: Yeah, you're right, but it still makes me feel bad when you point it out.

Marques: KZfaq, I've come to bargain.

I have a suspicion that KZfaq also applies compression to old videos when they backup the files to a new server. This is why I noticed a drop in quality in old videos.

Instead of using a lossless or a generally lossy algorithm, I don't understand why they don't use a limit loss algorithm. Basically, once the video has been compressed to a certain efficiency, then any further attempts at compression will cause the compression algorithm to return the same file. If they did this, your video would be initially compressed to their standard, but it could be reuploaded indefinitely after that without losing quality.

Doctor Strange: Dormammu, I've come to bargain. Marques: Alright so I'm sitting in a room different from the one you're in right now ....

My mom : "I thought they already taught you about this in the zoom meeting?" The zoom meeting : 11:50

Im new to the channel. I really love your good clean content.

That Im sitting in a room reference was great. As a sound engineer I have done this experiment with my song, recording and exporting again and again. Its a crazy experience.

That moment when you're sitting in a room, different from the one you're in right now.

What camera footage actually looks like: 13:06 What camera footage looks like when filming UFO evidence: 13:31

You should try this with the yt-dlp command line tool next time since you can download the full quality video straight from youtube instead of the 720p one. The only caveat is that if you want the highest quality audio and video you have to also have ffmpeg

I found this channel from your 100th tech video thingy.. THAT I SAW IN A DISCORD VIDEO. How lucky, you old intro had your channel name.