What is it with Music Video Quality
 

In the day of wonderful HD TVs, Video Receivers, quality speakers, media centers and XBMC - what happened to Music Videos. Quality seems terrible or am I looking in the wrong place?

Example - Today I went to the Apple Store and downloaded "Five O'Clock Somewhere" (Allan Jackson and Jimmy Buffet). The file size is 44MB and the quality is awful. The aspect isn't even widescreen. I can download a similar file online and its about the same.

However, if I "make" a music video by cutting a scene from a movie I get really nice HD.

Any ideas? I don't mind paying for videos but I would like good quality. And enough of good quality to last through a 3 hour poker game.

Am I going to the wrong place? What are you guys doing?

Tex

What format did you download?

Size - 49.9MB
Bit Rate - 245 kbps
Sample rate - 44.100 kHz
Channels - stereo
Video Dimensions 640x432
Total bit rate 1741 kbps
Codec H.264
File type m4v

No DRM on this file - or any iTune music files anymore as I understand it.

I should purchase "Candyman" (Christina Aguilera) and see what iTunes gives me. That one should be better but this one isn't that old. You would have thought it would be at least 720P.

Your song is from 2003. Maybe it's because they made the video with standard (as opposed to wide-screen) monitors and TV's in mind?

OP what the fuck are you going on about?

Hey Drive - you are right. LOL - I didn't realize it was that old. It isn't just the screen aspect though. The video quality is just poor.

There are some MVs older than that one. Go look at Britney's "Oops" MV from 2000; you can find the Vevo version on YouTube. Poor video quality but you can see it has been redone for the modern wide TV screen. (I can't link it till I do 15 post).

Obviously, movies are getting reissued in HD so I would expect MVs would but maybe not. I snipped a nice HD MV of Steve Vai's guitar duel from the movie, Crossroads (1986).

Anyway, I would be interested in where people are finding the best quality. A few months ago, the streaming quality was better but 480 and 360 is about as good it gets for streaming videos these days. It seems like ever since Vevo became the "official" supplier for YouTube the quality has declined.

As I said - I don't mind paying for good quality stuff.

As a followup:

I find this topic more heavily discussed on the DJ/VJ boards. It turns out VJs are doing the same - looking for good sources.

Some of them talk about the having to use Youtube sourced material - but then a year ago Youtube sourced material was better. Some talk about Youtube audio not being good enough and copyright issues with downloading from Youtube.

Many talk about Commercial Companies that can supply music videos for DJs/VJs. But they won't sell to individuals. I went to Smashvidz for example and to register they want the name of your DBA and you have to swear to be a professional in the biz.

Interesting for sure but no answers for individuals with a hobby in this area.