Freeflow

YouTube upload quality

It appears that uploading to YouTube isn’t always completely straightforward. I’ve had a few enquiries via e-mail in recent weeks from people who’ve found that their videos, once processed on YouTube, have degraded in quality to an unsatisfactory degree.

I’m told that the quality of the vids I’ve uploaded looks relatively good. So, if anyone’s interested in the settings I’m using, here goes:

1) Source: all the videos I’ve posted were shot on a Sony DCR-HC1000E camcorder, a 3CCD Mini DV camera.

2) Capture and edit: all the clips are captured and edited in Apple’s fantastic value Final Cut Express.

3) Export: prior to upload, each clip is exported from Final Cut as QuickTime movie. Given the need to stick within YouTube’s 100MB upload limit, plus the fact that I also want to upload to this site (all videos are here), I export (File/Export/Using Quicktime Conversion) as a standalone movie, optimised for ‘Broadband – High’:

Export settings

Clicking on Options, the default Broadband-High settings are:

Movie Settings

Because most of what I shoot is 16:9, the default size (which assumes a 4:3 aspect ratio) needs to be tweaked. Clicking on Size, the height is reduced to 270. That’s it: the clip can be exported.

4) Upload to YouTube: per the normal process, using the standalone Quicktime file exported in Step 3.

In short, if these settings appear to work better than others, I’m not entirely sure why. One thing to check – it probably makes sense to check that the resolution of the file you upload is higher than the standard YouTube playback window (452 × 338 on my PC): you don’t want YouTube trying to up-sample your video for playback.

That said, YouTube’s own recommendations seem to be at odds with what I’m doing. If anyone can explain the reasons for the differences, let me know.

Stephen · Tuesday, January 30, 2007, 16:30 · Permalink

2 Comments on this post

Regarding your request for explanations for differences with YouTube’s recommendations, note that: (1) YouTube transmits 320×240 video, but the browser on your PC scales it to 452×338 (you can also click the lower-right icons to view the original 320×240 version or a scaled full-screen version); (2) YouTube’s transcoder makes good use of high bit-rate video but not necessarily of resolutions greater than 320×240 (so better to use that bit-rate on the quality of target pixels rather than adding “superfluous” pixels); (3) There are many different video encoders for the QuickTime format and the H.264 Encoder is just one of those; (4) Empirical evidence suggests the best results come from H.264, 320×240, 30 FPS, and as high a bit-rate as you can (ideally 1500-2500 kbps) yet still fit within 100MB limit. I hope that useful…

Videoprofessional · Jul 22, 09:09 AM · #

Thank you so much for this insightful and incredibly simple tutorial. There are so many options available when exporting and uploading that it can become overwhelming not to mention confusing, especially when everybody online has a different opinion on the subject.
This is by far the best tutorial I have read on the subject so far. Great job.

Geoff Thomas · Jul 22, 11:02 PM · #