Encoding for YouTube, Pulling my hair out!!

[sdsumike619]

I've been searching high and low on the internet for how to get the best quality video on Youtube. Some say WMV, some say MOV, some say Xvid, bla bla.

I have very clean standard definition DV footage shot on a 3CCD camera. Source is 720x480

I've got all the best tools at my disposal including Vegas 7.0 and all the freeware stuff. I upoad crystal clear video and Youtube craps all over it and it becomes sh*t.

Are there any gurus here who can shed some light on this? For this particular project, I have an approx. 30 minute video (which I guess I'll have to chop up into parts)

Thanks!

[deets]

not much you can do about it? yt does its own encoding so all you can do is start with a good source.

if you need quality, isnt stage6.divx.com better?

[sdsumike619]

Yes, there are many better services than Youtube, however, YT has the audience and is the service where people discover our product and come to our website to buy. So until the masses of people boycott youtube, I'm stuck with it (I do of course upload to other sites)

[Jay Bee]

Ever seen a youtube video who's quality didn't want to make you puke? Exactly.

Encode to divx and use stage6 instead.

EDIT: missed your above post. Nothing you can do.

[sdsumike619]

Actually there are lots of videos on youtube that are very very clear. I can pull some examples if you like..

[deets]

depends what your encoding maybe, a person sitting in front of a webcam is going to look a lot better than a sports clip.

as far as im aware though, there is nothing the end user can do to alter the quality :(

[Jay Bee]

Actually there are lots of videos on youtube that are very very clear. I can pull some examples if you like..

Yes, I like :)

[Isochroma]

The quality really suffers if there's much motion in the scene, because YT's encoder is bitrate constrained.

If you can't capture/edit again to reduce this, just decimate the framerate in half. That will improve the quality somewhat.

[scharfis_brain]

maybe there is just the need for proper deinterlacing before uploading videos to YT

[Dark Shikari]

The only thing you can do is purposely lower the framerate by duping frames in high motion scenes, perhaps.

You could also run extremely heavy denoising on the source clip.

[Tack]

I thought that if the video you uploaded to youtube was within spec (flv, the proper resolution and within the bitrate limit), youtube would not mess with it?

If so, I'd just encode the flv myself (ffmpeg supports flv), so that I know exactly what I'm getting.

[foxyshadis]

Nope. No matter what you upload, it's always recompressed; you can check by downloading it and comparing, the file sizes (and quality) will probably be quite different. Unless they've changed in the last few months.

haha, didn't notice this was post #6000. ^____^

[smileBhappy]

Yes, there are many better services than Youtube, however, YT has the audience and is the service where people discover our product and come to our website to buy. So until the masses of people boycott youtube, I'm stuck with it (I do of course upload to other sites)
yeah and the only people who will care about the quality will be YOU because all the peole who use youtube either dont care or have come to expect what its like

[Schrade]

YouTube recommends using XviD/DivX in 320x240, 30fps.

http://www.google.com/support/youtube/bin/answer.py?answer=55745

[mgh]

The compressibility of the clip needs to be high for you tube because of the low bit rate and the codec itself. You can also try cutting back a tad on saturation, contrast and brightness which will help in reducing the bitrate needed without clearly apparent loss of detail.

[Wolfman]

I manged to compress a full cartoon episode into 100mb using the youtube spec ,,....but it got pulled after 2 viewings LOL

[Dark Shikari]

I manged to compress a full cartoon episode into 100mb using the youtube spec ,,....but it got pulled after 2 viewings LOLUse Stage6...

[Schrade]

Yeah Stage6 is awesome. No loss in quality plus you can use the DivX Web Plugin which is probably the highest quality video player you can get in a web browser. It has great features, looks good and I bet with some Firefox pluginreg.dat hacking you can even get it playing .mp4s if you have the proper DirectShow splitters/filters installed.

[milOtis]

look, if you are going to switch from youtube, use a more popular service like Azureus Vuze...can go all the way up to 1920x1080 HD, unlike Stage6's limited profiles.

Second though...to encode for you tube use these settings...
http://www.kenstone.net/fcp_homepage/youtube_compressor_gary.html

you actually encode to a 425x318 video size, and use other settings. all that can be done on a pc as well...it tricks the youtube encoder basically into thinking most of the conversion is done already

~ milOtis

[Jay Bee]

look, if you are going to switch from youtube, use a more popular service like Azureus Vuze...can go all the way up to 1920x1080 HD, unlike Stage6's limited profiles.

Second though...to encode for you tube use these settings...
http://www.kenstone.net/fcp_homepage/youtube_compressor_gary.html

you actually encode to a 425x318 video size, and use other settings. all that can be done on a pc as well...it tricks the youtube encoder basically into thinking most of the conversion is done already

~ milOtis

Jeez, what a time waster that guy is, 10 pages to tell us that a higher quality input file may result in higher quality output. Guess he gets payed by word count.

And I don't think that he's right with his 425x318 idea because firstly in my browser the flash window was bigger than that and secondly the flv files are all 320x240.

And stage6 does support 1080p, at least last time I checked.

[Doobie]

Jeez, what a time waster that guy is, 10 pages to tell us that a higher quality input file may result in higher quality output. Guess he gets payed by word count.

I scanned it and decided not to waste my time on it.

Someone should either except the poor quality of Youtube or use Stage6.

[*.mp4 guy]

Based on the information in the article I have devised a presharpener specifically for youtube. It will only work with 320*240 resolution video. It applies the inverse convolution to a bilinear upsize to 424*318 from a 320*240 source to the input video, so when it is put through a bilinear resizing operation it will look normal.

Function ytpresharp(clip c){mt_lutxy(c, lanczosresize(bilinearresize(c, 424, 318), 320, 240, taps=5), "x y - 1.32890625 * x +", u=2, v=2)}

[mgh]

Based on the information in the article I have devised a presharpener specifically for youtube. It will only work with 320*240 resolution video. It applies the inverse convolution to a bilinear upsize to 424*318 from a 320*240 source to the input video, so when it is put through a bilinear resizing operation it will look normal.

Function ytpresharp(clip c){mt_lutxy(c, lanczosresize(bilinearresize(c, 424, 318), 320, 240, taps=5), "x y - 1.32890625 * x +", u=2, v=2)}
don't know whether it will help with you tube, but it does improve "looks" of the video;)