6 tips for High Quality Youtube Video.
Published March 7th, 2007 in informationalI have recently uploaded a trailer for my new documentary to youtube. I was able to achieve very acceptable results and I thought I would share some insight with the world:
- Start with the best quality possible
- Use H.264
- Resize the video to 320×240
- Deinterlace your video
- Use Letterbox for 16×9 video
- Use as much of your 100MB limit as possible
This means starting from the video codec you shot your video on. The rest of the steps tell how to encode your original video in the best way for youtube. If you start with something that has already been compressed you will see bad results
H.264 is a high quality compression codec. With the right settings it will be indistinguishable from the original, which is good. You want Youtube’s compressor to work with with the best quality possible. If you can see compression artifacts when you encode, you will see twice as many on Youtube. The bitrate I used was 2000kbps — more about this a little later.
It is important that you resize the video to Youtube’s native resolution when you encode. Basically the philosophy behind this is that you want Youtube doing as little to mess up the video as possible. This removes one step for Youtube. This is also where the bit rate comes back in. 320×240 video running at 2000kbps is practically lossless in image quality. H.264 is made to look good at much lower bit rates. By oversampling your video to 320×240 and using such a high bitrate you will get very nice results.
Be sure to deinterlace your video when you encode. Interlacing is an artifact of television and has no place on the internet. It is another thing youtube will do for you if you don’t. And like I said before, you want youtube to do as little to mess up your video as possible.
If you shot your video in widescreen use letterboxing to make it fit 320×240’s 4×3 aspect ratio. Youtube only has support for one aspect ratio, if you upload wide video it will be squeezed.
If you are posting a long video that is over 100MB when using the 2000kbps h.264 codec, adjust the bitrate until you get something that is as close to 100MB as possible.
If you follow these tips you will achieve very good results. As far as encoding tools go, use whatever works for you. I used Quicktime Pro.
I heard some of these tips on the Digital Production Buzz Podcast. If you are interested in video I highly recommend it.
17 Responses to “6 tips for High Quality Youtube Video.”
- 1 Trackback on Mar 7th, 2007 at 11:09 pm
- 2 Pingback on Mar 21st, 2007 at 6:03 am
- 3 Pingback on Mar 23rd, 2007 at 6:25 am
how exactly do you resize videos on your computer, cuz im trying to figure out how, to resize a video, so i can put it on youtube. whenever i try uploading it, it says that the size is too big, and i dont know how to resize the vid.
What software are you using? In quicktime there is a size button under the button where you select the codec.
What method of resizing do you use (Lanczos, Bicubic, Bilinear, ect.)?
Also, do you compress your audio? If so what method do you use?
I’ve tried so many different methods now I lost track and I’ve yet to get satisfying results. That trailer of yours looks absolutely fantastic though.
I use quicktime pro to export which doesnt have an option for resize method. I assume its Bicubic.
I generally dont compress my audio. There is no reason to if your file is safely under 100mb. Youtube is just going to compress it again anyway.
One of the reasons why my trailer looks good which you may not be able to control is we shot on HDV. That gave us a lot more resolution to start with. However, if you do use 2000kbps h.264 and down size to 320×240 it should still look good.
The key is to make sure you cant see any compression artifacts in the file you upload to youtube. If you can use higher quality h.264 3000 or 4000kbps. Youtube will make any artifacts much worse. This is the main reason for poor quality video on youtube.
.. i tried your suggestion with h264 with all the settings,de-interlacing yadda yadda ,…. but youtube is saying it is an incorrect file format when its finished uploading .. this is an MPEG2 file i pressume ? but how come youtube is rejecting this ?
…. what am i doing wrong ?
What program are you using to compress with? What file extension does your file have? h.264 is not MPEG2 it is an advanced MPEG4. If you have an mpeg2 file something is wrong.
MainConcept H.264 Encoder v2 is the software im using … I am on a pc .
The original clip is .avi …. my settings are as follows :
MPEG type = H.264 MAIN
Sream Type = Program Video Audio
video mode = NTSC
Audio mode - Layer 2
size = 320×240
bitrate = 3000 kbps
frame rate = 29.97
De-interlacing = Bottom Field
I tried to upload it an hour ago .. again it says invalid format type on youtube .
( note , i didnt set it to MPEG2 … However there are options to choose H264 Main, H264 baseline and H264 High ..
any thoughts ?
oops almost forgot .. the file extention is still MPG
I am not familiar with this program so Its hard to say what is going on, sorry. Are you able to play the file back ok? Check out this thread from DVXUser http://www.dvxuser.com/V6/showthread.php?t=90118
It mentions another free h.264 encoder that supposedly works well.
Also, I would use the high profile, but that is just for quality. I dont think that will fix your problem.
yes the file plays ok on my computer. however , youtube displays an error = Invalid file (???) … the extention is mpg … it plays ok , crystal clear .. but no luck..
ill look into that link tho .. thanks =)
I use a normal DV Sony HandyCam and use Ulead software to edit my videos. So far I have uploaded in WMV & MPEG4. The video streams off the camera as AVI files. So my editing starts off with AVI and then I convert.
I don’t see much difference between MPEG4 & WMV. The WMV files are 30FPS and is in the 320 by 240 ratio.
The videos still look crap and just isn’t as decent like lonelygirl15’s videos.
Could someone possibly give me another routine here. I’m not sure what this H.264 & interlacing is. Would like to use if if Ulead can do it.
http://www.youtube.com/sydneyinaustralia
William Le.
To address the items you are not sure of:
H.264 is a new advanced codec based on MPEG4. It allows you to have better quality at lower bit rates.
Most video cameras record in an Interlaced format meaning each frame made up of two ‘fields’ that are made of of all the odd lines in the frame and all to even lines of a frame. If you pause a vhs tape on a scene with action you can see this. The stuttering look is because the tape is paused between two fields. The opposite of interlaced is progressive scan.
Now for some advice. Make sure that your encoded video looks exactly like your original as far as quality. IF you can see ANY compression artifacts, then you should reencode with a higher bit rate.
Read the comment above for a link to a program that encodes h.264 on windows. I have never used it because I am on a mac, but i have read that it works.
cheetos try to open your h.264 mpg video with quicktime pro and save it as .mov file.
also you can see more ways to encode videos for youtube here:
http://www.squidoo.com/youtuberight/
still in vain. Can anyone tell me settings for quicktime pro > export > h.264 for best quality youtube. Somewhere i read a about custom size 425×350 instead of the required (320×240). I simple step by step guide would be awesome. Any please?