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Settings for youtube videos
  • marcusomarcuso
    Has anyone created a .ini that would be appropriate for youtube videos? We are looking to use our GH1 primarily for youtube videos, and we are wanting to use the most efficient CODEC for editing - would that be AVCHD?. I assume that 720P/30 would be the best resolution? Does anyone have any recommendations for settings both in firmware and in camera?
  • 10 Replies sorted by
  • marcusomarcuso
    BTW, is there any advantage of using the firmware hack if just shooting youtube videos?
  • mpgxsvcdmpgxsvcd
    For youtube you want to maximize the bit rate they encode with. If you use a horizontal resolution greater than 1920 it will use the max bandwidth they allow. If you can't do that then 1920x1080 @ 24 FPS offers the second greatest bandwidth per frame.

    720p @ 60 FPS will show excessive compression artifacts with youtube. They also just throw out half of the frames so the 60 FPS does you no good.

    If you use the Vimeo hidden 1080p trick it will offer much better image quality than anything on youtube.

    Here is a sample.
  • CRFilmsCRFilms
    But youtube has the biggest audience, so vimeo's better quality doesn't matter.

    The thing you also need to consider is file size vs upload and processing time. Sometimes it takes FOREVER for youtube to process a video. It seems like MOV or WMV process faster, but depending on your NLE, it takes longer to render. I rendered in MP4 in Vegas Studio, but WMV processed faster, but it took way longer to render into WMV. You need to factor in your connection speed and how long it will take you to render/upload. I used MP4 so I could render faster and even though it took longer to process, I could still do other things while it was processing.

    I'd go for 720p, between 6-9mbs bitrate. Not every home user can play 1080p properly and a good 720p master will make the 480p look as good as it can.
  • MrAnthonyMrAnthony
    720p is the best resolution compromise. I have uploaded both MP4 and MPG files with no problems, and they processed quickly. Currently, youtube's size limitations are 15 minutes, up to 2GB file. CRFilms has it right--you have to consider resolution, file size and processing time and strike a balance as to those areas.
  • DrDaveDrDave
    Future proof your video--use high resolution. Youtube goes back every few years or so and reencodes them. Years ago, I uploaded HD Video, and, after several years, they appeared as HD video.
  • Mark_the_HarpMark_the_Harp
    That's interesting. I have some early ones (SD, not HD) which I had to upload at quite low resolution as I was still on dial-up then, and now of course I could take that same file and not have to mangle it so badly to get it uploaded. This particular one has a lot of hits (>500k) and it always niggles me how bad it now sounds / looks compared to my original file. Of course it would still be SD but I would compress it less. With Vimeo you can just replace a video at any time and not lose the URL / comments etc, but you can't do that with YouTube - you have to create a new video.
  • DrDaveDrDave
    That is truly an excellent feature of Vimeo--the ability to replace the clip "in place"--maybe youtube will adopt that someday. I find the quality in Facebook for Video to be quite good if you upload 1080p just under the one gig mark. The resample it, of course, but to me it beats youtube. But of course, youtube is the the 800 terrapound gorilla.
  • ZokeZoke
    I agree with DrDave. I've uploaded video's to Youtube which later increased in quality so apparently Youtube did save a copy of the upload or just did a decent job at upscaling it.

    Even more important, Youtube gives the default low res versions a higher bitrate if you upload a high resolution (720p or better) video. I do not know if the bit rates for these low resolution video's differ between 720p and 4k (which is really 3k?), don't know if anyone did any tests, but I remember upscaling 576i video's to 720p because the default 480p and 360p versions would look so much better due to the higher bit rate they would get. Again, I do not know if there's a difference in bitrate for these default versions if you upload it as 720p or 1080p, but I'd go safe, go for 1080p or even upscale 720p to 1080p with avisynth prior to uploading it to Youtube if I had to.
  • inqb8trinqb8tr
    It's all about bit-rate.
    For uploading to Youtube, the best codec is h264, and container is not important, mov, mp4.. You can go up to 12-15 mbps average (add 3-4 for max bitrate) to get around 50-80mb per minute of 1080p video.
    Now, when you shoot using AVCHD you need to set your hacked camera to at least 40mbps or even more for video to look decent, of course depending on what you are filming - any case too high bitrate for uploading.
    So you will most likely have to transcode it into lesser bit-rate h264 before uploading, thus the settings you use for recording should be those that allow for the best video to be captured in camera. And later you'll deal with transcoding for the upload.
  • inqb8trinqb8tr
    AVCHD is not an editing codec. It is lossy (and eats ram and cpu power). I always transcode it to something lossless and robust, like Prores422, cineform neoscene or even free matrox I-frame HD.
    Then in the end encode it to h264 if its destination is youtube or similar.
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