FAQ:What are the best settings for YouTube?


 * [http:// Stanley Arthur] said:
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Depending on the format of the source video, I've been known to change the frame rate from 29.97 to 23.97, or from lower field (NTSC) to progressive. Leaving the aspect set to square pixels seems to work well, too.
 * My best success so far has been windows media format at 1024 kbps. See for yourself at youtube, username stanarthur.
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 * [http:// Tom Krauska] said:
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YouTube is changing its video setup to allow a High Quality video to be shown if you submit it in that format. Unfortunately, that means most of the 320x240 videos will never look very good.
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Jake Ludington has a good article about this on his site. He also sent me this response as to how he sends in HQ videos to YouTube.

"Minimum 640x480 for all videos. I always use WMV format because in my testing it seems to look better. I shoot everything in HD, so I normally try and use 1280x720 when it fits in the 100MB limit or resize to 960x540 if I cross the size limit threshold (and they recently extended the limit if you use the upload tool). It's VBR with quality set to 90% and encode complexity set to the maximum."
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 * [http:// Jeff Schell] said:
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 * I don't purport this to be the end-all-be-all best option, but I've been quite satisfied with the results when uploading to Youtube using the following settings...

In the Adobe Media Encoder, I choose Windows Media, and instead of using a windows media v9 codec, I have an option for a windows media MPEG4 codec.

Set the size to 320 x 240, square pixels. (I'm not at my computer right now, but I believe square pixels was the only choice presented to me.) Set the video quality to the maximum on the quality slider.

After experimenting with a dozen or so videos, I've found the sweet spot to be an encoding bitrate of about 600 Kbps. Anything above that seemed to be wasted disk space, and below 550 Kbps I started to notice degredation.

(This is all personal taste, by the way. If you want to set it to 1000 Kbps, the more the merrier. The only downside is it will take longer to upload, but 1000 Kbps is the "better safe than sorry" approach.)

And I've been using an audio encoding option of 44.1 128 Kbps stereo. (But I have "video ears," so 128 is perfectly fine to me. I'm not an audiophile by any stretch of the imagination.)

The above settings have yielded no noticable quality loss after uploading to Youtube -- and I've uploaded about 60 videos.

Granted, Youtube likes to "enlarge" the clips beyond 320 x 240 in their default media player. So if you click the "reduce size" button back to its original 320x240 size, the quality looks muuuuch sharper. Identical to the original in my humble opinion.
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 * Steven Gotz said:
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I think I finally got a decent YouTube video using the method suggested by the producers of the Mr. Deity videos. The method was to export a DV AVI from Premiere Pro, then follow these instructions:

"Before uploading, I convert the file with QuickTime Pro to h.264, 480x360 pixels at 24fps, better quality, and with a keyframe every 24 frames. The audio is set to AAC, VBR 96-110, 32k stereo."

I left mine at 29.97 but the rest seemed to do the trick. It still looks better when you click the button that makes it 320X240. The original was 480X360 and the file was around 48MB for a 3 minute video.
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 * [http:// Connor Roberts] said:
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 * ignore the recommended youtube settings, and the biggest file is not always the best file...here is what you need to do for youtube...

if you want to export to youtube, you should export in FLV format out of adobe media encoder. and use these dimensions 425x318 (trust me, i've spent months and months researching the best youtube quality, and this is what they export in for the crystal-clear videos on youtube when they make those political ones that are always so clear)

when you go direct to FLV in that exact size, then youtube doesnt have to respample, just compresses the data rate.

also, use 192kbps or 128kbps mp3 audio quality
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