Hello, I live in St. Louis and I'm part owner of a small company that has a patented concrete block. I'm definitely not a video pro. I purchased a used Canon HX A1 (It's like new and a very good price and....oh, well, it's mine now).

I have 30 minutes of video I shot on the auto setting @ 30fps. This was footage of construction using our block.

I have downloaded the most recent version of Sony Vegas. I really need to get some footage up on YouTube in the next few days. I don't have time (Yet!) to get fancy and artistic. Is there anyone who could give me suggestions on picking the best render option in Vegas for YouTube?

Please, Please, give me a fairly straight forward answer. I have searched this forum and Google first and that question is usually followed by a link to a PhD dissertation on video codecs and bit rates. Right now what I really need is best/quick option. As soon as I get time I'll bury myself in specs and hopefully contribute a little to this community. Thanks much, Nick.

Here's a link to YouTube's basic spec sheet, and it contains a link to more detailed information. HTH...

https://support.google.com/youtube/troubleshooter/2888402?hl=en Their best recommendation: mp4 video, aac audio, H264 codec, set to progressive (i.e., not interlaced). Use same frame rate as original was shot at. The link has a chart of recommended bitrates for the dimensional size of the video.

that info is a close as you can get to a simple, quicky answer, video is actually a lot of moving parts and is not quite that simple. That said, the basics are there to see, and not all that complicated to set up or select when you go to output.

Thanks, Battle!

From what I understand this camera shoots in 60i. So if I'm shooting at 30fps is that progressive?

The "i" in 60i indicates interlaced, or 30fps altogether ( 2- 60 interlaced frames make 1 complete video frame, or 30 fps effectively.) You can SHOOT interlaced ok, and when you render your Vegas output, select a deinterlace option and progressive as your output, and the program will convert for you.

Look at the XHa1 manual which is a sticky over in the Canon forum for information on the various shooting modes the camera offers, in case yours didn't come with the manual, there are a number of choices. You can download it from the forum.

BTW, the progressive frame rates are indicated by a "p" suffix, interlaced framerates by the "i".