Hello,


The presets on Adobe Media Encoder don't cut it, I've tried upping bit rates,
using max render quality/bit depth and it is an improvement but
has anyone figured out the magic formula for great looking youtube videos?

I don't care about file size but I do care about encoding time so will you see
a quality difference in a 35MB CBR vs a 35MB 2-pass VBR?


Should we just throw the highest quality file at youtube, and let it
do its thing, so Pro Res 422, HQ and or 4444?

That's what I do, usually ProRes LT or ProRes HQ depending on the source (AVCHD for the former and ProRes HQ from an Atomos recorder for the latter).

I just don't think it's a good idea to submit an H.264 encoded video to YouTube or Vimeo just to have it turn around and re-encode it as another H.264 video.

I also get 20Mbps up, which isn't the best, but it makes uploading ProRes masters somewhat palatable.

I'm in the same boat - stuff looks great here and looks like CR-P on YouTube.

But lately I've been doing color grading in Resolve and just taking what it renders as "best" (whatever that means) h.264 and uploading it and it looks quite nice.So maybe the problem lies in what I'm using to render. I've also gotten nice results with Sorensen Squeeze come to think of it. But renders from Vegas never look good.

I don't sweat file size either.

Why not use what YouTube recommends? They should know best...

https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/1722171?hl=en