Best Render for Youtube HD in Vegas at DVinfo.net

Chris Rackauckas · March 15th, 2009, 09:52 PM

What are you guys using to put up on Youtube HD? WMV or MP4?

Chris Barcellos · March 15th, 2009, 10:21 PM

In Vegas, Sony AVC, rendered to 1280 x 720, 6,000,000 average 10,000,000 max bitrate, 24p.

Dave Stern · March 15th, 2009, 10:25 PM

not sure this will quite answer your question on what people are using here on this board for youtube HD, but I thought the below was a good article re HD on youtube:

YouTube does 720P HD using H.264

Jack Zhang · March 15th, 2009, 10:50 PM

Youtube supports up to 30p. Best to do a 2-pass to improve quality.

Robert Martens · March 16th, 2009, 12:14 AM

Chris' suggestion is what I'd go with, but I'd add a couple of things, first being what Jack mentioned; Youtube supports 30p, so use that if that's your project's framerate.

Where I must respectfully disagree with Jack, however, is with two pass encoding. It's my experience that multi pass encoding is a waste of time when it comes to Youtube, Vimeo, or other similar services. The only two reasons to run multiple passes are lowering the size of the file you create and increasing the quality at a given bitrate. With regard to the size, the file you'll be uploading is not the file Youtube will deliver; absolutely everything gets recompressed, according to their own settings, so there's no worry about uploading too large a file. The file won't get appreciably smaller with more than one pass, and you won't save much time on the upload; you'll just spend an unnecessarily long time compressing the video. As for quality, again, at these bitrates the increase is mathematical, and for all the testing I've done it never makes a lick of difference. Single pass and multi pass H.264 files at six to ten megabits per second are near indistinguishable side by side, and the end result of Youtube's compression makes the difference even less evident. If you were encoding video to give directly to your viewers, and/or using bitrates on the order of less than, say, two megabits per second, you'd do well to run the two pass, but for this particular application, I wouldn't bother.

I'd also suggest forcing a keyframe every Nth frame, N being your framerate. The phenomenon mentioned in the article Dave linked is also known as "keyframe flashing", and has never been a problem for me, despite the short intervals I use. Long GOP files are enough of a pain when you view them directly--random access gets more and more difficult the longer the group--but they also cause problems with Youtube. When using long groups I run into a kind of stuttering effect that I suspect is the same issue the author mentions. Forcing a keyframe once every second has successfully eliminated that in all of my upload tests.

Finally, don't forget to keep your audio in stereo, as Youtube has recently made that their standard. They even went back and converted all of my old videos, which was a nice surprise.

Hubert Duijzer · March 16th, 2009, 05:14 AM

I don't like MP4, i always upload wmv.
1280x720, 25p(pal) and a 4 or 5MB bitrate does look pretty good to me.

Douglas Spotted Eagle · March 16th, 2009, 06:23 AM

Having tested both extensively, YouTube likes mp4 when it's of equal bitrate to WMV. The tests can be found on our Youtube channel.
VASST - The ?New YouTube? has a very lengthy description of frame sizes, etc for Youtube and how to force the player to show HD in a link.

March 15th, 2009, 09:52 PM	#1
Chris Rackauckas Regular Crew Join Date: Feb 2009 Location: USA Posts: 113	Best Render for Youtube HD in Vegas What are you guys using to put up on Youtube HD? WMV or MP4?

March 15th, 2009, 10:21 PM	#2
Chris Barcellos Inner Circle Join Date: Nov 2005 Location: Elk Grove CA Posts: 6,838	In Vegas, Sony AVC, rendered to 1280 x 720, 6,000,000 average 10,000,000 max bitrate, 24p. __________________ Chris J. Barcellos

March 16th, 2009, 06:23 AM	#7
Douglas Spotted Eagle VASST Join Date: Jan 2004 Location: Stockton, UT Posts: 5,648	Having tested both extensively, YouTube likes mp4 when it's of equal bitrate to WMV. The tests can be found on our Youtube channel. VASST - The ?New YouTube? has a very lengthy description of frame sizes, etc for Youtube and how to force the player to show HD in a link. __________________ Douglas Spotted Eagle/Spot Author, producer, composer Certified Sony Vegas Trainer http://www.vasst.com

March 15th, 2009, 10:25 PM	#3
Dave Stern Major Player Join Date: Nov 2006 Location: Northern New Jersey Posts: 391	not sure this will quite answer your question on what people are using here on this board for youtube HD, but I thought the below was a good article re HD on youtube: YouTube does 720P HD using H.264

March 15th, 2009, 10:50 PM	#4
Jack Zhang Inner Circle Join Date: May 2005 Location: Burnaby, BC, Canada Posts: 3,053	Youtube supports up to 30p. Best to do a 2-pass to improve quality.

March 16th, 2009, 12:14 AM	#5
Robert Martens Major Player Join Date: Jun 2003 Location: Miller Place, NY Posts: 820	Chris' suggestion is what I'd go with, but I'd add a couple of things, first being what Jack mentioned; Youtube supports 30p, so use that if that's your project's framerate. Where I must respectfully disagree with Jack, however, is with two pass encoding. It's my experience that multi pass encoding is a waste of time when it comes to Youtube, Vimeo, or other similar services. The only two reasons to run multiple passes are lowering the size of the file you create and increasing the quality at a given bitrate. With regard to the size, the file you'll be uploading is not the file Youtube will deliver; absolutely everything gets recompressed, according to their own settings, so there's no worry about uploading too large a file. The file won't get appreciably smaller with more than one pass, and you won't save much time on the upload; you'll just spend an unnecessarily long time compressing the video. As for quality, again, at these bitrates the increase is mathematical, and for all the testing I've done it never makes a lick of difference. Single pass and multi pass H.264 files at six to ten megabits per second are near indistinguishable side by side, and the end result of Youtube's compression makes the difference even less evident. If you were encoding video to give directly to your viewers, and/or using bitrates on the order of less than, say, two megabits per second, you'd do well to run the two pass, but for this particular application, I wouldn't bother. I'd also suggest forcing a keyframe every Nth frame, N being your framerate. The phenomenon mentioned in the article Dave linked is also known as "keyframe flashing", and has never been a problem for me, despite the short intervals I use. Long GOP files are enough of a pain when you view them directly--random access gets more and more difficult the longer the group--but they also cause problems with Youtube. When using long groups I run into a kind of stuttering effect that I suspect is the same issue the author mentions. Forcing a keyframe once every second has successfully eliminated that in all of my upload tests. Finally, don't forget to keep your audio in stereo, as Youtube has recently made that their standard. They even went back and converted all of my old videos, which was a nice surprise.

March 16th, 2009, 05:14 AM	#6
Hubert Duijzer Regular Crew Join Date: Oct 2006 Location: Netherlands Posts: 177	I don't like MP4, i always upload wmv. 1280x720, 25p(pal) and a 4 or 5MB bitrate does look pretty good to me.