Make Your YouTube Videos Look Better - Compression Tips

Since Youtube introduced their improved video quality, there have been some questions about the best compression method and file formats to upload. We found a great article on WillVideoForFood.com that explains in great detail the ins and outs of uploading on Youtube.

Below we summarized Nalts steps, but you can click here to visit the full article.

1. First, use the H.264 codec, which is the best “mpeg4 codec” currently available.
2. Export quality in the best setting you can. If there’s a choice (low to high) pick the best.
3. Your size (aspect ratio) will normally be 640×480. You may want to experiment with higher HD settings but be careful to select “letterbox” if you use wide-screen videos. Otherwise your video will get squished into a dimension it doesn’t belong.
4. You DO want to de-interlace your video. Interlace no likely. De-interlace your NTSC or PAL source videos, especially if it’s high motion
5. If you want to get anal, here are some of the other settings you may see:

• Set rate control to 1-pass Constant Bit Rate (CBR). (So no Variable Bit Rate, no Multipass). YouTube transcoders dig CBR.
• Set key frames to every 30 frames or less. This impacts file size, so you could go as low as 15.
• Set data rate to 10,000 kbps or more, depending on the length of your video.
• Set frame rate to 29.97 or 30 fps.
• Set audio compression AAC: 44.1 KHz, 128 kbps, 16 bits, stereo.
• I don’t mess with filters, but you could experiment with contrast or sharpening filters.