Thanks. Do you know if YouTube re-encodes your AVC videos, or is the quality high enough that it just doesn't matter?


I hope to see H.264 support and YouTube templates in the next version of Vegas.

> I hope to see H.264 support and YouTube templates in the next version of Vegas.

Well... if you bought the next version of Vegas (which would be Vegas Pro 9.0 for you) you would already have them. ;-)

As A. Grant already said, Vegas Pro 9.0 has templates for YouTube under the Sony AVC encoder. BTW, AVC = H.264 so Vegas has had H.264 support for several releases and offers you a choice of the Sony AVC encoder or Main Concept AVC encoder.

~jr

youtube has always re-coded my videos regardless of codec. I normally use WMV with good results.

I get fairly good results with DivX.

>BTW, AVC = H.264<

Bingo! That's what I was looking for, thanks!

I generally upgrade to the next iteration of Vegas at its initial release to take advantage of the pricing, but a) I didn't see a clear benefit of V9 to my particular workflow, and b) many early adopters found issues with the product. But if I'd known there were YouTube templates I'd would have purchases the product anyway.

I've seen several recent posts from folks expressing disappointment with AVC rendering quality. Have you been satisfied with the quality of your YouTube renders using AVC?

Do you use the Sony CODEC, or Main Concept? Any preferred settings?

Thanks again for the AVC = H.264 insight!

Guy

>youtube has always re-coded my videos regardless of codec. I normally use WMV with good results. <

I supply our product videos in wmv format and the ad agency transcodes them to a Flash-compatible format for use on the marketing website (www.ridgidupgrade.com). They also get posted to YouTube by our OEM partner (

The quality has been OK, but going forward I'd like to avoid the transcode process. You said that you "normally" use wmv; what other formats do you use? Also, have you tried the AVC CODEC?

Thanks,

Guy

>I get fairly good results with DivX. <

I believe DivX is one of YouTube's preferred formats. I didn't see DivX as a rendering choice (at least in V8). How do you render your Vegas timeline to DivX?

Thanks,

Guy

I've recently startes using the Sony AVC MP4 format for rendering and have been very happy. I had previously used WMV, but switched after seeing in my opinion a significant difference for the better.

To check out our YouTube material do a search for KalamazooBusinesses.

Chad

You said that you "normally" use wmv; what other formats do you use? Also, have you tried the AVC CODEC?

I've use quicktime & AVC, but it still reencoded. I chose WMV for two reasons: every site I upload to (moddb.com & youtube) accepts that format & then I have a nice copy that's playable via download or off CD/DVD/USB drive on every computer I could find (Windows, OSX & Linux all seem to support wmv out of the box for the most part)..

> Have you been satisfied with the quality of your YouTube renders using AVC?

I have been very satisfied but you can judge for yourself. Here is a link to one of the tutorials that I did. This was encoded using the Sony AVC codec at only 3.5Mbps to keep the size down because the content is long. I used the Internet 16:9 HD 30p preset and just turned the bit-rate down and changed the framerate to 24p because I captured 24p.

The settings are:

Video format: AVC
Frame size: High definition (1280x720)
Profile: Baseline
Entropy coding: CAVLC
Frame rate: 24.000 (Film)
Field order: None (progressive scan)
Pixel aspect ratio: 1.0000
Bit rate (bps): 3,500,000

Here is the YouTube video (watch it in fullscreen HD):



~jr

> I didn't see DivX as a rendering choice (at least in V8). How do you render your Vegas timeline to DivX?

Install the DivX codec. Then select Video for Windows (*.avi) as the render type, select a template that is close to what you want and press the Custom... button. On the Video tab change the Video format: to DivX 6.8.3 Codec. (or whatever version you installed.) Then save that for future use.

~jr

>I've recently startes using the Sony AVC MP4 format...<

The video looks good, I'll definitely try AVC, thanks.


Guy

>This was encoded using the Sony AVC codec at only 3.5Mbps...<

Video looks great and plays without pausing at all (many videos do not play this smoothly).

I can't thank you enough for sharing your settings -- this is going to save me a ton of time. Thanks also for putting up tutorials on your website, especially the one for editing Camtasia Studio footage in Vegas, as I need to begin using that program very soon.

Guy

Thanks to everyone for generously sharing your thoughts and practices for rendering high quality video for YouTube.

Special thanks to JohnnyRoy -- I've tried using the Sony AVC in the past but either couldn't get it to render (error message indicating mis-match with project settings) or the render quality was poor and the file size was very large. I just rendered a project with your settings, and WOW! It just looks exceptional and the file size is small. I could have invested (even more) days and never discovered these settings.

Guy

I like JR video. But it's not crystal clear as Andrew Kramer tutorials on Video CoPilot site. I want that type of quality. I've emailed VIDEO COPILOT asking what software or encoder are they using? I'd notice a different between every tutorial I have. Whatever they using.... it’s one of the best-looking video on the Internet.

"I like JR video. But it's not crystal clear as Andrew Kramer tutorials on Video CoPilot site.Hmmm... I like the JR Video better. Did you click the "HD" button in the lower right of the YourTube video player?

...Jerry

> I can't thank you enough for sharing your settings -- this is going to save me a ton of time.

You're welcome but I can't take the credit. These are the default settings that come with Vegas Pro 9.0. I just turned down the bitrate because my tutorials ran around 20 minutes but for shorter pieces you could place it back at 6Mbps and get some stellar HD out of it.

> Thanks also for putting up tutorials on your website, especially the one for editing Camtasia Studio footage in Vegas, as I need to begin using that program very soon.

I'm glad you found them useful. I've been wanting to update the site and get some video tutorials on it. As long as it's helping people, that gives me the incentive to work on it more. I was hoping to get it re-done over the Christmas vacation but that didn't happen. So much to do... so little time. ;-)

~jr