For better quality than either the Sony or MainConcept AVC, many render a DNxHD intermediate with Vegas, then encode an MP4 in HandBrake prior to uploading to YT or Vimeo.
Lots of info in this 2011 discussion from the experts. (Nick Hope, MusicVid among others)
http://www.sonycreativesoftware.com/forums/ShowMessage.asp?ForumID=4&MessageID=754942

Do you want VP9 because you think youtube will not re-encode your uploads. This is not the case. YT re-encodes everything uploaded to their own spec, whatever that may be at the time.

...or maybe you are thinking about smaller files to minimize upload time?

I'm thinking it's probably because version 9 is what he has to work with.

In line with the DNxHD recommendation, you could just render XDCAM-EX, then upload. XDCAM is a variable bit-rate codec that is highly optimized in Vegas. YouTube will convert this automatically, and will accept 20GB uploads.

That way you can avoid the gyrations of multiple sub encodes, and the walking scourge of QT limitations.

I've been using the free Video4YouTube extension from the folks at Vegasaur and am very happy with it.

Mike

With Leslie's level of technical understanding, I suggest giving Marco's frameserving to Handbrake method a try.
Do report back.

thanks for the compliment musicvid10 - however my 'technical understanding' is disappearing in direct proportion to the release of new technology ;-(

i was curious regarding vp9 after reading an article about it a few days ago (i posted a link to it). i don't really use youtube, preferring vimeo, but am asked to do stuff for it occasionally.

i have tried marco's frame>handbrake and agree the results are in general much better at low bitrates. however, and here's where i duck below the parapets, for the majority of projects i knock out my clientele wouldn't know / see / care for the quality improvement over a straight render from a sony preset.

the older i get (and how much older have i got to get is another question) the less i care about 'quality' and the more concerned i am with content. the net (youtube, vimeo, et al) are filled with gorgeous imagery, carefully shot, painstakingly tweaked, and finally hand rendered pixel by pixel to perfection - but it's like pretty wallpaper, it's omnipresent and hard to avoid. but it's also quite vacuous in many cases. i actually want more than wallpaper, i want some substance to my eye candy...

and, whilst i follow the many discussions here and elsewhere about evolving technology, 3d, 4k, whathaveyou, i see less and less of it being put to 'intelligent' use, other than as astounding imagery in and for itself.

but hey, i still have vhs tapes on my shelf of programs that i think (or thought) quite outstanding in their day (not that i can play them since i haven't owned a vtr for 8 years). and yes, i should have transferred them when i did have a deck - but that would have been a 'busman's holiday', wouldn't it ;-)

In my ignorance, I thought that VP9 stood for Vegas Pro 9, which I still use sometimes.

In case others are ignorant, here is the wiki link:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VP9

I thought the subject was referring to VP9 codec from Google when I 1st read, but then one of the 1st posts was referring to Vegas 9. Not sure what the thread is about now.

If VP9 codec is what you are referring, FFMPEG has a version that allows conversion to VP9, but I think its still experimental. The Wiki link says this as well.

I would be interested to understand what is to be gained by encoding this format? I believe Youtube would just re-encode this format just like AVC, it would be hard to hit exactly on googles flavor even if they were streaming it.

This is an old thread but whatever.

There are more ways to get VP9 than to upload in 1440p.

So, here are the known ones;
Rendering in 1440p
Lots of views
(?) Lots of subscribers

Some people just randomly get VP9 on their videos.

Here are the "secret" / "unknown" ways to get VP9.;
(KIM) You don't need to render in 1440p or have a lot of views.
1. Go to "Video Manager," find your video, click "Edit", click on the "Enhancements" tab, and drag the little preview slider all the way to the left. You don't touch anything else, just drag the slider to the left and click save changes. Your video should get VP9 soon.
2. Enable Google Drive for your channel if it's not already. Go to Google Drive, click "Upload" and select the rendered video or just drag and drop into the general area, when it's done uploading, go to your YouTube, click "Upload", in the top right there should be something that says "Import Videos", click "Import", find your video and select it, when the video is done processing it will have VP9 in a little bit.

1. Go to "Video Manager," find your video, click "Edit", click on the "Enhancements" tab, and drag the little preview slider all the way to the left. You don't touch anything else, just drag the slider to the left and click save changes. Your video should get VP9 soon.
 

i tried this on 2 of my videos and it worked. oh my god thank you so much!

I have three systems using Internet Explorer and Google's own Chrome browsers, Safari on my iPad, a 4K Sony XBR TV, two Blu-ray players and I have yet to see any difference in my youtube videos after doing this procedure. Did I miss the secret handshake? I'm still trying to understand why I care what youtube encodes and streams, when none of my devices appear to make use of it and none of my videos appear to look any better.

Boy, is this thread rabbit salad.VP9 is a codec, a distant clone of h265/hevc. It is owned by Google. YouTube accepts it, but it is not passed by YT; it is encoded, same as h264 or any other.

"Be careful what you wish for" is operative for those who think it should be available in Vegas. It's slow as snails, and has few redeeming attributes, except in the eyes of Google.

Anyone remember VP8? (oh, It was a Google codec too...)

I have three systems using Internet Explorer and Google's own Chrome browsers, Safari on my iPad, a 4K Sony XBR TV, two Blu-ray players and I have yet to see any difference in my youtube videos after doing this procedure. Did I miss the secret handshake? I'm still trying to understand why I care what youtube encodes and streams, when none of my devices appear to make use of it and none of my videos appear to look any better.

Is this screenshot from a browser? If so, are you using some sort of browser extension to see the stream data? Me want.

It's just Chrome. Right click select Nerd Info.

The point of VP9 in Youtube is than for high motion for example while YT H264 create too much blocky artifacts, VP9 make things a bit more blurry and avoid these blocky artifacts, what is a good improvement for those with high motion footage. It will not look great like a high bitrate footage, it only improve a bit removing the annoying blocky artifacting from H264 for high motion footage.
YT H264 5.7Mb/s 1080p
YT VP9 7.2Mb/s 1080p :

YT H264 always create heavy blocky artifacts in keyframes for high motion+high detail, that H264 scenes with blocky artifacts are the more annoying ones because they keep blinking like in a pixelation of blocky artifacts.

Chummy! If you keep backing up your assertions with real data, you and I are going to get on just fine.

VP9 still won't help playback on devices that are unable to play it and thus require youtube to stream the avc version. Or on devices whose manufacturers "just refuse to participate".

[conspiracy theory]

Perhaps youtube isn't working that hard on their avc encodes because they have an interest in their own encoder.

[/conspiracy theory]

If you mean for mobile device yes, there's the restriction of few devices supporting VP9 decoding still and most only support H264/H265. For PC we can run 1080p VP9 on almost any machine even with an old CPU in most of browsers i know of.

There's no conspiracy in that thought, VP9 fastest encoding settings does 9fps in my CPU and is limited to use 4 threads for 1080p encoding, while x264 veryfast does something like 80-100fps. Youtube uses some of fast AVC presets while for VP9 their preset used is something would match x264 slower. Yet even using slower presets in x264 it's not as efficient to avoid blocky artifacts for intense fast motion+details like VP9/HEVC does.

VP9/HEVC always add a "special blur" to regions where has too much details to save bitrate and helps avoid blocky/pixelation artifacts in motion with low bitrates. AVC won't work like that, x264 try to preserve sharp details even at lower bitrates and create blocky artifacts instead of getting rid of details first like new codecs.

 

i have no idea what you guys are talking about, in my case i just want vp9 because of this problem https://www.reddit.com/r/youtube/comments/5qx1xa/youtube_is_making_small_channels_struggle_to_grow/

whenever my youtube video uses the "avc" codec, it looks like 240p when viewing at 360p, 360p when viewing at 480p. the quality degrades so bad.

by using Walsh "secret" method, i got rid of this problem.