If your clip is 200 or 300 MB in size it sounds like you're using very low or no compression. If you make a 320x240 mp4 file, it won't be anywhere near that big.

There is no point in uploading high resolution or very high bitrate files, because (as far as I know) YouTube re-encodes ALL submitted video into their own format (flash video?) which is very highly compressed. The actual stored video size is 320x240 but it defaults to being upscaled during playback in the YouTube window.
You do want a clean noise-free image because if it has any noise, the compression will make it look worse

Unless you get a "Director" account, each clip is limited to 10 minutes, but most of the YouTube audience has a shorter attention span than that anyway!

http://www.youtube.com/t/howto_makevideo
Uploading Your Videos to YouTube
...Unless you're a professional video producer, we recommend that you save your videos as either QuickTime .MOV, Windows .AVI, or .MPG files— these are the most common formats and they work well within our system. We specifically recommend the MPEG4 (Divx, Xvid) format at 320x240 resolution with MP3 audio. Resizing your video to these specifications before uploading will help your clips look better on YouTube.

That "Windows .AVI" is pretty ambiguous! Surprising they would say that, because the underlying codec of an AVI (or MOV for that matter) could be anything. But probably the average reader wouldn't understand "DV AVI" or something like that.

If you give them .flv it doesn't seem like they re-encode.

I uploaded a few for a client and they were the exact same size and quality as the originals. Makes sense, why would they convert a .flv file to .flv.

So the answer is, if you want control over the quality of your video, do conversion to .flv yourself.

jbeale:
I love that line---most of the audiance on you tube doesn't have an attention span more than 10 minutes---
JJK

What do you use to render an .flv file and what settings? What is your vegas source file before rendering to flash, Video for Windows .avi, DV or uncompressed?

I have done numeroous tests with wmv and mp4

Auto frame sixe - 896Kbps template
Audio: 128 Kbps, 48,000 Hz, AAC.
Video: 768 Kbps, 29.970 fps, Multimedia 320x240 auto-sized. Video rendering quality Best.
Also, this mp4 video had stereo audio that YouTube has changed to mono.

looks the same as:

Audio: 128 Kbps, 44,100 Hz wma.
Video: 1000 Kbps, 30 fps, Animation 320x240. Video rendering quality Best.
Video smoothness 100

640x 480 makes no difference for mp4 or wmv.

The best results are for minimal motion and motion graphics, good quality camera makes a difference, good lighting. B&W footage looks pretty good.

YMMV

Jeff

Dude, when I watch uTube, my attention span is 3 min per clip max. True.

Most of what I see there knocks me out after 3 seconds ...

Marco

In vegas render finished project as uncompressed avi.

Then use Sorenson or On2 ( or flash itself ) to render .flv
The cheapest ( I think ) option is Sorenson squeeze for flash ( $100 )

You'll get better results with third party apps like Sorenson or Flix as flash doesn't do 2 pass encoding. Squeeze also has some additional options designed for the web ( gamma, sharpening, and so on )

Normally I'd use 1K, but for youtube 512kb would work better ( 1k works fine on a normal site but, will buffer too much on youtube )

Deusx, rendering out a higher quality for YouTube shouldn't make it buffer any higher then if you rendered it out a lower quality. YouTube converts any file to its own format anyway.

They use .flv video, so if you give them .flv video I don' think they convert. That's why it will buffer if you give them a high bitrate .flv file. They won't convert it.

I'm pretty sure that is the way they do it, because files uploaded were on line almost immediately and file sizes were exactly the same ( they would be smaller if they converted anything ), and quality looked the same.

thanks guys will try it, as have now got Sorenson Squeeze..

I take it i pick one of the .flv to convert as it has given me a list of every .flv convert going! ie:

lge.flv
Med.flv
sm.flv
256.flv
512.flv etc etc!

Also is it best to do .flv or flash movie .swf for youtube??

So, you want to produce the best possible video and audio quality for YouTube? Their encoder really isn't that bad, but here are some specs.

Video
   - Resolution: 320 x 240
   - Frame Rate: 29.970
   - Aspect Ratio: 1.000

Audio
   - Phonic: Mono
   - Bit Depth: 16
   - Sampling rate: 22050 Mhz


Now, with that said, here are the specs on their encoding:

Video
   - Format: Flash Video 1
   - Bitrate: CBR, 265 kbps

Audio
   - Format: MPEG-2 Layer 3
   - Bitrate: VBR, roughly 65 kbps

If anyone or myself discover any corrections to me made, I'll update. I gathered these specs by analyzing various FLV files downloaded from YouTube. You can use a free application, Riva FLV Encoder to encode your video files close to these specifications. Even after creating my own customized XML Preset, my FLV files were encoded with video at 281 kbps and audio at 64 kbps. These settings will not give you an accurate representation of the YouTube encoded final product. It is possible that if you encode your video to the precise settings I have previously mentioned, your YouTube copy will be virtually identical. On the other hand, they may re-encode ANYTHING uploaded to their servers, and in that case it may be best to upload something with either greater or lesser bitrates. We could each experiment and report our results. :)

>>>512.flv etc etc!

>>>>Also is it best to do .flv or flash movie .swf for youtube??

do a flv. swf is just a container, and is used to start playing the .flv file ( Unless you have some flash player, you can't play .flv by just doubleclicking them. In any case, if you export swf, you should still have swf and .flv exported. You only upload .flv to youtube. But if you want to view video on your pc, you would open the swf file and will be able to view video.

I rarely go below 750kbs, but for youtube you may want to choose 512. Anything over 750 that I uloaded was buffering way too much ( one of the reasons I'm pretty sure they do not re-encode if you upload .flv format yourself )

deusx, I'm going to try that out later - uploading a pre-compressed FLV, downloading it, and then comparing that file to the original.

I'm using FFMPEG to encode all of my files, and I also have the K-Lite Mega Codec Pack. If you really do have a 512 kbps video stream, then that is well over the typical 265 kbps encoding done by YouTube. Do you have any links to share? This could be some exciting information for YouTube unloaders!

btw, for anyone wanting to go beyond the restrictions of youtube, checkout zudeo. The client is a nice ui wrapper around the azureus bittorrent application. They support HD rez and accept mov and wmv files. There are lots of HD rez teasers and trailers for movies and games along with other content. The only issue is you need to have the various players installed (Windows Media, Quicktime....)

http://www.zudeo.com/az-web/app

Its not a streaming site, but a file download and upload site. Uploading and accessing and downloading is free. When logged in, like any other bittorrent site, you become part of the distribution network. Currently one of the best ways to show your work in a relativley high quality way.

is one example of 750kb video and it buffers a lot.
Nothing enlghtening to share really. I didn't do any editing here or shooting ( somebody in France did it ).

On her website we used all videos at 1mbps and on most broadband connections it worked fine, no buffering at all, then downgraded to 750kbs ( just to make sure ) , and that is what was uploaded to youtube.

So the fact that it buffers and file sizes are exactly the same compared to youtube files, makes me think they do not re-compress .flv files. The only loss of quality comes from originals being 400 x 300, and you tube embeds them at 450 x 370.

The videos weren't that great in the first place since they all came in already compressed.

So to answer the original question: from Vegas I'd render an uncompressed avi, import that into Squeeze or flix and output a 512kbs .flv file , and match the youtube video size ( 450x337 , the remaining 33 pixelse are bottom controls).

If you upload that , you should end up with the exact same video you created.

From what I've read online I thinkthat Youtube re-encodes regardless of how close it is to the specs they themselves use. Now you're telling me that that isn't the case and I really want to believe you. Does anyone know for sure?

If they re-encoded that .flv I showed, then it would not buffer ( at least not as much ) and file size would be smaller ( file size of the file you take out of your temporary internet files folder, after viewing it on youtube matches the original ).

For me , that is at least 99% proof that .flv doesn't get re-encoded.

deusx, download GSpot and analyze the FLV that you posted to YouTube, the one you had BEFORE you uploaded that is. Then, go onto YouTube and download your video. If you don't know how, copy the URL of your video to SaveVid and they will provide you with an FLV download. Use GSpot to compare the two. If they really are identical then you are truly onto something my friend.

I just get the you tube version from cache ( easy to spot even though they rename it to something else )

But, Gspot gives me no real additional info on either file.

AlI I have is same info as before, both files are 31.4 MB
Had youtube recompressed it to their standard, supposed 216kbs, file size would be much smaller and it would look much worse. There are a few bytes of difference, but that could be just due to renaming/adding a tag??

GSpot, most importantly, tells you if they changed the bitrate of codec on your video or audio. You should at least see two things the same or two things different.

OK, I had a wrong version of Gspot, downloaded the latest and both files are 1010 kbs. ( I thought it was 750, because some were re-uploaded at lower bit rates, but I guess that one is still the original 1Mbs )

But we didn't ned gspot to tell us that :-) since both were 31.4MB

So they are the same, and the only thing that makes the one on youtube slightly worse looking ( barely noticeable ) is resizing.