YouTube Optimization

Dave wrote on 3/9/2009, 8:33 PM

Hi,

Does anyone have a "tried and true" method for optimizing videos to be shown on YouTube?

My original format is 720x480 SD.

I've experimented a bit and seem to get the best results using WMV11 while keeping the original resolution size (720x480). However, the video is letterboxed and pillarboxed on YouTube.

Anyone have a better solution?

Thanks.

Comments

Ivan Lietaert wrote on 3/9/2009, 11:19 PM

Youtube says this: 1280 x 720 (16:9 HD) and 640 x 480 (4:3 SD)

For hd, I use the wmv hd template 720p.

Sonata wrote on 3/11/2009, 7:40 AM

I upload *SD* 720x480 widescreen movies from my DV camera to YouTube all the time, and this is what I do:

First, I have to "crop" each event using the preset 16:9 crop within the "pan&crop" dialogue (otherwise you get very thin bars on the top and bottom).

Then, I "render as..." using these settings:

640x360
Square pixels
Bitrate 3M

The above preselects whatever format is used (I can't remember if it works out being WMV11 or not, but I think it does).

This is done using the custom options, so I have saved my own template.

The result I get is a video that fills the widescreen YouTube player completely. 50% of my videos end up with a "watch in high quality" option and 50% do not get the high quality option.

When embedding videos, you can use the "customize" icon to the right of the embed link to choose sizes and colors to embed the video on another site, including 640x385 which is more or less the size of the player on the YouTube site itself.