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Topic: YouTube Upload Quality

I have been working tirelessly on my newest brickfilm for 8 months, and I want to achieve maximum quality when I finally upload it to YouTube later this month. The problem is that YouTube's rendering process appears to degrade the quality of my brickfilm, and I cannot seem to circumvent this problem. My original video files are a crisp 720p HD quality, but once I post them to YouTube they lose their sharpness. I have tried various file types and settings, but they all produce the same result. I use JPEG images, my films are 15 FPS, and I do all of my video editing in Sony Movie Studio Platinum.

Does anybody have any ideas or perhaps solutions regarding this problem?

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Re: YouTube Upload Quality

On the Youtube player, you have to set the video quality to 720p or whatever it is you have. Usually Youtube automatically chooses a low resolution so the video plays faster.

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Re: YouTube Upload Quality

I have made sure the 720p resolution was selected, and the quality was still lower than it looked originally.

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Re: YouTube Upload Quality

What codec are you using export your videos to? What's the final file type?

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Re: YouTube Upload Quality

Make sure the video is exported from your software in the 720p resolution. Some cheaper programs don't export to a higher quality.

You can also try adding formatting tags to your YouTube video. Perhaps the aspect ratio is off, which can occur quite often.

It may also be that your lower quality video has already been processed by YouTube, but they haven't finished processing the higher quality video yet. This is due to the amount of videos uploaded to YouTube, and the only thing you can do to fix this is to wait. YouTube automatically will complete the upload even if the highest quality version isn't ready on their servers.

There's also some things here you could try.

Last edited by Kieren Barnett (August 4, 2015 (10:27pm))

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Re: YouTube Upload Quality

Nathan Wells wrote:

What codec are you using export your videos to? What's the final file type?


To be honest I know nothing about codecs, but I can tell you that I have been working with a WMV file type. I would use MP4, but for some reason it messes up the lighting in my videos.

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Re: YouTube Upload Quality

What software do you export the final video in? Maybe try H.264, but as far as preserving quality, I'd steer clear of WMV.

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Re: YouTube Upload Quality

1. Don't use WMV, it's just trouble.

2. Make sure your project properties match the original footage (framerate, resolution, etc)

3. Render h.264 MP4. In Movie Studio Platinum 12, I use the "Sony AVC/MVC" category, and select the appropriate template for internet video. I always customize the template to change the framerate though. I always make it match my Project Properties.

http://i.imgur.com/Jcmgbsj.gif

4. To fix the MP4 darkening your videos, go to the Media Generators tab in Movie Studio, go to Levels, and drag the "Computer RGB to Studio RGB" to the video tracks you have your videos in. This will reduce the contrast and raise the brightness just slightly in the editor program, but it will be normal-looking when it renders to MP4.

http://i.imgur.com/AtVf7uy.gif

This is how I have done it for a while, and it always seems to work for me.

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Re: YouTube Upload Quality

@rioforce

Thanks for your step-by-step instructions! I used your recommended settings and the result was good, although the file size was pretty large. Notably, I will be running my original media through the video editor twice before it ends up on YouTube, but I assume it will still be fine as long as I keep using the same export settings.

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Re: YouTube Upload Quality

Why are you going to run the media through twice? That would only compress it more.

Large file sizes and high quality go hand-in-hand. You're going to have to be willing to upload large (as in multiple gigabytes) to YouTube if you want high quality.

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Re: YouTube Upload Quality

Up until recently, I had limited internet, which resorted me to uploading poorer quality films. Now that I have broadband, it's much better, my films are now HD. If you've got unlimited internet and you have enough patience to wait for the film to upload for a while, there is no reason not to make good quality films.

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Re: YouTube Upload Quality

Nathan Wells wrote:

Why are you going to run the media through twice? That would only compress it more.

Large file sizes and high quality go hand-in-hand. You're going to have to be willing to upload large (as in multiple gigabytes) to YouTube if you want high quality.


The first time I run my media through the Sony Movie Studio, I string together my images into video clips and export them. Then I bring all of the video clips back into Movie Studio to put them together into the final brickfilm, and export it a second time. I'm sure there are better ways to go about video editing, but it's too late to change my methods as my film is due out in less than two weeks.

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Re: YouTube Upload Quality

Sunspace wrote:
Nathan Wells wrote:

Why are you going to run the media through twice? That would only compress it more.

Large file sizes and high quality go hand-in-hand. You're going to have to be willing to upload large (as in multiple gigabytes) to YouTube if you want high quality.


The first time I run my media through the Sony Movie Studio, I string together my images into video clips and export them. Then I bring all of the video clips back into Movie Studio to put them together into the final brickfilm, and export it a second time. I'm sure there are better ways to go about video editing, but it's too late to change my methods as my film is due out in less than two weeks.

What version of Movie Studio do you have? Newer version (since 10, maybe, not sure) have an image sequencing feature where you don't need to render your pictures into videos and then import the videos, you can just use the raw pictures and it treats them like videos. Rendering twice just degrades quality and makes videos look worse. Not that you have to do this for your currently project, but for future reference, you should avoid rendering twice.

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Re: YouTube Upload Quality

Alright, I think I know how to proceed now. Thanks to everyone who provided suggestions!

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