I wish this had a simple answer, unfortunately it doesn't.

Firstly it all depends on what you start with. If you start with blu-ray quality HD like 24Kbps 1080 video that is a good start.

Did you produce your video to the same format and quality as the raw footage?

Lastly, a little story. Last year I found some youtube footage which just blew me away with the quality even playing it back through youtube at 320 let along 1080.

I am talking stunning quality. I actually traced down the name of the camera used and found out it was a $42,000 professional video camera. So you see it also depends on what you start with as to what you end up with.

So to sum a few things up, bit rate is usually more important that video size eg 720 or 1080.

All of this doesn't even touch on codecs or formats used to produce your final video.

Lastly did you produce your video then manually uploaded to youtube. I say this because the default settings using PowerDirector to automatically upload to youtube is not the best quality.

I am getting reasonable youtube footage with my GoPro HD shooting at 920 at 12Kbps and stretching to 16:9 aspect ratio then producing to H.264 15-20Kbps and manually uploading to youtube.

Cheers

Robert2 S My youtube channel====> http://www.youtube.com/user/relate2?feature=mhsn

How long ago did you upload it. The HD takes a while to process. It sometimes plays at a lower quality until finished. __________________________________
CORNBLOSSOM

Thanks, I'm shooting Gopro at 1080 and produced an mp4. But I did let PD9 upload for me. I'm going to produce some test clips at different formats and see what happens. Might upload some things to Viemo also.

I have found the raw footage from my GoPro is a bit washed out. I use Fix/Enhance- then 1/4-1/2 setting in "Video Enhancement" which in one click gives a boost in colour, sharpness and clarity.

I used to have to give a tweak to Contrast, Saturation and Sharpness but using "Video Enhancement" does it in one click.

Cheers

Robert2 S My youtube channel====> http://www.youtube.com/user/relate2?feature=mhsn

just ran a test clip at H.264 1440x1080 24kbps with 1/2 click enhancement. VERY NICE! Thanks

No problem, clad to help.

Just one thing about producing 12Kbps video at 24Kbps is you really don't gain much better resolution just a much larger file in Mbytes.

I did some testing last year with youtube rending at Blu-ray settings of 24Kbps -v- 15-20Kbps on my GoPro video and could not see any difference going to 24Kbps, so to save me upload time and megabytes I settled on 15-20K. If I wasn't so picky I would have stuck with 12-15Kbps. My youtube channel====> http://www.youtube.com/user/relate2?feature=mhsn

I'm sort of finding this out on my own. I just did a test at 1440x1080 24kbps to DVD and the quality wasn't much better than an mp4. Which setting in the H.264 Av drop down window do you suggest? Thanks.

Something you may not know a normal DVD will not take 1440X1080 resolution unless you burn it as an AVCHD DVD which will only play in a Blu-ray player or computer. Normal DVD resolution is something like 704x480

Something I have just noticed with my H.264 video settings it seems as though the last update patch has taken away my option to choose a variable bit rate. I can only choose a set number not a range.

If you go into H.264 AVC you can make up a custom profile.

My profile is 1920X1080-progressive-high profile-15000 bit rate-max slider-deblocking ticked- Audio-stereo-192Kbps.

Cheers

Robert2 S

My youtube channel====> http://www.youtube.com/user/relate2?feature=mhsn

Thanks,
you've been a great help. I was sort of surprised to find a fellow GoPro owner on this forum. When I was looking for editing software, I posted to the Gopro HD forum. EVERYONE there told me to get Sony Vegas. I was looking for something a little more user friendly so I mentioned PD9 and they got a little snippy with me. I'm very happy with PD9 and it runs smoothly on my PC with 64 bit Vista SP1 ( Vegas required SP2). I think I made the right choice. Thanks again.

Yes I have tried virtually every video editing software out there using their trial versions, including the $800 Sony Vegas Pro and nothing comes close to matching the ease of PD and it's $100 price tag.

Cheers

Robert2 S My youtube channel====> http://www.youtube.com/user/relate2?feature=mhsn