It's been my observation that YouTube always encodes the video, regardless of what I upload, so I just upload a high quality MP4 and let them do their thing. __________________________________
CORNBLOSSOM

I figured they would as well, but it would be nice to upload in 66% less time with similar final results.

Hi Bastian -

I'd point you to a previous post I made about this, but it's gone! Fortunately, I had the steps saved in a Word doc so I don't need to retype...

Here's how you can make an MPEG-4 profile with the bitrate you want (3000 kbps). No doubt, I'll be corrected if I've missed something.

1. In the Produce module, select MPEG-4 High Quality (1280x720) & click the + button to make a custom profile
2. Set the bitrate at 6000kbps (which is the minimum allowed)
3. Give the profile a name if you like, or remember its label (I just called mine TONY 3)
4. Save your project & close PD (not completely necessary).

Now - go to C:\Users\user name\AppData\Roaming\CyberLink\PowerDirector\10.0 and locate "Profile.ini"

5. Open the .ini file in notepad
6. Locate the custom profile you just made (it'll be the last one)
7. Scan through the text to find "<Video BitRate>6000000<Min BitRate>3000000<Max BitRate>6500000<"
8. Change 6000000 to 3000000
9. Save & close notepad

Now - open your project in PD & go to Produce > MPEG-4 & select your custom profile from the dropdown menu. Mine's named TONY 3 so it's easy to find.

10. Name your video & hit Start.

The profile you just created will always be available to you in the Custom dropdown.

You'll also find instructions here http://forum.cyberlink.com/forum/posts/list/17939.page

Bastian - I'm not sure I've ever understood exactly what happens to videos when they're processed in YouTube. I'll do some digging.

Cheers - Tony


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Bastian -

Haven't conquered the YouTube thing yet, but here's some interesting reading...

What to do/not to do
http://support.google.com/youtube/bin/static.py?hl=en&guide=1728585&topic=1728569&page=guide.cs

Advanced Encoding
http://support.google.com/youtube/bin/static.py?hl=en&guide=1728585&topic=1728573&page=guide.cs

Cheers - Tony
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Yeah, they say use the highest bitrate possible and that makes sense - when they downsample to 3mbps you want the best source possible to get the best 3mbps stream possible. I'm not sure how much uglier a 3mbps to 3mbps recompression will be, but I'm curious to find out.

I may prefer to upload videos in 1/3 the time, if only a small degradation in detected.

There is also the possibility that in the future youtube might increase their maximum quality video bitrate. I cannot imagine the CPU processing it would take for them to re-render all of the HD content on youtube though.

Keep in mind, they are most likely using a very high end "professional" encoder, most likely multipass as well. There is absolutely no comparison between a consumer single pass encoder 3mbps stream (like PD10) with a "professional" encoder 3mbps stream if both started with a very high quality video and was downsampled to create 3mbps.

Most likely the reason they say to upload the highest quality you have. They are much more capable at creating a good lower bitrate stream than you.

I've even seen some DVR's that create a much better picture quality at a given bitrate than what PD10 can do.


Jeff

HI,
this is a video I shot with MY Canon Vixia SD camcorder of a friends son 4th Birthday. I imported to PD 9 for the production. At first You tube did not like the size, but there was a 'tag' for uploading larger file size but I had to enter my 'cell phone #' once I got the confirmation e-mail I uploaded as Hi def full movie (i just had to enter my cell phone ## to verify it was me. This is directly though You Tube tho' not Director.
Jim

http://youtu.be/rTetUr-4_oQ Intel i7-2600@3.4Gz Geforce 560ti-1GB Graphic accelerator, windows 7 Premium 12GB memory

Visit GranPapa64's channel for your YouTube experience of the day!

I did some experimenting.

I downloaded youtube's 3mbps stream and re-uploaded it to youtube so it would re-compress their own 3mbps stream.
Them I downloaded THAT and compared the first 3mbps to the re-encoded 3mbps to see how much quality loss there was.
Verdict: I could barely tell the difference.

Then I created a new 3mbps profile as suggested above and compared youtube's 3mbps stream to powerdirector's 3mbps stream.
Verdict: I could barely tell the difference.

Verdict on my verdict: I'm going to start using the custom 3mbps mp4 720P profile for most things meant for youtube.


Below:
A comparison of youtube video quality when the source content was 9mbps 720P vs 3mbps 720P

An below here is a comparison of 3mbps youtube stream (down-converted from 9mbps)
And a custom 3mbps stream created in power director 10.

This compare's youtube's 3mbps compression algorithm with powerdirectors custom 3mbps.

Video from powerdirector 3mbps custom profile: (24MB upload)


Video from powerdirector 9mbps default mp4 720p profile: (71MB upload)


& <Class>MPEG-4 AVC <Name>720P-3mbps <Description> Custom Profile -1 <Output FileName> <DescID>11922 <NameID>11923 <Group>2 <File Format Class>11 <Video Format Class>8 <Audio Format Class>10 <Stream Flag>3 <Field Order>0 <Attribute>40083 <Video BitRate>3000000 <Min BitRate>3000000 <Max BitRate>3500000 <Video Quality>0 <Video Width>1280 <Video Height>720 <Frame Rate>29.969999 <Profile Level>65357 <Pattern>IBPBPBPBPBPBPBPBPBPBPBPBPBPBP <Pre Processing>0 <Resize>1 <Flip Video>0 <Speed Quality Indicator>7 <Interlacing>0 <Encoder Mode>0 <App Type>2 <Dynamic GOP>0 <Deblock>1 <EntryMode>1 <Encoder Type>32 <Audio Layer>2 <Audio Mode>2 <Audio BitRate>160000 <Audio Channels>2 <Audio SamplesPerSec>1 <Audio BitsPerSample>1 <Misc>0 <SamplesPerFrame>0 &&

Bastian:

Verdict on my verdict: I'm going to start using the custom 3mbps mp4 720P profile for most things meant for youtube

Hi you two,

I'm glad you are looking in to this.
I've never been able to get a grip on what YT does exactly with my videos.
Help sites and forums seem to not agree on different things.
Mostly I've uploaded .mp4's, but the last one I used .m2ts because I didn't bother upload a converted
one, as the file size didn't differ that much. As a download I'm offered and .mp4 720p anyway.
So Tony, do you agree with Bastian on the above?
3mbps isn't much?

Nina

Just something.
https://www.petitpoisvideo.com

The proof is in the pudding. If you watch the two youtube videos and think the difference between them is negligible then you're wasting time / bandwidth.

I guess youtube's compression isn't as amazing as I thought. I'm instead surprised how much quality is retained at 3mbps vs 9.

The only time this really maters to me is when I'm doing video of something time sensitive, where I want to get it uploaded the same day. Anything "news" like, the first one to post is the one that gets the views.

Of course, for home viewing / archiving I'd still want to create a full-quality version, but if I want to get things on youtube in 1 hour instead of 3, then the custom profile is the way to go.

I'm going to make a custom 1080P profile as well.
I just downloaded a 1080 clip from youtube and the bitrate was 6mbps, high profile, progressive.
Whats funny is audio quality is slightly less on 1080 clips. 140kbps on the 1080 clip and 151kbps on the 720 clip.
The source content was 190kbps audio

Bastian -

That's excellent investigating you're doing. We're all learning from it!

I downloaded both the ski clips from YouTube at the highest quality I could using Mozilla Firefox (DownloadHelper)... both about 23MB & both with the same video & audio bitrates.

I put the two clips into PD & masked one to get a side-by-side view. At a few points during the video (preview & produced file), you could spot the edge of the mask... meaning there is some slight difference there. For most of it, my poor old eyes couldn't see much difference. I couldn't see much difference on YT either.



Of course, it's a bit of a convoluted investigation process... upload, view, download, test... but I think you've shown that the difference in bandwidth isn't reflected (at all) in the viewing quality on YouTube.

Good job!

Cheers - Tony
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I have one more experiment to try later.
Upload a 6mbps 1080 clip and a 6mbps 720 clip.
Both should be the same file size.
I have a theory the 1080 one will look better than the 720 one when viewed at the max quality on youtube.

What that means, if it turns out true, is that you should not upload 720p, even if the native source is 720P.
You should upconvert to 1080, and use a bitrate of at least 6000. It would take the same time to upload the 1080 clip, yet retain more information than a 720.

The 1080 clip will retain more detail from your native 720 clip than if you were to upload just 720.
That seems obvious, since 1080 clips on youtube are allowed 6mbps and 720 are only allowed 3mbps.

P.S. It may look cold in that clip, but it was actually 80 degrees F outside!
I was sweating in the sun while filming people downhill skiing. So weird!

The 1080 clip will retain more detail from your native 720 clip than if you were to upload just 720.
That seems obvious, since 1080 clips on youtube are allowed 6mbps and 720 are only allowed 3mbps.

I'm not sure that it is quite as straightforward. The following posts might help explain my understanding of the "bitrate/quality/filesize" issue

http://forum.cyberlink.com/forum/posts/list/17428.page#88453
with more detail here
http://forum.cyberlink.com/forum/posts/list/17428.page#88459

if one adds into the mix that intelligent CBR or VBR encoding may make the content of the video stream perhaps the most important variable (simply put for illustration, fast colourful motion .v. a single colour brick wall) then I'm not sure a single approach is necessarily applicable in all circumstances.

I think also that the "quality" of 1080 upscaled 720p may not necessarily be better than the original, it must depend on the upscaling algorithms - again simply put "you can't add what is not there, you can only make a best estimate". AS JL has said there is no performance comparison between high quality "hollywood" encoders and consumer encoders.

I suppose that, pragmatically (given a number of us did a lot of experimenting when .mp4s became more common some time ago), and given that youtube is constantly altering/improving its file handling I am wary of adopting a fixed approach.

However, when time is an essential factor, I accept that it will be important to make some adjustments and experiment to gain an advantage, after all I've just spent 3 months on an island with a terminally slow, often intermittent (when it rained), wi-fi internet access that made any video upload/download virtually impossible.

Cheers
Adrian
Life is really simple, but we insist on making it complicated. (see below)
Confucius
AMD Phenom IIX6 1055T, win10, 5 internal drives, 7 usb drives, struggling power supply.

I'm not suggesting that the 720P image upscaled to 1080 on youtube will be as good as the original 720P prior to upload.
What I'm suggesting is that at full screen playback the 1080 video (6mbps) will have more detail than the full screen playback of 720 (3mbps)

Sample 1:
720 9mbps upscaled to 1080p 6mbps, viewed full screen at 1080 on youtube (youtube recompressed to 6 mbps)
Sample 2:
720 9mbps viewed full screen at 720 on youtube (youtube recompressed to 3mbps)

I'm about to find out.

Well, my theory was wrong. The youtube uploaded as 720 looks better than the higher rate at 1080

720-9mbps scaled to 1080-6mbps:
(6mbps youtube)

720-9mbps
(3mbps youtube)

I have done a lot of testing with my GoPro videos on youtube. I have settled on rendering to 1080 at 15,000 - 17,000Kbps. Know that I am not so worried about the size of the upload, more interested in getting the best video quality.

A couple of things I have noticed over the years.

1. I have found I get better 720 youtube quality when I upload at 1080.

2. A hell of a lot depends on the camera used to take the original video. I wish I still had the link but I found a low mb video (about 100mb for 4 minutes) where the quality blew me away, I mean it was stunning. I ended up tracking down the camera used and it was a $25,000 video camera.

For example some of my Youtube testing videos using my GoPro HD1 at blu-ray quality render of 25,000 kbps are not as good as my new GoPro HD2 at 12,000 - 15,000 kbps

4. People have so many different requirements, I think the best way is to take a test 1 minute video and render it to various settings, upload them and find out what works for you. My youtube channel====> http://www.youtube.com/user/relate2?feature=mhsn

Hi Bastian74 ,
Online encoders are used on sites such as YouTube and others. The ffmpeg codec was once the favourite to create the streaming flash flv format online. The downside for the website is the time it takes to carry out the task which although pretty quick is dependent upon the settings given to the codec to control the end result. From my experience, the input file does have a bearing on what the end result will be. An uploaded mp4 would be more likely to retain quality than another (i haven't tested for a few years). Matching the output source can have a marked effect on the render times IF streaming sites allow.

Keep testing and reporting please - an interesting thread to read.

Dafydd