Uploading HD content to YouTube

Andy14

Newbie Joined: Mar 22, 2012 06:33 Messages: 13 Offline

Solved by

Mar 22, 2012 06:40

Morning all. Hoping someone can help here, I'm fairly new to PD10, but after years of using Premiere have a good background in Video Editing.

I'm shooting AVCHD video on my Sony A65 @ 50fps. I'm then taking this footage and editing it in Cyberlink PowerDirector 10 Ultra. Then I use PD10u to upload the video to YouTube directly in 1080p format.

Resulting videos can be seen here as examples. -- http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLB57BB6A867F7D7E2&feature=plcp

My problem is that although the resulting video is good, even the 1080p is not completely smooth and if compared to the original footage obviously not as good.

Is YouTube limiting the FPS / bitrate ? Is the 50fps (I believe this is AVCHD2?) causing the issue ? Are there limitations in PD10u ?

Any thoughts appreciated.

Robert2 S

Senior Contributor Location: Australia Joined: Apr 22, 2009 05:57 Messages: 1461 Offline

Mar 22, 2012 06:51

Hi Andy and welcome to the PD help forum.

The automatic Youtube upload inside PowerDirector, in my opinion is set to the lowest common denominator. It is not the best PD can do. I would suggest producing your video to the quality you want and manually upload to Youtube.

I use a GoPro HD2 for my hanggliding videos and for me I produce to H.264 AVC 15,000 to 17,000 kbps. Your requirements may differ. I would suggest making a sample 1 minute video produced at different settings and upload to Youtube till you find a setting that suits your needs. My youtube channel====> http://www.youtube.com/user/relate2?feature=mhsn

Andy14

Newbie Joined: Mar 22, 2012 06:33 Messages: 13 Offline

Mar 22, 2012 07:02

Thanks for the input. That's a shame to hear as I have to admit to being lazy and really enjoying the automated features within PD10. Also it means I will need more disk space dedicated to output files and need to learn how to upload videos to YouTube manually - lol.

My videos are being recorded at 28Mb/s and the output therefore should be pretty close to that. I am worried that 50fps compatibility is part of the latest AVCHD standard and although PD10 understands it, perhaps YouTube wont support it. Only one way to find out I guess and that's to experiment as you suggest.

Something for the weekend perhaps and I'll of course share my thoughts afterwards.

Robert2 S

Senior Contributor Location: Australia Joined: Apr 22, 2009 05:57 Messages: 1461 Offline

Mar 22, 2012 07:13

Just a quick comment about 28MB/s video, if you produce to this level the videos will be huge(megabytes), hence very long uploads to Youtube.

One of the reasons I suggested to do a 1 minute test video first, you may not need to upload at 28MB/s as Youtube re-renders all uploads anyway.

Manually uploading is very simple, click on the upload button on your youtube page, browse to the video on your computer, hit enter and it will automatically start uploading. My youtube channel====> http://www.youtube.com/user/relate2?feature=mhsn

Andy14

Newbie Joined: Mar 22, 2012 06:33 Messages: 13 Offline

Mar 22, 2012 07:20

Indeed the videos are huge, I think the 13minute one is getting near Gb mark or perhaps over. I will definitely test as you suggested with a sample render and upload. I already have a clip in mind to use and test with.

Luckily though I have a very fast internet connection. Would hate to think of doing this a few years ago.

Robert2 S

Senior Contributor Location: Australia Joined: Apr 22, 2009 05:57 Messages: 1461 Offline

Mar 22, 2012 07:29

Good luck Andy, Ah yes the old days, even now I have a slow upload speed of only 500kb/s, download is cable fast though.

I remember many many years ago having to download a 100MB file, it took me a week.

I was on 56k dial-up.

and I thought that was fast as I had just upgraded from 28K dial-up.

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

Andy14

Newbie Joined: Mar 22, 2012 06:33 Messages: 13 Offline

Mar 22, 2012 08:17

A week to download (without it error'ing out) now that's serious dedication ! Can't say I ever managed anything over half a day.

Luckily I now have 8.5Mb/s up (soon to be much higher I hope) so this does help relieve some pain.

Robert2 S

Senior Contributor Location: Australia Joined: Apr 22, 2009 05:57 Messages: 1461 Offline

Mar 22, 2012 08:32

Quote: A week to download (without it error'ing out) now that's serious dedication ! Can't say I ever managed anything over half a day.

Luckily I now have 8.5Mb/s up (soon to be much higher I hope) so this does help relieve some pain.

Thankfully the site I was downloading from had a pause/resume function, so dropping out wasn't a problem. I wish more of the modern sites these days had the pause/resume function. My youtube channel====> http://www.youtube.com/user/relate2?feature=mhsn

Andy14

Newbie Joined: Mar 22, 2012 06:33 Messages: 13 Offline

Mar 22, 2012 09:01

You can use a download manager (like Downloadthemall) for Firefox to solve that issue easily.

Then you can press pause and resume anytime.

Bastian74

Senior Member Joined: Dec 06, 2010 12:12 Messages: 204 Offline

Mar 22, 2012 12:12

Youtube does not properly transcode video faster than 30fps. If you upload a 50fps or 60fps clip it will not playback correctly on youtube once processed.

http://support.google.com/youtube/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=1722171

Also, you might find this interesting:
http://forum.cyberlink.com/forum/posts/list/22363.page

This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at Mar 22. 2012 12:13

Andy14

Newbie Joined: Mar 22, 2012 06:33 Messages: 13 Offline

Mar 22, 2012 12:34

When I read the first post it specifically says :-

Content shot in 720p60, should be uploaded at 720p60

Did I miss the bit about "don't load anything higher than 30fps" ?

Bastian74

Senior Member Joined: Dec 06, 2010 12:12 Messages: 204 Offline

Mar 22, 2012 12:51

Sorry, you are correct, for 720. Youtube will still recompress it to 30P however.
What will fail is 1080-60P. At least it does for me, ever time.
The clip uploads, and gets processed, but desynchronized.

C.DeMille

Newbie Joined: Mar 22, 2012 22:34 Messages: 30 Offline

Mar 22, 2012 22:48

I came to this forum this morning searching info the same problem as the original poster. I save in the highest quality mp4 format (24MB/s)and it plays great on my computer, full hd 1080,full screen but when I manually upload it to youtube the video is a little choppy at times.

Bastian74

Senior Member Joined: Dec 06, 2010 12:12 Messages: 204 Offline

Mar 22, 2012 22:56

Youtube plays back 1080p at 30fps / 6mbps. There comes diminishing returns as you keep increasing the uploaded bitrate.

And as I said, don't upload 1080 at more than 30fps, or interlaced.

C.DeMille

Newbie Joined: Mar 22, 2012 22:34 Messages: 30 Offline

Mar 22, 2012 23:02

please, what kind of file format and profile types do you recommend so as to eliminate the choppiness ?

Bastian74

Senior Member Joined: Dec 06, 2010 12:12 Messages: 204 Offline

Mar 22, 2012 23:03

If you are using powerdirector 10, use the "best" profile from MP4

Andy14

Newbie Joined: Mar 22, 2012 06:33 Messages: 13 Offline

Mar 23, 2012 07:53

Last night I tried a few experiments. All failed to produce results any better than the PD10 direct upload to YouTube.

When I saved to MP4 then the resulting files were nowhere near as good as the original AVCHD footage.

Then I saved to AVCHD format and PD10 hung when trying to view or edit the produced file and it was complete garbage in both WMP and VLC.

Not really very good at all.

Luckily for me I suppose, the video exported to YouTube isn’t that bad, so I won’t bother with this anymore, it’s just wasting my time.

C.DeMille

Newbie Joined: Mar 22, 2012 22:34 Messages: 30 Offline

Mar 23, 2012 08:04

looks like we are in the same boat there, the uploaded video is ok but slightly choppy in places. It also isn't necessarily choppy in the same place if I restart the youtube video ?! Have you tried different browsers ? I primarily use firefox but it seems it's better sometimes when I switch to I.E.

Andy14

Newbie Joined: Mar 22, 2012 06:33 Messages: 13 Offline

Mar 23, 2012 08:25

Have to admit that I've only tried viewing through Firefox and on the iPad.

Bastian74

Senior Member Joined: Dec 06, 2010 12:12 Messages: 204 Offline

Mar 23, 2012 09:49

Youtube converts your video to MP4 1080 30fps 6mbps, so if you lose some quality using mp4 instead of avchd, you're going to lose it no mater what you upload in once youtube does its thing. Since youtube's native quality is MP4, it makes sense that uploading in mp4 has the least chance of random transcoding failure.

Also, which avchd profile are you using?