YouTube Upload and Streaming Optimization

[sunchip]

Quick and Easy YouTube Guide - Updated THURSDAY 12TH FEBRUARY

Introduction
Have you been wondering or wondered how some people manage to get videos onto YouTube without having their video quality completely destroyed by YouTube's auto-conversion technique?

I want to quickly tell you about video formats, frames, codecs and resolutions for maximum optimizations based on uploading to YouTube specifically. There is so much information, secret tips and techniques for editing in HD Cinema Quality, 3D Animation, Television Broadcasting and so on but for now, we'll concentrate on YouTube and web streaming. I hope you learn something from this.

What format, frames, codecs and resolution is best suited for YouTube?

This should save you all the time in the world without 'testing' your video before uploading to YouTube. What do I mean? YouTube has changed their functions and standards - for the better! They now offer widescreen viewing as well as an HD experience if you upload something big enough to fullfill that requirement.

So the big question here is "What do I have to do to make sure the conversion to Flash video is not pathetic"? I've read many guides out there and spent many days testing this myself in my spare time to see which combination was and is truly the best.

When uploading to YouTube, make sure your settings are as follows:
Video Format (Extensions) - .mp4 (MPEG4) or .mov (Quicktime)
Video Codec - Xvid, Divx or MPEG4 (.mp4 works as a format AND codec)
Video Resolution - 640x480 (4:3), 720x405 (16:9) or 1280x720 (HD)
Video FPS (Frames Per Second) - 29.97 or 30 (29.97 is the absolute accurate NTSC frames per second standard but 30 is widely used for web streaming so it's really up to you)
Video Sound Format - AAC or MP3 (both can deliver top sound quality).

If your video covers the criteria above, then you are ready to upload onto YouTube.

Good tip for YouTube streaming
Certain videos will have the link under the viewing box 'Watch High Quality' or 'Watch HD'. If you want to watch the videos in higher quality manually, add the red bold text after the URL:

Add '&fmt=18' (without the marks) to watch in High Quality - Mpeg4
Add '&fmt=22' (without the marks) to watch in HD - Avi
If you don't add anything and just watch the video as is, you're watching in Low Quality - Flash

[WhatThePhuc]

mp4 eh?
i'll keep that in mind

[fieryshadowcard]

Looks interesting. Time to give this a test. Nice sleuth work. @_@

[Globalastro]

why the high res??? i tend to convert my fils to 320X240 before hand and it seems to work ok for me...

[sunchip]

youtube has changed their viewing window to 16:9 widescreen so i recommend that ALL VIDEOS should be optimized in widescreen from now on to take advantage of it otherwise it'd look very ugly

same codec, resolution and format still applies as detailed in the first post