Best Format to Export Long Video to Youtube

[Shawn Speller]

Ok so I exported the video with the above settings, video quality is good and the file size is sitting at 438.9MB so with that in mind, am I in the clear now? I know you can upload up to something like 2GB but will a video of this size play fluently?

[Ryan Holmes]

You can actually upload a 20GB file to YouTube. Ultimately, once YouTube gets your file they will recompress it again. So playability isn’t as much of an issue since they generate different version of it automagically on your upload (360p, 480p, 720p if HD is uploaded and 1080p if so uploaded).

How long is your video? The biggest impact on your file size is the data rate of your video and the data rate of your audio. The higher they are the bigger the file. How that impacts quality depends on the overall frame size you’re dictating. So if you have a frame size of 1280×720 with a data rate of 200kbps total (both audio and video together) than you’ll have a small file, but poor quality. Conversely, if you have the same 720p frame size, but a total data rate of 5,000kbps then you’ll have great quality and a big file size.

I like Vimeo’s compression guide. I think it’s a good starting point for most people:
https://vimeo.com/help/compression

Ryan Holmes
http://www.ryanholmes.me
vimeo.com/ryanholmes

[Dustin Parsons]

Here’s what I use when uploading to Youtube, I came to these settings after a lot of trial and error and they seem to work really well.

For 1080:
Codec: H.264
Data Rate: 5000 kbits/sec
Frame Size: 1920×1080 Square pixels

For 720:
Codec: H.264
Data Rate: 4000 kbits/sec
Frame Size: 1280×720 Square pixels

Audio for both:
Format: AAC
Rate: 48 kHz
Quality: Best
Bit Rate: 128kbps

[Shawn Speller]

The video is 51 mins long so should I be looking for a low data rate or a sweet spot so to speak like a total of 1000-2000kbps?