Compressor Youtube 480p settings

Apple Final Cut Pro Legacy

Compressor Youtube 480p settings

Posted by Jon Smitherton on March 25, 2012 at 10:56 am

Hi

Just finished a film and am outputting an H.264 for 480p youtube via compressor.

My source video:
NTSC 29.97 fps
ProRes 422
720 x 486 Widescreen Anamorphic (873 x 486 actual pixels displayed in quicktime player)

My required video is 480p = 854 x 480. Can be 853 x 480
(But apparently youtube doesn’t like odd numbers for transcoding:
https://longzijun.wordpress.com/2010/10/24/exporting-video-for-youtube-pixel-aspect-ratio-basics/)

I tried compressing at 854 x 480 but it looks like the pixel aspect ratio is wrong as it looks ‘chunky’ especially on text – outputting at 873 x 486 looks perfect.
Would like to compress to the 854 x 480 so youtube doesn’t do anything strange with it’s transcoding – as I have to deliver tomorrow and it’s around 50mins so it takes long to compress.

So to make this 873 x 486 video to 854 x 480 I figure I’ll just crop it
19 pixels on the sides (10+9) and 6 on the top/bottom (3 each).

Sounds simple enough. But for the life of me can’t get it working.
I put 854 x 480 in the frame size and then added the crops in the ‘source inset’ fields…but it came out the wrong size. Do I have to enable ‘frame controls’ for resizing or something?

Any input on this would be greatly appreciated.

I have spent 3 weeks onlining/grading/mixing this film – where the original cut was cut in a HDV timeline (so had to resize everything and change field order), had oversized graphics (90 of them over 4000px) and framerates of 23.98, 24 and 25 fps and audio was exported and imported back in out of sync! So I don’t want to drop the ball after all the effort I’ve put in.

Jon.

FYI my other compressor settings:
H.264 Multipass
no reordering
Automatic keyframes
restrict to 3000kbits/sec
Optimised for streaming

44.1 kHz AAC
320 kbps

Rafael Amador replied 14 years, 1 month ago 2 Members · 4 Replies
4 Replies

Rafael Amador
March 25, 2012 at 11:35 am

864 x 486 SQ pixels is “16×9” aspect [(486/9) x 16 = 864]
873 x 486 is not 16×9.
480 can’t yield an accurate 16×9 frame, because 480/9 = 53,33333333333….
I would try with 864 x 486. You keep the original vertical resolution.
YouTube has a wonderful downscaling engine.
rafael

http://www.nagavideo.com
Jon Smitherton
March 25, 2012 at 12:17 pm

Hi Rafael,

Yes do realise that it is a strange ratio, however this is what it says in quicktime:

I’m used to PAL settings, so NTSC PAR settings are a little bit foreign to me.

Will try this and get back to you…

Thanks,
Jon
Jon Smitherton
March 25, 2012 at 12:24 pm

Thanks Rafael that worked fine…I searched for hours to find the correct ratio…

Cheers,
Jon
Rafael Amador
March 26, 2012 at 3:39 am

[jon smitherton] “Hi Rafael,

Yes do realise that it is a strange ratio, however this is what it says in quicktime:”
You shouldn’t care about that. That’s just the window of the QT player, no the real picture.

[jon smitherton] “I’m used to PAL settings, so NTSC PAR settings are a little bit foreign to me.
“
PAL or NTSC you endup dealing with SQ pictures and there is where the proportions must be “16 to 9”.

The point is that YouTube has a vertical size (480) that do not allow a real 16×9 aspect on SQ pixels.

Great that worked the 864×486.
rafael

http://www.nagavideo.com

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