Is there any way to get good YouTube quality without rendering in HD?

[Dave Haynie]

Yeah, that’s correct. YouTube has a secret formula for what it does in conversion. Generally, the better your upload, the better the video YouTube makes available will be, but there seem to a couple of different grades, even for the same resolution. And at least awhile back, you could upload in HD but still not guarantee you’d get HD offered… that seems to have been fixed.

1080p is pretty hardcore for streaming, regardless of who’s uploading it. You may find that some folks are delivering theirs in 1080/24p, which would be easier to stream, at the same effective quality, than 1080/30p or 1080/60i (the latter almost certainly converted to 1080/30p in the process of YouTube-ization).

I’ve only done a few 1080p videos myself, and they were delivered in 1080/24p AVC at 20Mb/s. So YouTube would have nothing at all to complain about.

-Dave

[Dave Haynie]

Here are a few I did upload at 1080p. These were both same-day edits, so they edit itself, and the noise in the second one (a wedding in a very dark, weirdly lit nightclub) were better in the final project.

This was originally shot at 1080/60p on a Panasonic TM700.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X1rVPpT47hc

This was originally shot at 1080/24p on a Panasonic HMC40
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FD8qFgciwIU

Judge for yourself if the 1080p is any improvement over 720p, once in YouTube format.

-Dave

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[John Rofrano]

[Dave Haynie] “Judge for yourself if the 1080p is any improvement over 720p, once in YouTube format.”

I can’t tell the difference… but that’s just me.

~jr

http://www.johnrofrano.com
http://www.vasst.com

[Dave Haynie]

At my house, I can barely stream the 720p, much less the 1080p. I should try it at work myself.

I shot this in San Francisco last June, and uploaded my same-day edits from my cousin’s high speed cable link. I never had much time to look it over.

My point isn’t to suggest a result, but basically, to provide an example for us all to look at. These were shot on good cameras, uploaded at 1080p @ 20Mb/s, etc. You probably can’t get much better out of YouTube, unless they tweak their encoder. If you can’t see a difference, then there may well not be a significant difference, at least based on YouTube encoding last June.

On the other hand, 1080p costs much more encoding time. If you know up front there’s no effective difference, there’s no reason to bother. If there’s a small difference visible only to video nerds, that, too, is useful information. If it was day and night, also good info.

-Dave

[John Rofrano]

[Dave Haynie] “On the other hand, 1080p costs much more encoding time. If you know up front there’s no effective difference, there’s no reason to bother.”

The other thing to consider is your target audience. If the majority of the people you are trying to reach are college students on their 1366×768 laptops, it seems silly to upload 1080p since it won’t look any different. How many people have PC’s that can display full 1080p? My $450 Samsung SyncMaster 215TW displays are 1600×1050 so they can’t even do 1920×1080 (which may be why I can’t see a difference).

~jr

http://www.johnrofrano.com
http://www.vasst.com

[Dave Haynie]

Dual Westinghouse L2410 MVA-type 1920×1200 LCD monitors here (originally $350 each), with an optional 32″ LCD/LED HDTV output as well. These monitors actually take composite or YPrPb inputs, too… more useful four years ago than it is today, but still occasionally good to have.

I can definitely tell the difference between the 720p and 1080p versions. Part of that’s because the 1080p is too slow to be usefully viewable over my satellite internet connection. But it is noticeably sharper.

-Dave