[Jason Holmes]

Thank you Daniel! I checked into that and did an export – only issue was over 20GB for a three min music video!

I’m still going to choose between standard H264 with AAC audio VS QuickTime H264 with uncompressed audio.

If anyone is interested – I’ll post links to both versions on YouTube for comparison…

[Jason Holmes]

^ you’re not the first person to say to me, to steer clear of the QuickTime H.264. On the two uploads I did; it did look identical to the MP4 H.264 – but I’m certainly hearing a lot about the QuickTime being worse. Excuse my naivety; I’m trying to learn so much in so little time.. but if the codec is H.264 – How much effect can the wrapper have???

I will definitely look at the superior formats and see what the audio options are in those cases. I’m not in front of Premiere right now – but I think I did have a look and whilst they offered higher res or uncompressed audio export; I think I was forced to the 48k standard for the audio – whereas the audio master I have is 44.1 – and again, I’m trying to avoid any conversion; especially by Premiere itself. If I’m forced into a corner in doing a conversion I will use a special audio app like Izotope RX. Reason being is, sample rate conversions can cause spikes and in almost all cases can take audio, subtly, over the ideal gain point. A standalone app offers control over that and I’ve yet to delve into what premiere might do in this regard.

So far, it seems: H.264 MP4 is superior video vs being forced to use inferior audio OR QuickTime which can be inferior video – but allows uncompressed audio to be a part of the export. Again, the codec is the same, so can the wrapper make so much difference?

I will look, tomorrow, at the other options and see what hey hold. Thank you for your post.

[Jason Holmes]

This is the point i was making! There’s a lot of misinformation on the web and in my tests and upon speaking with other audio biased video makers (music videos etc) – it’s not true that you can upload pre-compressed audio – and that takes care of the job… (takes away the need for YouTube et al to then compress).

YouTube / Vimeo / (all of them!) will compress the video and audio… WHATEVER you upload, no matter the quality – so whilst YouTube might stream audio in AAC – if you export your video with AAC audio – YouTube will be recompressing that audio AGAIN – in other words, YouTube will be compressing the compressed audio (not good) and so the moral here is – upload uncompressed audio! Audio is not as heavy as video footage and so uncompressed audio won’t do too much to the file size and upload.

The point you’ve made seems to be the oft’ throught of approach – but I’ve been informed that the reality is something different. I’m open to hearing other people’s views on this – to confirm one way or another. Upon uploading two identical videos – one with AAC audio on export – and another with 24Bit WAV audio… the uncompressed audio version did indeed sound better (slightly).

I think that for normal videos / films; compressed audio will be close enough… but for music / or audio biased films; uncompressed audio on export is preferable.

With this in mind; I’d love to hear from anyone, what their export settings are for delivering to video platforms… anyone have any insight into this?