Creating Videos For YouTube
I recently was creating some videos for YouTube with Windows Movie Maker. Movie Maker gives you about
9 different encoding options for the WMV format that would be possible candidates for encoding.
Since I was curious I decided to do a little experiment to determine which bitrate would be the best to encode at for YouTube.
If you encode at too low of a rate the file size is small, which is great for upload times, but the quality suffers.
If you encode at a higher bitrate the file size becomes larger which increases the upload times. I suspected there was
a point of diminishing returns by increasing the bitrate past a certain point.
YouTube accepts AVI, MPEG, MOV and WMV files for upload. YouTube then re-encodes the video into the FLV format at 320×240.
YouTube also increases the dimensions of the video to 425×350 with the embed code which decreases quality a bit.
It’s the same effect when you view a DVD at full screen an your computer. Your not increasing the number of pixels, just spreading them out further.
Below is a list of the test videos I created and uploaded. The videos contain the types of scenes you may take on vacation.
Pay attention to details in the videos like textures in the grass and water. There is one high action scene that features a
bike rider doing a loop. This particular scene really shows blocking and artifacting at the lower bitrates.
Conclusion:
It appears that the maximum bitrate YouTube encodes the FLV files is ~260Kbps at 320X240.
For audio they are MPEG-2 Layer 3 22050Hz 65 kb/s Mono
Therefore it seems like a good encoding setting is 320×240 at 512KBS. I really don’t seen any drastic improvement when I used higher bitrate videos as the source for the YouTube upload file.
|
Size: 320×240 WMV Bitrate: 150 Kbps Length: 74 Seconds WMV Filesize: 1,316 KB |
FLV FileSize: 1,648 KB YouTube Bitrate :~178 Kbs |
|
Size: 320×240 WMV Bitrate: 340 Kbps Length: 74 Seconds WMV Filesize: 2,987 KB |
FLV FileSize: 2,849 KB YouTube Bitrate :~322 Kbs |
|
Size: 320×240 WMV Bitrate: 512 Kbps Length: 74 Seconds WMV Filesize: 4,156 KB |
FLV FileSize: 2,906 KB YouTube Bitrate :~322 Kbs |
|
Size: 320×240 WMV Bitrate: VBR Length: 74 Seconds WMV Filesize: 4,633 KB |
FLV FileSize: 2,679 KB YouTube Bitrate :~289 Kbs |
|
Size: 640×480 WMV Bitrate: 768 Kbps Length: 74 Seconds WMV Filesize: 6,600 KB |
FLV FileSize: 2,679 KB YouTube Bitrate :~289 Kbs |
|
Size: 640×480 WMV Bitrate: 1 Mbps Length: 74 Seconds WMV Filesize: 8569 KB |
FLV FileSize: 2,886 KB YouTube Bitrate :~312 Kbs |
|
Size: 640×480 WMV Bitrate: 1.5 Mbps Length: 74 Seconds WMV Filesize: 12,342 KB |
FLV FileSize: 2,773 KB YouTube Bitrate: ~300 Kbs |
|
Size: 640×480 WMV Bitrate: 2.1 Mbps Length: 74 Seconds WMV Filesize: 16,663 KB |
FLV FileSize: 2,706 KB YouTube Bitrate: ~292 Kbs |
|
Size: 640×480 WMV Bitrate: Variable Length: 74 Seconds WMV Filesize: 10,780 KB |
FLV FileSize: 2,567 KB YouTube Bitrate: ~277 Kbs |
The following are some YouTube clips. One is a 320×240 WMV clip encoded at 512 Kbps. The other was encoded at 340 Kbps.
Here is the original 512 Kbps WMV and 340 Kbps WMV.
| 340 Kbps |
| 512 Kbps |
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Casio Announces Youtube Ready Camera-Home Video 101 Blog said,
July 27, 2007 @ 9:02 am
[...] first glance this seem like a cheap marketing ploy. Uploading a video to Youtube isn’t exactly [...]
Casio Announces Youtube Ready Camera | videohomelighting.com said,
July 28, 2007 @ 2:20 am
[...] first glance this seem like a cheap marketing ploy. Uploading a video to Youtube isn’t exactly [...]
Steve Able said,
June 8, 2008 @ 10:26 am
I wanted to thank you for all this hard work you have done.
I had a major problem. I had recorded some footage with a HD Camera at 1080i. I then played the recorded footage straight to DVD, via my standalone DVD recorder. The Vob files were moves to my computer, converted to avi with Super, edited in Movie Maker and exported as a wmv file. So they went on quite a journey.
I wanted to burn the file to DVD as well as put onto youtube, but there was a serious quality loss at some point and I couldn’t figure out why. I had changed the encoding settings to mov, avi, xvid etc. At some stages the picture went very pixelated.
Other times the audio went out of sync, and again I changed the settings to mp3, wav, etc.
I never had this problem before, when I used old camera.
Then, after reading your well evidenced article,. I checked the bitrate and saw that it as still encoded at 1080!!! I was shocked that even through all the devices and conversion software the footage went through at the start, it had somehow maintained the bit rate.
I can change it with ‘Super’, which will hopefully solve my problem.
Thank you for your excellent article.
Steve