Youtube Render Settings?

[RoadSprock]

So, after watching my videos being heavily compressed by YouTube - I was wondering what's everyone's settings for the render? Is there a better way to keep quality?

What settings/ tweeks do you do in Sony Vegas to fix?

 

[SalvageSV]

There is a page with suggested settings ... https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/1722171?hl=en

I personally use H.264 video at VBR between 22 and 25 mbps for 1080p 48 footage. But, with my connection at home, sometimes the quality is downgraded since it runs a little slow on playback.

I'd suggest using a 2-pass VBR encode at around 16-18 mbps to see if that helps.

 

[RoadSprock]

There is a page with suggested settings ... https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/1722171?hl=en

I personally use H.264 video at VBR between 22 and 25 mbps for 1080p 48 footage. But, with my connection at home, sometimes the quality is downgraded since it runs a little slow on playback.

I'd suggest using a 2-pass VBR encode at around 16-18 mbps to see if that helps.

This is what I've been running normally;

I've experimented with increasing the variable bit rate, but isn't making any seen difference on YT. The files I take off from YouTube to see what it's gone to is a FPS drop to 25, resolution 1280x720, total bitrate at 2303kbps.

 

[SalvageSV]

Uncheck the "allow source to" boxes. That's locking you to match source. That should fix the FPS and res issues. You could bump up the average bitrate to 12+mbps and the max to around 15 mbps.

I'm not sure if reference frames or slices is your keyframes, but look in to it. Using more keyframes will increase quality, at least on the initial encode.

Are you allowing YouTube time to process the video? It usually take several hours to get full 1080 video processed.

 

[RoadSprock]

Uncheck the "allow source to" boxes. That's locking you to match source. That should fix the FPS and res issues. You could bump up the average bitrate to 12+mbps and the max to around 15 mbps.

I'm not sure if reference frames or slices is your keyframes, but look in to it. Using more keyframes will increase quality, at least on the initial encode.

Are you allowing YouTube time to process the video? It usually take several hours to get full 1080 video processed.

Not certain either, I found the below for slices - not sure if that helps?
"Divides the frame into rectangular sections (slices) and allows macroblocks in different slices to be isolated and processed simultaneously. Not available in all Profiles iirc. The defaults are fine, and may result in a slight encoding speed increase. "Number of slices" in Vegas probably refers to b-slices.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Video_compression_picture_types#Slices"

 

[SalvageSV]

Yeah, it seems so. I'd crank up the reference frames number. Unless that's putting a keyframe every 2 frames, which would severely bloat your files.

 

[RoadSprock]

Yeah, it seems so. I'd crank up the reference frames number. Unless that's putting a keyframe every 2 frames, which would severely bloat your files.

How far should I bump it up?

 

[SalvageSV]

How far should I bump it up?

I like to use 2 keyframes every second for fast moving images. So, if that's the TOTAL keyframes, take your total seconds and x2 it max. Or, just use the actual seconds for one keyframe each second.

But, if that's a value of "every X seconds" or "every X frames," increasing the number would actually lower quality.

Do a test. Just render like 10 sec and try the number at 2 and at 10 and compare the file sizes. That'll tell you how it's functioning.

 

[SalvageSV]

Or, click the help icon up top ... lol

 

[RoadSprock]

I like to use 2 keyframes every second for fast moving images. So, if that's the TOTAL keyframes, take your total seconds and x2 it max. Or, just use the actual seconds for one keyframe each second.

But, if that's a value of "every X seconds" or "every X frames," increasing the number would actually lower quality.

Do a test. Just render like 10 sec and try the number at 2 and at 10 and compare the file sizes. That'll tell you how it's functioning.

Adjusted the number of reference frames as you said, both were the same file sizes for 10secs


I pressed the help button and it says:

"
Number of reference frames

Type a value in the box to specify the number of frames that will be used to find correlations between frames for performing compression.

Higher values allow the encoder to perform better compression, but require more work for the encoder and more buffering by the decoder.

Some applications (especially hardware devices) have limited buffering capabilities and cannot decode video with a large number of reference frames. "

"
Use deblocking filter

AVC encoding divides a video frame into smaller sections called macroblocks and compresses each block separately. During decompression, edges between the blocks can sometimes be seen. A deblocking filter smoothes the edges between blocks to make them less visible.

When encoding to a low bit rate, select this check box to set a flag that allows the decoder to apply a filter to reduce the appearance of blocking in your video.

When encoding to a high bit rate, clear the check box. Deblocking high-bit rate video can produce artifacts.
"

 

[SalvageSV]

Yeah, that might be B-frames and not I-Frames. B-frames just control motion so that makes sense.

I'd say just uncheck the source boxes and bump up the bitrates a bit. See if that helps.

 

[RoadSprock]

Yeah, that might be B-frames and not I-Frames. B-frames just control motion so that makes sense.

I'd say just uncheck the source boxes and bump up the bitrates a bit. See if that helps.

I'll give it ago, fingers crossed! Should I just set it to constant bit rate at say 14,000,000bps?

 

[SalvageSV]

You could. CBR isn't bad, it's just not dynamic and usually causes larger file sizes. Plus, it's only single pass, but you'll likely not notice.