HB preset for YouTube?

[njitgrad]

I decided to encode some edited home video footage using the HB preset for Android (H264, 720x406) and the files play perfectly on all of my Android devices and via QuickTime on my PC. Absolutely smooth and crystal clear.

Thinking that this would be a good resolution for sharing the videos with others on YouTube I was quite disappointed when I uploaded the MP4 files. On playback the resolution was awful, very blocky. Obviously YouTube re-encoded them.

Why? Each file was about 1 min long to about 6 minutes at most. The files sizes ranged from 9MB to 82MB each. I thought YouTube only does this for really large files.

Is there another HB preset that I should consider using?

[njitgrad]

Actually I think I may have found the answer. Since 720x406 is not a standard size, it probably re-encoded it at the next lowest resolution level, 640x360.

[LigH.de]

YouTube will recode all videos anyway (may it just be to ensure that possibly hidden malware is eliminated). Therefore, try to upload as good quality as you can afford bandwidth. And good quality video formats (H.264 in convenient quantization) are only stored on their servers when your source is already in HD resolution (the higher, the better chance to keep some quality, more or less). I have seen efforts to pre-optimize videos so that YouTube's recompression will return convenient results, but i am skeptical about such ideas... Side effects are usually hilarious bitrates.

[njitgrad]

Then why is it some videos are absolutely perfect when viewing them? There must be some magical formula or something.

[manono]

Then why is it some videos are absolutely perfect when viewing them? There must be some magical formula or something.

For one thing, to get a 480p version available you have to upload it with a height of 480 or more.

Other than that, complex videos (ones with lots of motion) are often filtered to make them more compressible so they look better on YouTube. Whether it's a static video (man reading the news) or an action-packed video (using a GoPro from a moving motorcycle), each resolution video gets the same average bitrate. The former will look good, the latter horrible. If you point us to the video we might be able to give tips to make yours look better.