YouTube video quality problems with my uploads

[ShaneJensen]

I'm having this big issue with this one video I keep uploading to YouTube. The quality is awesome on my computer, even after editing and rendering to the final file to upload to YouTube. It looks great, that is until it is uploaded to YouTube. The quality is HORRIBLE! It's all blurry and pixelated. I have rendered out the video using several different encoders, Vegas 7.0, TMPEGEnc, Virtual Dub, Windows Movie Maker, and also rendered to different types of formats as well as doing it on another computer. I get the same results every time. The video was filmed with a Sony Cybershot digital camera, which records to MPG, and the original video looks good until it gets converted to FLV. I even tried converting to FLV myself using Riva and it still ends up looking that bad. Why is it that everyone else on YouTube seems to have MUCH better results with their video and mine look like crap? I've tried everything I can think of. Please help.

Here are some examples of the same video, each time I tried things differently but don't notice any difference in the end result on YouTube.

This was rendered to an MP4 directly from Vegas: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9EyXvDvULxE

This was rendered to an Xvid using Virtual Dub: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R0drAkhHaf0

This was rendered to an MP4 in Vegas, but after I converted all the source files from MPG to AVI before rendering to see if that would help. Also note, I changed the background music by the time I got to this one. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i8OnfaUsQ50

This was rendered to a WMV at 640x480 in Windows Movie Maker: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zyLfvhnCRGk

Here is one of the raw source files unedited from the Sony Cybershot that was directly uploaded from the original MPG. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gU3_FaKxzpU

Please help.

[jagabo]

Youtube converts just about anything you upload to a low bitrate, 320x240, 15 fps, FLV file. Your video has too much motion (at least in the early part I watched) to compress well with FLV. Your only hope is to encode to FVL yourself at that frame size and acceptable birates so that Youtube doesn't reencode it. Your video wasn't worse than most of the non-commercial stuff I've seen at Youtube.

[ShaneJensen]

Yeah, but I've seen a lot better from regular video bloggers as well and for some reason can't get the footage from this camera to upload good.

I followed this tutorial from someone on YouTube, Mr. Safety, since my last message and still didn't get better results. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v6R9qktqWo8

This is really frustrating, if you guys could only see the original wmv file I used to upload to YouTube you would no believe the difference. That file looks sharp, crisp, and clear, yet YouTube DESTROYS it while other videos from other cameras of mine (webcam, MY digital camera) seem to load fine. Then there are people on YouTube like Renetto who's video look so clear I didn't think it was possible for videos to look that good on YouTube. Renetto posted a video that was 69 minutes once (it has since been taken down so I can't reference it) and it STILL looked almost as good as his shorter videos. Yet here I am, with this problem with this seven minute video from a Sony Cybershot camera. What gives.

For more reference, the camera used is my brother's camera and he uploads videos from that camera all the time to his YouTube account. He does no editing at all and just uploads the raw files and they look much better then when I uploaded it. They even look better than the one I uploaded when I uploaded one of his files above with no editing. Here's my brother's YouTube channel for reference: http://www.youtube.com/wurkanimal

I just uploaded the same file (the one I did following Mr. Safety's tutorial) to my LiveVideo account and the results are awesome. Why can't YouTube encode this any good? http://www.livevideo.com/video/3770324C5C584DCFAF087D3679594229/at-the-pine-barrens-with-rick.aspx

[jagabo]

Some general rules for high compression video:

Use a tripod. Camera motion is a killer for low bitrate encoding.

Use backgrounds with very little detail.

Have brightly lit subjects with dark backgrounds.

Use a camera with a low noise CCD. Noise eats up bitrate.

[ShaneJensen]

That sounds great for future productions. But what about my existing stuff that was filmed? There has to be some way to get what I have to load decently to YouTube.

[hech54]

I've given up trying to get consistant results for YouTube uploads. Uploaded two yesterday and both look completely different.

[Soopafresh]

You can try applying some heavy grain to the source file. In theory, Pootube's variable bitrate encoding will give more bits to the encode.

Conversely, you can try the VirtualDub plugin "Shadow Smoother", which will blur the dark parts of the image and require less bitrate during the encode.

Yeah, your brother's video looks pretty clean.