Making YT Low-bitrate FLVs Look Better?

[icestorm]

It seems like even though videos have the same bitrate, and are also uploaded w/ a high quality source,
some videos look better than others.

Slower motion videos look better than fast motion videos (with lots of things moving).. so a still picture in a video would look more crisp and detailed..

I'm also thinking there's something to do with colors and contrast..

What colors look better on Youtube?
What do I do about contrast?

I've managed to make some gameplay footage recorded w/ Fraps look better by upping the brightness and contrast..

Does anyone know a lot about this stuff?

Thanks.

[jagabo]

High compression codecs get a lot of their compression by encoding only the differeces between consecutive frames. So having a perfectly motionless background will help a lot. Frames with less detail compress better than frames with lots of detail. Low contrast frames compress better than high contrast frames (typically this means that dark video compress better than bright video). Things like heavy rain, smoke, a forst of of bright green leaves blowing in the wind, light reflecting off waves in the ocean, strobing lights, and noise (static), all make the video harder to compress.