Trailer competition judging in progress
Wow, that’s a lot of entries. I’ll be announcing the winners tomorrow morning.
Erik Beeson, who so generously helped with the hosting and torrenting, sent along stats:
- total torrent file downloads for both torrents combined: 808 (includes search engine crawlers)
- dv torrent: 162 completed downloads
- mpeg4 torrent: 79 completed downloads
- mpeg4.zip: 242 (the direct download)
- total completed (torrents+direct): 483
Thanks to everyone who helped seed the footage.
Having now looked at dozens and dozens of clips on YouTube, I’m struck by the wide range of picture quality (talking pixels, not professionalism). Considering we all started with the same clips, one might not expect such a variation. My entry is near the middle of the pack in terms of blockiness.
If any readers/competitors have tips on how you kept YouTube from over-smushing your video, please share.
Filed under: Follow Up, Geek Alert, Projects, The Movie, Video
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September 25th, 2007 at 1:48 pm
For FCP http://www.kenstone.net/fcphomepage/youtubecompressorgary.html http://www.lafcpug.org/Tutorials/basicyou_tube.html
September 25th, 2007 at 2:49 pm
I’m definitely interested in tips on that, seeing that my entries didn’t have optimal picture quality.
They was from the DV footage, rendered in Adobe Premiere and exported in QuickTime format with MPEG-4 encoding in 320×240, 24 fps. Which is what YouTube recommends, except for the frame rate. However, the output from YouTube is certainly larger than 320×240, ie. they upsize it in addtion to re-encoding it.
At least the sound is good on YouTube, they don’t butcher it like Dailymotion does. But Dailymotion seem to have better picture quality, even though they upsize it even more than YouTube. Ergo…YouTube’s re-encoding is what sucks?
September 25th, 2007 at 3:39 pm
I used Sony Vegas. It has MPEG-2 encoding for DVD NTSC. That’s about all I did. Export. It does look really good though. I do wish I had more time with the music.
September 25th, 2007 at 5:23 pm
I did more or less the same thing as Knut, in Premiere as well. It sounds like dumping to MPEG-2 at 720×480 and having youtube down-convert gives you a better picture than following their recommendations to upload at 320×240. I ave a nice, high quality 320×240 MPEG-4 clip on my machine and the uploaded youtube clip is far blockier then I expected it to be.
September 25th, 2007 at 5:27 pm
Here’s a blog entry that makes some recommendations for getting the best possible picture quality out of youtube. On of their suggestions is to use H.264 as the codec, which was an option I considered but ultimately discarded because youtube’s own instructions said to use MPEG-4. Go figure.
http://ellingtonmedia.com/blog/2007/03/07/6-tips-for-high-quality-youtube-video/
September 25th, 2007 at 8:35 pm
I noticed that I maybe posted my links at the wrong place, but they were uploaded to youtube before the expiring date. Now, I posted as I should. Someone could tell me if I’m in the competition?
I hope I am.
thanks.
September 25th, 2007 at 10:10 pm
I think youtubes own instructions are designed to have people upload the smallest files rather to get the best video – regardless of what they say.
September 25th, 2007 at 11:41 pm
I felt my video came out halfway decent, and unlike many others, I pay no attention to what YouTube says apart from size. And even that, I may reconsider.
My export settings, from FCP 5.1:
Export using Quicktime Conversion H.264 codec 320X240 Best Quality Automatic keyframing Mono Sound at 44.1khz Optimize for Fast Internet Streaming
If I had increased the size, it would have been even better.