YouTube just recently made the switch from the traditional 4:3 aspect ratio to the widescreen 16:9 ratio. This is a great improvement to be able to take advantage of a wide angle shot and a 1280X720 resolution. There have been many complaints over the “black bars” appearing on the 4:3 aspect ratio videos due to them not filling the entire 16:9 spot.
I feel the pain of seeing the black frame is far outweighed by the benefit of viewing future videos in widescreen and HD quality.
Note that this switch to 16:9 has a huge effect on the video quality on Youtube. At first, it was difficult to find what was the Best Youtube video format to upload, but after doing some research I was able to come to a concession with the team over at Sorenson Media. Here are the recommended Specs.
- > Mp4 video format\container (or FLV, MPEG-2)
- > h.264 codec (or MPEG-2)
- > Bitrate of 256 kbps for audio (MP3 or AAC)
- > Bitrate of 4000 kbps for video (Optional)
- > Resolution of 640X480 for 4:3 aspect ratio
- > Resolution of 1920X1080 or 1280X720 for 16:9 aspect ratio
- > Max file size 1GB
I uploaded a 1280X720 and a 640×360 video to determine if a higher resolution had an effect on the final converted video. I could not see any quality difference in the videos until I discovered that Youtube does not display 720p by default. It does show the 16:9 aspect ratio by default,but the video is still 480×270. The standard embed code and Url will need to be modified by adding &fmt=22 to the end of the url to view the actual 720p version. *This no longer applies, all videos will play in HD quality if the video is available.
If your not worried about the upload time, it is recommend to upload the highest quality video. I’d say shoot for 999mb.
Came across this blog and found it to be awesome… will be back for more.
Thanks, I finally got the answer I have been looking for.
Thanks the the help :-)
Hello,
I would like to get some help on the following question.
What are the best options to get the best quality of video on Youtube. Ik have a film of about 12 minutes long and it is a AVI file with a dvsd codec on it and the size is now 2.72 GB. My question is what is the best bitrate to upload and to come close to the 1 GB (because that’s allowed at Youtube). My film is 720×576 with 25 fps.
Hope to hear from you!
Greatings,
Mihdi
what is the best res. to encode a video with for youtube if it is SD widescreen I use a panasonic PV-GS500 and I like to use the widescreen option but am unsure encode with I found on vimeo to use 853×480 is good with a bitrate of 3000 and codec h.264 – I thought 1280X720 for 16:9 aspect ratio was HD and would not be the best choice for SD 16:9 but I am unsure please help?
Hi Mark,
I believe you want to use the highest 16:9 resolution possible. Whether it’s SD or HD shouldn’t matter, as long as the video is in a 16:9 ratio, YouTube will handle the video accordingly. Your camera can record a 1280X720 resolution, which would be the best resolution to upload to YouTube.
You always want to upload the highest resolution, with the correct aspect ratio.
thanx for the bitrate, made my mp4 look so much better, I had no idea what to set it to, and have been looking for sometime…ran across this site and now looks great! thanks for taking the time to post.
Hi Jeremy
Thanks for posting this, it is info a have been looking for ages. Only recently did I find out the hard way that the aspect ration had changed and my videos did not look as they did before. I will modify the settings of WMM so that they are set to what you say.
Thanks!
Federico