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[LandyVlad]

What do we even mean by 'best'?

There are a lot of myths out there and it's important to understand what all the various settings are, the effect they have on upload times and YouTube video quality.

This is the best, most well-researched and scientific analysis I have yet seen.

 

[JayZippo]

My settings:

1080p, 60fps and I render it at 16mbps. A bitrate that is higher is a waste for the tubes, even at 4K. It will compress it past those settings (at least that is what it was 2 years ago).

A 20 minute video will be around 2GB.

[LandyVlad]

I'd never really thought much about the bitrate at all. Mine is set to automatic - best.
The 'restrict to' default is 80,000 kbps (a strange way of putting it, that's more usually written as 80 mbps).  Which is a LOT. Surely that can't be right?


I just checked one of my videos which encoded to 11,216 kbps or 11mbps and 6 minutes is 482MB

Now I'm not sure if that's the setting it chose to use as automatic (seems an unusual number)/  I'll have to check next time I export a video.

[JayZippo]

From what I read, the following is roughly the guidelines for the tubes. When I say it should not exceed, I just mean anything more would be useless.

720p the rendering should not exceed 10mbps
1080p is 16mbps
4K is 20mbps

Anything more is either compressed or brought down to certain levels. I didn't do a ton of research but off the cuff, 720 gets pulled down to 7, 1080 goes to 10 and 4K drops to 13 or 14 when you upload.

Adobe premiere will not allow me to go past 64 for 4K, and 32 for 1080. So I am going to say 80mbps is a wee bit of overkill.

I relate it to photography. 72dpi is the web standard. 180dpi is magazine standard and 300dpi is the photographer standard (wedding printing, etc). Render a 1080 at 4mbps, you will see the difference, much like printing a 72dpi photo you will most likely see the difference too. But render the 1080 at 10mbps - 16mbps, I am not sure you will truly see the difference on Youtube from 10-16. Not sure if I am talking nonsense or not LOL. lots around my brain and I streamed until 12:30 last night.

Now mind you, this info is about 4-5 years old, maybe even older. Just what I remember.

[LandyVlad]

The stills photo analogy kinda makes sense to me.
Valid? Probably.