Video quality

[bonzillesgames]

Just asking what people think about videos for YouTube.

At the moment I use Movavi Video Editor and find it a really good video editor but the size of the videos can be excessively large where a 1 hour gameplay video can be up to 40GB.

I use the highest possible setting but find that the upload to YouTube can take 4 plus hours.

The main question is do you need to have a video set to high for a YouTube video ?

If you reduce the quality to say medium will it effect the views ?

Do people still watch a video if the quality isn't super HD ?

Thank you for any feedback

[Rhody Seth]

I think it probably depends on your genre.  I make videos of the outdoors so I go for the highest resolution possible.  For your video game videos, I suspect you could go for a lower resolution especially depending on the type of game.

[JayZippo]

Not sure how relavent this is anymore but here ya go. This could be outdated, but as of 3-4 years ago it was the brass tacks.

Youtube downgrades things, as we know. I think they have too. But from what was presented before; a 1080p HD 60fps, anything over 16mbps is useless. If you are rendering it at 30mbps, it will get reduced to roughly 16mbps - ish and published.

With 4K, I am positive it is different. 720p was 10mbps.

I did some experimenting at work with some colleagues (again 4 years ago). Uploaded some vids at 24mbps, 16mps and like 6mps. The same 1080p video. We redownloaded them through youtube and put them in Premiere.

24 and 16 were almost exactly the same. Just a bit better artifact handling on the higher one, but on a 24" screen (I think it was) there was no discernible difference. The 6mps didnt look terrible but putting it in premiere you could tell the difference.

I wished I saved this experiment, but as the "video" department lost people, we lost a lot of footage and information.

4K I am not sure the max for the tubes is.
1080P is 16mbps
720p is 10mps
480p is 5mps (I think).

Beat dead horse: might be outdated by now, Take it for what it is worth, but I am not sure rendering it really high makes much difference to the tubes.

[LandyVlad]

I suspect that rendering it excessively high can actually have negative consequences due to the way YouTube compresses video data; but in any event I agree with Jay on this.

Also what is the resolution and frame rate of the game you are playing?
There would be no point, for example, in rendering minecraft in anything above 'potato' quality because that's what it inherently is.

As to your questions:

If you reduce the quality to say medium will it effect the views ?

Generally not. As long as it looks 'good', that's enough. The content and overall production quality is more important i.e. decent audio that people can understand, your personality if doing commentary etc.

Do people still watch a video if the quality isn't super HD ?

They sure do.

People watch what they enjoy first and foremost.

I mostly watch (especially gaming and talking head type videos) in 1080p even when higher is available because generally speaking I hardly see any difference.
I'd only really consider 4k for 'cinematic' type videos.