In January of ‘08, North Point launched a YouTube channel in order to reach out to the video sharing community. The initial thought was to upload 15-20 minute video segments from selected message series for people out there who may not step foot into a church–it generated some great discussions, and we uploaded a good bit of letterboxed content to the then 4:3 Youtube.
Windowbox effect on older videos
Recently, however, YouTube has switched over to 16:9 and has added a limit of 10 minutes to all new videos. That put us in a bit of a bind because we don’t want to sacrifice the existing “extended” content & comments/discussions we have up there, but at the same time we ‘d need to recompress everything to make the content look as good as possible. Because of the switchover, many of our older videos are now both pillar-boxed and letter-boxed…the dreaded “windowboxing” effect.
New native 16:9 compression
Until we figure out the best way to update the older content, this is where we stand: Compressing all our newer videos in 10-minute intervals with a new setting to fill the player natively at 16:9. Despite the issues with the older files, we’re thankful for YouTube’s new system as it’s way more flattering to our widescreen content.
Do any of you anyone upload content to YouTube? What settings / compressions have you found to work well?
November 24th, 2009 at 5:48 pm
These are the settings I use
Video: h.264 format, 1280×720, 3Mbps (CBR)
Audio: AAC, 128kbps, 48000khz
There are probably some other settings as far as multiplexer and pull-down, but i don’t remember off the top of me head. This is all in Adobe MEdia Encoder, and I’ve seen the same options in Quick Time Pro.
This is a resulting video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uqLkVZjkJ4g
Yes, it is longer than 10 minutes. Youtube’s FAQ says that users that were previously able to upload videos longer than 10 minutes can continue to do so.
November 24th, 2009 at 6:37 pm
As “Bear” says, YouTube’s FAQ does state that you should still be able to upload videos that are longer than 10 minutes if you were previously able to do so.
Other than that, Vimeo Plus ($60/year) provides for up to 5GB/week, with no time limit. If if fits within the 1GB file size limit, it’s on Vimeo.
Another great feature is HD embedding.
Vimeo’s Plus FAQ is available at: http://www.vimeo.com/help/faq/vimeo_plus
November 25th, 2009 at 3:52 pm
I just missed joining YouTube before the 10-minute cutoff. Dang it! Anyway, I think their quality is the best out there, and you can’t beat free. It’s also the most “social” of all the video sites, so the traffic is there.
I make an .MP4 file using H.264: 1280×720, progressive, High Profile, Level 3.2, avg. 6 Mbps, max Mbps, 9 Mbps, AAC 44.1 KHz stereo audio, 112 kbps. If I need to go over 10 minutes, I’ll create a playlist to link the files together or use Video Replies to link them together. There’s nothing more frustrating than not being able to find the second half of something you’re interested in…
November 30th, 2009 at 10:53 am
We’ve had some issues with YouTube with regards to the time limit of 10 minutes, ever since they decided to do away with their “channel” groups. Anytime we try to upload longer than 10 minutes, the uploads always fail. Good advice on the different settings, we’ll definitely check those out.
December 10th, 2009 at 5:06 pm
When I preview the messages before Sunday, I always make a note of the “tension” point in the message. This is usually about 60 sec in length. Then, I add the end of the title package to the end of this preview. I upload a new video every week for a promo on our website (http://redstonechurch.org).
The compression I use in Final Cut (Quicktime conversion) is 30fps, constrain to 1000kbps, set “optimized” to streaming, set a custom size of 720×405, deinterlace, and audio 128kbps stereo MP3. This gives us a good quality video setting but small enough for internet streaming (usually around 11MB).
See our youtube channel at http://youtube.com/redstonevideo