Getting good quality yet small clips on YouTube

[rc444]

Hi Everyone,

I have a Panasonic TM-200. This is a 3 CMOS 1/4 inch camcorder that shoots AVCHD. I don't have a problem editing this format through Final Cut Pro, but getting a format of this size to stream is an issue. The lowest quality file I can get is 20Mb. To get it to that state, I've had to change the dimensions from 1920x1080 to 480x270 to fit onto YouTube, but in doing so, the quality of the clip is almost neglible.

I can't seem to find a balance of the best quality and the small file size. How can I get a small file size without scrimping on quality?

FYI, for reference, my clip is here:
http://www.inspirationaltv.net/the-lab

Cheers
David

 

[RyanBellaCine]

Lots and lots of testing and tweaking!

The real question is how are you compressing the file down? Compressor 3 will give you good results, but I found Apple's version of the h.264 codec to be awful for low bandwidth streaming.

I've been using the x264Encoder codec you can find off VersionTracker.com and its quality is much superior and will work fine within Compressor. It will give you tons more control which can be quite intimidating when you see all you can twiddle with and you have no idea what they do. I still don't really understand all the controls, but I've managed to massage some decent settings out of trial and error.

The real bit*h is dealing with interlaced sources and converting them to progressive while maintaining sharp detail. Sometimes it multiplies your render time like crazy.