How should I render to get good results at 360p on YouTube?

D

dreamsound2

Member
[h=2]So my video looks just like I intened on 1080p but when I go to 360 it gets very pixelated where this is for the most part the usual playing mode for YouTube. [/h]

Here's the thing, I look at other people's videos at 360p also using a CANON 60D camera and they look great!!

Here's my video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cG2lZ...feature=colike

I can give you samples of other's videos looking great at both 360p and 1080. How should I render to get good results at 360p?

I'm also getting a message when I upload saying my Pixel aspect ratio was off on YouTube. I tried rendering in dozen different ways. Spent a whole day on that and two hours on the video itself!!​
 
dreamsound2 said:
[h=2]So my video looks just like I intened on 1080p but when I go to 360 it gets very pixelated where this is for the most part the usual playing mode for YouTube. [/h]

Here's the thing, I look at other people's videos at 360p also using a CANON 60D camera and they look great!!

Here's my video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cG2lZ...feature=colike

I can give you samples of other's videos looking great at both 360p and 1080. How should I render to get good results at 360p?

I'm also getting a message when I upload saying my Pixel aspect ratio was off on YouTube. I tried rendering in dozen different ways. Spent a whole day on that and two hours on the video itself!!​
Click to expand...

I don't see what your problem is for 360p. The youtube clip played fine, and given that it was a resolution of 360 lines, playing in the 'small' window is the correct way to view this. Playing 360 line media in a 1080 'full frame' will always mean there will be 'pixelation'.

I don't know how you encoded your material, but one thought is that you need to make sure what ever you are using to encode, has the 'bitrate' limits set 'high'. For 720p 5 Mbits/sec seems to be a 'good bitrate', and is the youtube 'recommended' rate for 720 HD. So for 360, perhaps a bit rate of at least 1-2 Mbits/sec would be appropriate.
 
With the default player size, the quality of your YouTube video is excellent (i'm watching on a high quality 21" LED monitor). A 360p video should always be watched in the default player window size. I'm curious: why would you not render in at least 720p? You have an excellent video and are limiting yourself!

Dave
 
I've seen this problem many times: the problem is that no matter what, Youtube usually starts any video at 360P (and you have to click to make the quality higher). Many, many people out there, casual viewers, sometimes aren't even aware of what the "720P Button" is at the bottom of the screen, and merely watch it in 360P, which usually looks horrible. I think he OP wants to know how they can simply upload a 360P-only video in perfect quality resolution so that when the video is watched by casual audiences, it simply looks perfect in 360P. The reason why 360P on Youtube doesn't always look great is that Youtube doesn't do a good job at downscaling 720P to 360P on it's own. 360P is not in itself a pixelated, low-resolution format. In theory, if you upload a 360P video to Youtube, it should look absolutely perfect in the little-sized video box (which is indeed about 360P until you enlargen or full-screen it, which then resolution-wise needs at least 720P.) However, this theory doesn't seem to work, as I've tried uploading perfect-quality 360P videos before, and Youtube does no better of a job at handling them. It seems the only way to really get picture perfect quality is to click '720P', though it doesn't really make sense. There's really no reason 360P should look crappy in a video box that isn't half a foot long, but my guess is that Youtube assigns a very low processing scale to 360P, lower than what 360P really can benefit from. Youtube's 360P even negatively impacts audio, which is also just as wacky.
 
Thanks for all the responses. So looking back you are right is not bad, I think its more to do with the way I shot it rather than how I render it then. I don't mind the bluriness in some parts but definitely I want to get more clarity too. I see other videos with similar cameras and even with low light and in 360p they are still crystal clear: http://youtu.be/PGoCtJzPHkU

How do they get it to look so crisp, even at low resolutions?

Should I try to steer away from 24p and go into 30 or 60 or something else?

I rendered mine at 1080p so people who do want to view in HD can.

ErikTande said:
Check out this:

http://support.google.com/youtube/bin/static.py?hl=en&guide=1728585&topic=1728573&page=guide.cs
Click to expand...

Thanks Erik, I actually did go by the parameters shown in that page and did several experiments with them.
 
dreamsound2 said:
Thanks for all the responses. So looking back you are right is not bad, I think its more to do with the way I shot it rather than how I render it then. I don't mind the bluriness in some parts but definitely I want to get more clarity too. I see other videos with similar cameras and even with low light and in 360p they are still crystal clear: http://youtu.be/PGoCtJzPHkU

How do they get it to look so crisp, even at low resolutions?

Should I try to steer away from 24p and go into 30 or 60 or something else?

I rendered mine at 1080p so people who do want to view in HD can.



Thanks Erik, I actually did go by the parameters shown in that page and did several experiments with them.
Click to expand...

In the example you just posted, the lighting is 'hard', and so the image will have a 'crisper' look. This does not do the girl's face any favors... you can see skin blemishes etc... Now, if that 'hard' look is what is desired... crappy skin and all.. go with a hard light, surrounded by 'dark'...

In your original clip, you are using 'soft' light, and so the images will appear less 'sharp' because of the lower contrast.

Put a spot light on the fretboard and fingers, have mostly dark, near black for the rest of the frame, and you will have a 'sharper' looking image. And it always helps to run an 'unsharp mask' filter over the final image if 'sharp' is where you are going.

Despite it's name, that is a 'sharpening' filter. It really doesn't 'sharpen' so much as increases contrast at edges that the human eye tends to 'interpret' as 'sharp'...
 
360p often looks terrible in comparison to 720p not because of resolution alone, but purely because of the bitrate it's encoded at.
Youtube for some reason insists on ruining every video uploaded with a terrible bitrate, so 720p looks as good as 360p should look by default, but at the same time looks terrible if you actually watch it as 720p.
2k looks as good as 720p should by default, but again looks terrible if you actually tried to watch it as 2k, and 4k and looks as good as 1080p should by... Yeah.

Youtube is not a viable option for getting production quality video on the internet. It's good for publicity but if you're going for quality, look elsewhere.
 
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j1clark@ucsd.edu said:
In the example you just posted, the lighting is 'hard', and so the image will have a 'crisper' look. This does not do the girl's face any favors... you can see skin blemishes etc... Now, if that 'hard' look is what is desired... crappy skin and all.. go with a hard light, surrounded by 'dark'...

In your original clip, you are using 'soft' light, and so the images will appear less 'sharp' because of the lower contrast.

Put a spot light on the fretboard and fingers, have mostly dark, near black for the rest of the frame, and you will have a 'sharper' looking image. And it always helps to run an 'unsharp mask' filter over the final image if 'sharp' is where you are going.

Despite it's name, that is a 'sharpening' filter. It really doesn't 'sharpen' so much as increases contrast at edges that the human eye tends to 'interpret' as 'sharp'...
Click to expand...


Ok, I'll definitely look into trying that in the next vid.

What plugin would you recommend I can buy to bring the colors and contrasts more without having to analyze the picture and do it manually? Same for color correction. I'm more of a sound guy than video, this is new to me and I want to focus more on the audio yet have the best video quality I can.
 
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