Complete newbie - question about film hosting

Hi, I bought a Sony A6000 video camera last year. I'm very happy with it, it produces some great, crystal-clear video. I've just created a 4-minute film about beaches in Portugal, but I'm having trouble with uploading it to an external site.

Of utmost importance to me is keeping the excellent video quality. How is it possible to upload the video to a site like Youtube or Vimeo and to keep the quality? I uploaded to Vimeo and it's down-sized or down-graded the quality and the video looks very blurry and pixelated at times.

If anyone can share any advice about the Export settings in the video production suite, that would be appreciated too. There are many options for Exporting the video, and I haven't a clue about any of them. I'm a complete novice.

Many thanks
Aron
 
Hi SFoster,

Thanks for taking the time to respond to my query :).

I'm currently using Filmora by Wondershare, which is a very basic film editing suite, but good for a novice like myself. When I export the video, I get options to save it as .WMV or .MP4 or .AVI. Does the choice made here influence the eventual video quality?

Further on, if I click on the Settings options, there is a further menu where I get these options for exporting the video:-

Encoder: H.264 or MJPEG or Xvid

Frame rate: 12fps or 15fps or 20fps or 23.97fps or 24fps or 25 fps (default) or 29.97 fps or 30 fps

Resolution: 320*240 or 352*288 or 640*480 or 720*480 or 720*576 or 1280*720 or 1440*1080 or 1920*1080

Bit rate: 2000kpbs or 3000kpbs or 4000kpbs or 5000kpbs or 6000kpbs or 7000kpbs or 8000kpbs or 10000kpbs or 15000kpbs or 20000kpbs or 30000kpbs


Which should I chose to ensure top video quality?

When I selected 25fps and 30000kpbs, the resulting video was 980mb and far too big for Youtube and Vimeo to handle; it wouldn't even upload. Vimeo had a 550mb limit for a free account and Youtube just hung.

Thanks for any light you can shed on this.:yes:

Best regards
Aron
 
Hey Nordico,

For online video, I would use:
.MP4
H.264
25fps (if for Europe) or 29.97 (if for U.S.) or 24 (to make it look like film)
All the fps has to match what you shot it in with your camera. Was you camera on 25, or 24? Find out.
640 x 480 if you don't have widescreen, and 720 x 480 if you do have widescreen. Did you shoot in widescreen?
Smallest kbps you can that it still looks good. Try viewing it before you upload to YouTube and check it out. I often render/output multiple versions to test what settings are the best until I know what settings are the best.

Good luck!
 
Hey Nordico,

For online video, I would use:
.MP4
H.264
25fps (if for Europe) or 29.97 (if for U.S.) or 24 (to make it look like film)
All the fps has to match what you shot it in with your camera. Was you camera on 25, or 24? Find out.
640 x 480 if you don't have widescreen, and 720 x 480 if you do have widescreen. Did you shoot in widescreen?
Smallest kbps you can that it still looks good. Try viewing it before you upload to YouTube and check it out. I often render/output multiple versions to test what settings are the best until I know what settings are the best.

Good luck!

Hey ChrisColorado, thanks so much for this... it is exactly what I needed. I'll let you know how I get on with this approach.

best wishes
 
I assume OP was at least HD resolution. So go with the highest resolution that fits the aspect ratio (1440*1080 or 1920*1080).

SD loads faster in browsers, and as I learned in business school/real life, if you actually want viewers to watch, then you better load that video ASAP or they click away pretty soon. SD loads fast, so that's what I recommend. Anyway, seems to have worked for him. Good point, though!


And Nordico, you are welcome! Dreadylocks has a good point though that if you want HD, you may want to look at higher settings.
 
Hi SFoster,
I'm currently using Filmora by Wondershare, which is a very basic film editing suite, but good for a novice like myself. When I export the video, I get options to save it as .WMV or .MP4 or .AVI. Does the choice made here influence the eventual video quality?

.MP4 for YouTube. Vimeo I'm not sure their requirements, but if you're uploading there it's just to show other filmmakers and you'll want the Pro account.

Encoder: H.264 or MJPEG or Xvid

H.264

Frame rate: 12fps or 15fps or 20fps or 23.97fps or 24fps or 25 fps (default) or 29.97 fps or 30 fps

No offense to chris, but don't do it based on your region or if you want the film look. You're using novice film software, and you're most likely a novice editor. Do not fuck with the FPS in post at your level. Select the FPS that you shot the video on. Your camera most likely defaulted at 24 or 30. If possible for the future change your camera setting to 29.97.

Resolution: 320*240 or 352*288 or 640*480 or 720*480 or 720*576 or 1280*720 or 1440*1080 or 1920*1080

1920x1080 if you shot it in 16:9, which you most likely did.

Bit rate: 2000kpbs or 3000kpbs or 4000kpbs or 5000kpbs or 6000kpbs or 7000kpbs or 8000kpbs or 10000kpbs or 15000kpbs or 20000kpbs or 30000kpbs

Try 6000, that should be a good medium between best picture and smallest size. To give you an idea, head to Twitch.tv, majority of video you see there is between 2800 - 3800 and most look pretty sharp. 5000 is most likely the highest YouTube will take.

Which should I chose to ensure top video quality?

When I selected 25fps and 30000kpbs, the resulting video was 980mb and far too big for Youtube and Vimeo to handle; it wouldn't even upload. Vimeo had a 550mb limit for a free account and Youtube just hung.

Those are my recommended settings. Also you need to get on some better software, the rendering on those can't be too great. Try to get something like Final Cut Pro X or Sony Vegas if you can. Those are much higher quality amateur film editing suites. I think HitFilm 2 is pretty cheap also, but I can't recommend it from first hand experience like the prior 2 mentioned.

Thanks for any light you can shed on this.:yes:

You're welcome.
 
Hi SkyCopeland,

Thanks for all this information, it's great to have it here in one place and I'll certainly do everything you recommend. You're quite right about getting better video editing software, the Wondershare Filmora was just a beginner's thing just to get me going and I've already got Power Director 14 (is this good?) and am going to PCWorld tonight to buy Sony Vegas Movie Studio Platinum Suite 12.

thanks again!
 
Hi SkyCopeland,

Thanks for all this information, it's great to have it here in one place and I'll certainly do everything you recommend. You're quite right about getting better video editing software, the Wondershare Filmora was just a beginner's thing just to get me going and I've already got Power Director 14 (is this good?) and am going to PCWorld tonight to buy Sony Vegas Movie Studio Platinum Suite 12.

thanks again!

I've never even heard of Power Director... stick to learning Sony Vegas, but eventually you'll need to graduate from that to an intermediate software like Premier & After-Effects.

Sony Vegas is a great platform to build your early skills on though.
 
I tried editing with Filmora.That software is actually is i its early stages IMO.But they have released version 7 ,with many updates. Nonetheless i found Filmora tend to produce heavy file size even for smaller videos. May be its the error of the .mp4 codec they are using.I recommend you to use Adobe AE or Sony Vegas to render out the video as H.264 with a mp4 container (not .mov).And with 1280x720 with 25FPS HD size (5 mint Clip is about 30mb for me) 1920x1080 with 25 FPS (5 mint Clip is about 80mb for me).

PS: Even if you get huge file size ,Download the below program
Its totally free https://handbrake.fr/
There is bunch of tutorials on youtube also,on how to configure it.

Hope that help you
Filmer
 
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