Transcode for YouTube upload?

porina · December 21, 2023

Got a new video camera yesterday (Pocket 3) and having some fun learning to use it. I'm thinking of doing walking videos and still working out a strategy for that. Image quality looks great so far even at night. I don't feel a need to correct or edit significantly.

Debating if I should:

1, just upload the native file to YT without editing unless really essential, but this will mean no intro.

2, do some kind of recompression before upload. This may or may not involve some editing depending on what software I use.

I'm still testing out the file formats. So far it looks like 4k60 H265 is about 100 Mbps, and 4k30 H265 is about 75 Mbps. I don't think I want to drop to H264 record. YT recommends H264 at up to 68/45 Mbps but I believe they will accept H265 and will recompress it anyway. So the main benefit of recompression is faster upload times on my potato internet. If I have to edit, the transcode is a requirement anyway.

I could create a new preset in my main editor: Vegas 16 (debating grabbing 19 currently on Humble), or I could do something with ffmpeg I guess?

WereCat · December 21, 2023

YT will accept almost any format and generally the higher quality you upload, the video will look slightly better after their transcode... But you really want to force them to use VP9 or AV1 for best quality so you will want to upload at least 1440p+.

porina · December 21, 2023

11 minutes ago, WereCat said:

YT will accept almost any format and generally the higher quality you upload, the video will look slightly better after their transcode... But you really want to force them to use VP9 or AV1 for best quality so you will want to upload at least 1440p+.

Shouldn't be a problem. I'm debating recording/uploading in 4k30 or 4k60 and probably should go for the latter. Doing a test upload now of a 4k30 run from last night. 1h40m upload for 7.6GB file. If I drop the bitrate down to YT recommendation that'll knock it down to about an hour. This is for a 13 minute recording and I plan to do longer ones at higher framerate. I think this alone is a good reason for me to transcode before upload.

Unfortunately better internet isn't really an option. Edit: my internet becomes almost unusable for anything else during upload. Other wifi clients stall, and I get massive ping in games. I need a way to throttle uploads to help with that.

Given they accept H265 I'm now thinking I should stick to that, even if they recommend H264.

WereCat · December 21, 2023

11 minutes ago, porina said:

Shouldn't be a problem. I'm debating recording/uploading in 4k30 or 4k60 and probably should go for the latter. Doing a test upload now of a 4k30 run from last night. 1h40m upload for 7.6GB file. If I drop the bitrate down to YT recommendation that'll knock it down to about an hour. This is for a 13 minute recording and I plan to do longer ones at higher framerate. I think this alone is a good reason for me to transcode before upload.

Unfortunately better internet isn't really an option. Edit: my internet becomes almost unusable for anything else during upload. Other wifi clients stall, and I get massive ping in games. I need a way to throttle uploads to help with that.

Given they accept H265 I'm now thinking I should stick to that, even if they recommend H264.

Definitely stick with H265.

I agree that if your Internet upload is slow it's best to re-encode for as mall bitrate as possible yourself to make uploads not take ages. You should stick to their max recommended bitrates at least though.

Even if you re-encode with all their settings they will still transcode it anyways so just stick to the codec that gives highest quality at the same bitrate.