A friend was not getting very good results exporting Apple HDV 1080i60 video for uploading to youtube. She supplied some samples and access to her Mac with Final Cut Pro for some tests and we determined that the following Compressor preset produces pretty good looking H.264 video for uploading to youtube.

Name: H.264-10Msingle
Description: h264toyoutube
File Extension: mov
Audio Encoder
	AAC, Stereo (L R), 48.000 kHz
Video Encoder
	Format: QT
	Width: 1280
	Height: 720
	Pixel aspect ratio: default
	Crop: None
	Frame rate: 29.97
	Frame Controls:
		Retiming: Nearest Frame
		Resize Filter: Linear Filter
		Deinterlace Filter: Motion Adaptive
		Adaptive Details: Off
		Antialias: 0
		Detail Level: 0
		Field Output: Progressive
	Codec Type: H.264
	Multi-pass: Off, frame reorder: Off
	Pixel depth: 24
	Spatial quality: 75
	Min. Spatial quality: 25
	Temporal quality: 50
	Min. temporal quality: 25
	Average data rate: 10.24 (Mbps)

This preset yields an approximately 750mb exported quicktime .mov file for 10 minutes of video, which is under youtube's current 1gb per file limit.

Compressor 2's exported video was superior to what was produced by the QuickTime (Pro) Player direct export of a .dv stream because Compressor has sophisticated deinterlacing which is much better than what QuickTime export does with its "Deinterlace Source Video" checkbox in the Size options of the Video Export settings. Non interlaced progressive video might work reasonably well directly exported from QuickTime Player.

In Compressor, the Inspector shows the following on the "Encoder" Panel. Note File Format: is set to QuickTime Movie

Compressor encoder panel in preset inspector

the "Frame Controls" panel, Frame Controls: set to Custom

Apple Compressor's Inspector Frame Controls panel

the "Geometry" panel (your settings may vary depending on your source video's resolution and aspect ratio):

Apple Compressor's Inspector Geometry panel

In the Encoder panel, the following are the Video "Settings…" (note "Frame Reordering" is unchecked. Checking this option may cause problems (small jerks or stutters) after youtube processes the file. 10,000 kbits/sec seemed a reasonable compromise for a good quality video that would be under the youtube size limit per 10 minute video.

QuickTime video export settings

the following are the Audio "Settings…"

QuickTime audio export settings

Notes:


Thanks to Kristina Buddenhagen for providing the test machine, test video and inspiration to conduct the video export and youtube upload tests. Check out her Vietnamese cooking videos, Cooking with Maily series.


-- harvey.nu