Best encoding settings for Viddler and others
Best encoding settings for Viddler(/YouTube/Vimeo)
Every year video quality on the web gets better, new cameras with better chip resolution are released, and everyone asks “why doesn’t my video look good” (or something to that effect).
As of January 2009, these are the settings I would use if you want your video to look great online.
HD VIDEO
If you have a video camera that shoots HD (720p or 1080p) use the following settings:
File format: QuickTime Movie (.mov) or MPEG-4 (.mp4)
Video format: H.264
Video bit rate: 5000kbps
Video resolution/image size: 1280×720 (aka 720p)Frames per second: This depends on your camera. Most common is 30fps, but more professional cameras are now able to do 24fps. Older cameras that record in PAL have a frame rate of 25fps. If you’re unsure, just use the ‘current’ setting in your video editing/encoding software.
Audio: Between 128kbps and 256kbps; higher if you have music in the video.
4:3 VIDEO
If you have a video camera that shoots 4:3 (640×480 NTSC or 768×576 PAL) use the following settings:
File format: QuickTime Movie (.mov) or MPEG-4 (.mp4)
Video format: H.264
Video bit rate: Between 3500-4500kbps (the higher the better, but file size will be larger too)
Video resolution/image size: 640×480 or 768×576 — 640×480 is more popular with online video because most point and shoot cameras record that natively. Regardless, I like to bump mine up to 768×576 to make them slightly future-proof1.Frames per second: This depends on your camera. Most common is 30fps, but more professional cameras are now able to do 24fps. Older cameras that record in PAL have a frame rate of 25fps. If you’re unsure, just use the ‘current’ setting in your video editing/encoding software.
Audio: Between 128kbps and 256kbps; higher if you have music in the video.
<— Here’s a set of screenshots to display how to input the above settings in QuickTime Pro, iMovie, or Final Cut Pro.
The Dead Simple Approach
If you’re using iMovie, QuickTime Pro (Mac or Windows), or Final Cut Pro/Express to encode your videos, then you can choose the ‘Apple TV’ setting and it will make an MPEG-4 Video (.m4v) file which will look great and have a smaller file size than the aforementioned methods.
The only issue I’ve found with this is that iMovie HD 6 doesn’t import .m4v files, and YouTube doesn’t display them as HD even if your video is HD.
Progressive and Interlaced
If you have a video camera that records to tape and was made before 2007, then it most likely records interlaced video. Online video does not support interlacing; your video will have lines going through it especially during high motion. To remedy this you just have to deinterlace your video (instructions here) when you export it.
File Size Vs Video Quality
Obviously, if the video quality is really high, the file size will be high too. At this point in time Viddler supports unlimited uploading of videos 500MB in size (no length restrictions). This can be increased upon request. If you use the settings above you’ll be able to upload a superb quality video that’s about 15 minutes in length.
1 Future-proof is my way of saying that it should be save to have a video at this resolution/quality without it being considered crappy in a year or two. If you ever encoded a video at 320×240 @ 768kbps to YouTube, then you never had any hope in being future-proof. Moreover, I don’t think that web video will support raw HD 1080p video @ 22Mbps any time soon, thus why the settings mentioned in this post should be future-proof for now.
