Best settings to export a video clip into youtube

[fdormoy]

I used a Gopro to make a video clip using 4K setting, but with low light at night (street Halloween parade).  Before exporting from Premiere Pro, I made sone image corrections (increasing exposure, reducing contrats, changing highlights etc.).

I tried to follow the recommendations found in the web :

1. Format: H.264 (.mp4)
2. Frame sizes: UHD: 3840 x 2160. ...
3. Frame rate: match the frame rate of the source video.
4. Target bitrate: 8 Mbps (45 for 4K)
5. Bitrate encoding: VBR, 1-pass.
6. Field order: Progressive. (I cound not find where in the youtube settings of Premiere I could change this)
7. Aspect: match the aspect of the source video.

But the results look awful (pixelised, and artefacst around people's face) and I decided to delete my exported video from youtube.

Please let me know if I missed something (either in the Gopro setting or in the Premiere settings

If necessary, I could export again the file so that someone can see the results and give proper advice.

[R Neil Haugen]

What's that look like if you export say a ProRes 422 file, view that?

[fdormoy]

I will try.  Thanks

[Richard M Knight]

Are you viewing the exported file directly on your computer or are you watching it streamed from YouTube?

[fdormoy]

Watching the strem on my TV

[fdormoy]

Here is the link.  You will see that the quality is awful.  Any suggestion ?  I wanted to follow the suggestion from R. Neil, but I dont have ProRes 422 in my list of available format.  Any reason why ?

[fdormoy]

Here is the link.: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2DMJltm5__0

[R Neil Haugen]

There's a LOT of macro-blocking going on there. I think probably due to two things ... the corrections to an under-exposed original file, and then H.264 style compression.

First, raising "exposure" in the Lumetri panel makes things brighter, but of course doesn't change the original exposure of the image. If the image is too dark, then 'lifting' things to make them brighter also raises the noise and visible artifacts in the shadow areas as much.

Becuase there are very few "bits" or bytes of actual data in video file shadow areas. Raising them much means that you stretch them out so that there are 'missing' levels.

In 8 bit terms, there are 256 values between white & black, as this was found to be the minimal number so that our eyes would 'see' a complete light to dark image. But an underexposed image does not have the midtones around 120 or higher. In your video, what you have corrected to be say middle value, around 126, might have started at 80 or below.

They can't just make intermediate values ... so that means that some of those 256 steps  in the shadow areas don't actually have any pixels of that value anymore. This can be seen most often as "banding" ... say an even wall has a range of lines across it where it gets darker.

But you take that lack of data in some levels, and then do an H.264/5 type compression pattern, and it goes off the rails. Because that compression is based off of taking blocks of pixels ... 4x4 to 9x9, depending on the level of compression ... and if the values are pretty close for all the pixels in the block, it just records all of them as the same.

Ergo, you get blocks of up to nine pixels, all the same value, but a bit differently arranged nearly every frame. Which is what this video is showing. That's called "macroblocking".

You can try doing an export to ProRes 422 or maybe even ProRes Lt, found in the Quicktime format of the Export dialog. Do that as your export, then upload that file to YouTube in 3840x2160, as you get a better codec for their re-encoding then.

Also ... I would suggest going back to your original sequence, and reducing the amount of 'lifting' of the shadows and mids to somewhat less than you've done with this one. It will be a bit darker, but will not have nearly the artifacting visible.

[MyerPj]

Which version of PP. (Get it from the HELP/About screen). To find ProRes, you select "Quicktime" in the Format drop-down.

You can export using ProRes LT or even Proxy (selected from the Video Codec option).

Upload that file, and check the quality when done. Put a link for us too...

[Richard M Knight]

Often youtube takes a little while to encode at its best quality, especially 4k footage.

[fdormoy]

Thanks all of you for your comments I think I found the right settings uing mp4 format rather than mov.  I realised that there is no way we could upload a 4K mov file into youtube of 8 minutes.  It would take more than 24 hours with an internet speed of 160 mbs.  Unless you demonstrate that it could be done in a certain way.