I'm wonder how you guys upload Black Magic Pocket 4k footage to Youtube?

[GabrielLSR]

I've seen some incredible footage from the pocket 4k on Youtube and I'm trying to figure out what export/ sequence settings are ideal for a very high-quality upload to Youtube. Whenever I upload there always seems to be a significant loss of quality which really bothers me. I know there is a solution because I've seen videos on Youtube that have extremely high detail. I've tried h.264 and DNxHR export settings at 4k but my videos still seem to be lacking the quality that the original clips had straight out of the pocket 4k. 

Your advice is appreciated! 

[WeAreMoose]

Youtube is always going to downgrade your quality, it compresses the file you upload, what you see on youtube is never the file you upload.

Try to export a ProRes 422 and check Maximum Render Quality. But even that won't prevent it.

Thanks

[Averdahl]

Try to export a ProRes 422 and check Maximum Render Quality. But even that won't prevent it.

That will do the trick, minus the Maximum Render Quality. Maximum Render Quality is a render hog and is often used even if it not is even relevant to use. When to Use Maximum Render Quality

[WeAreMoose]

That is very surprising to me. 

I have delivered a ProRes 422 without checking those two mentioned boxes to a colour grading studio

and they came back and flagged that there was clear banding in the gradients. 

After checking those boxes the banding was gone?

[Media Editor]

If I want my viewers to see videos, I transfer them using wetransfer.com.  They are transfered through e-mail.  The videos are not reincoded.  You can  upload videos up to 2 gigabytes for free.

[R Neil Haugen]

WeAreMoose ...

I've been through Premeire's internal pipelines for hours with an engineer on screen-share, phone, and in person, to create a presentation last year for NAB/Vegas in the Flanders/MixingLight booth, and then tutorial for the MixingLight subscritption website. Much of the information included had never been gathered in any one place before, some never published by Adobe. For some of the questions we had, the engineer had to go into the engineering notes and then test things himself, as ... they didn't even have it specified what X caused when coupled with Y for all cases in any in-house records.

I'm very grateful for the HOURS of work the Premiere development team put at my disposoal. When the tutorial was finally finished, and they viewed it for accuracy prior to publishing, they requested that MixingLight place that tutorial outside the paywall. The founders of MixingLight include Adobe Master Trainer Robbie Carman and also Pat Inhofer, two of the best teaching colorists out there. And they and partner Dan Moran were happy to oblige. So that tutorial is free for anyone to view.

And is here: How to Finish with Highest Quality in Premiere Pro

Premiere's pipeline "reads" the clip's bit-depth from the file as it is being used in a sequence. Internal processing is in 32-bit float unless the user uses an effect, like some of the "Obsolete" color effects, that do NOT have the 32-bit lego block in the Effects list. If any 8-bit effect is used, the processing for that effect pulls everything down to 8 bits. So just avoid any 8-bit color/tonal effect.

For exporting, the presence of a discrete GPU that is selected in the Project Settings Mercury Acceleration options ... CUDA, OpenCL, Metal ... typically means that any exporting done involving any color changes will occur using full 32-bit GPU style math, all the way into the bit-depth of the chosen format/codec. At that point, the "Max Render Depth" options in the Sequence Settings and the Export panel are most likely irrelevant, and can at times actually (if not often) cause export issues.

There are though, a few cases I know of where users have not done any color correction ... and though they have a good GPU installed, Premiere didn't for some reason use the full GPU style math for the export color data. I cannot replicate ... any 10/12 bit media I export is always exported into the bit-depth of the chosen format/codec (the ProRes, DNxHD/R and Cineform options) in proper high-bit all the way. Checked in MediaInfo and tested in Resolve, the media is fine.

What the Render in Max Bit Depth option is supposed to do ... is ... IF you do not have a full discrete GPU with Premiere running in something other than Mercury Acceleration/Software-only mode ... it forces the CPU to render with GPU style math.

So ... the simplified version: no discrete GPU, use Render Max Bit Depth; got a good GPU in use, no need for that option.

I'm a firm believer in trust but verify for ALL things ... especially anything involving the work for the nice clients what pays our bills. So ... if you get a bad export with MRD off, and a GPU active, yea, I'd go ahead and set the thing on.

I was wondering if I always got proper bit depth because I can't remember when I exported something for any external use without doing at least some color. That definitely would "invoke" the GPU. So I tried exporting a bunch of clips of different format/codec combinations to different format/codec combinations just after dropping them on a sequence, doing nothing at all for any effects. I still got full-depth exports.

So ... I don't know what trigger that for some people. Can it happen? Yea, I think it can. But I've known quite a few other experienced users who've tested and get my result ... they can't manage a non-full-depth export with a good GPU in the rig. So I don't know how widely this can happen.

Test ... as in everything, test. Use what passes the testing.

Neil

[Averdahl · Accepted solution]

I've seen some incredible footage from the pocket 4k on Youtube and I'm trying to figure out what export/ sequence settings are ideal for a very high-quality upload to Youtube.

Make sure that your Sequence Settings match the footage and export settings. If you have 4K footage and place it on a 1080p timeline and then blow it up to 4K when exporting it will look bad. 4K source footage, use a 4K timeline, export as 4K if 4K is the desired output resolution.

As WeAreMoose wrote, try to export to ProRes 422 or GoPro CineForm and upload the file to YouTube and bare in mind that it will take some minutes after the upload is done before you can view 4K in YouTube.