At What Kbps Should I Upload To Youtube

Near every solar day I upload an Hard disk drive video to ane of my YouTube channels, whether it be a vlog, Q&A video, a skit or something else. I really savor near everything about YouTube: the community interaction, editing, the creative outlet it provides, even the weird looks I go when vlogging in public! Only the thing I can't stand is that information technology often takes two.5 to 3 hours to upload my content. If I consign my video from iMovie using the default 720p HD (High-Definition) settings, information technology takes my approximately 10 minute vlog and creates a file effectually 750 MB. Since I already have the fastest upload speed that'due south bachelor at my location (1 Mbps), the just way to decrease my upload time is to lessen the file size.

Encoding my videos to H.264/AAC is already a pretty high compression and is also arguably the current industry standard (unless you ask Google, apparently), just fortunately there's some flexibility within that compression to get an even smaller file size by adjusting the bitrate.

Very simplistically, "bitrate" is the corporeality of information each frame contains. The higher the bitrate, the more than information the video contains, which makes for higher video quality and thus a larger file size. The lower the bitrate, the less data each fame contains and the lower the quality producing a smaller file size. Bitrate is measured by the number of bits per 2nd.

My United nations-Scientific Quest for the Optimal Bitrate for YouTube:

Since nearly of my videos are uploaded to YouTube in 720p HD, I wanted to know the maximum bitrate they utilize to encode my video. If I requite YouTube a file encoded at ~10 Mbps and it re-encoded it to 2Mbps, so I knew I could reduce the bitrate when I encode my video and upload something smaller and likely still get the aforementioned result.

For my unscientific tests, I downloaded the MP4 of many 720p Hard disk drive videos from YouTube beyond many different users and channels. I also downloaded their FLV counterparts, which were really 854×480 high quality videos, not true 720p HD. Since I don't know if Google plays with their encoding settings from time to time, I only checked videos that were newer than one week. I used VLC to monitor the variable bitrate peaks and Mac's "Get Info" to check the video file belongings's total bitrate.

Hither's what I found:

Maximum Playback Bitrates on YouTube

FLV HQ: 1.5 Mbit/s (variable bitrate with peaks of three.0 Mbps)
MP4 720p: four.0 Mbit/s (variable bitrate with peaks of v.0 Mbps)
MP4 1080p: 8.0 Mbit/south (variable bitrate with peaks of 10.0 Mbps)

This tells me that encoding my videos at 10 Mbps for YouTube is definitely overkill. Since it's usually a adept thought to encode with some overhead and requite YouTube a higher quality video than it will produce.

My New YouTube Video Encoding Parameters

I started giving YouTube 720p H.264/AAC files with the video encoded at five.0 Mbps and the audio encoded at 256 Kbps.

I'm exporting my videos with Quicktime and to salve fourth dimension, I've only been exporting with a single-pass encoding because I tin't meet a noticeable difference betwixt single and dual-pass encoding. I'1000 using a Flip and a Canon HF100, fairly low-end cameras, and so their image reproduction isn't high plenty quality enough to show much of a deviation. If I end up upgrading to a Canon 60D or 7D, the extra time dual-laissez passer encoding takes volition be worth information technology.

The Results?

With this I am able to encode files to approximately half the size I was previously getting from iMovie'southward defaults. It seems that the files still outcome with the same quality on YouTube as my 10 Mbps videos did and now my uploads too only take half the fourth dimension. Although, I still wish I could boost my upload speed to something faster than 1 Mbps.

Here'due south an case of a video I uploaded concluding month using v mbps encoding:

What do you think? Is in that location an optimal bitrate that you've found (perhaps with a more "scientific" approach)?

About the Writer

Tim Schmoyer

Tim Schmoyer blogs at Life In Educatee Ministry where he often shares what he's learning about online video as a advice and date tool. You can encounter some of his videos on his YouTube Vlog Channel and his new YouTube Educatee Ministry building Aqueduct.

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