Video Editing Production | Upload HD Video To YouTube

If you viewed the previous Video Editing and Production Tips you may have noticed that the opening graphics and closing credits are obviously crisper and in higher resolution than previous years of fuzzy YouTube videos. The other obvious feature is that the included video, although good resolution, reveals how important a good quality camera has become. Now a HD camera is a must. It should be capable of and set to record at a minimum 1280 x 720. Also note that good camera work, or lack of, becomes more obvious, but that’s another report.

So you should have good raw video footage, edited it and added your graphics, transitions, and audio tracks. And as covered previously, you have rendered the output to a MP4 file with H264 compression at a minimum 2 Megabits per second bitrate, and 1280 by 720 pixels for a wide screen 16 to 9 aspect ratio, and at a frame rate of 30 frames per second.

Now you are ready to publish your video to YouTube.

YouTube currently has a limit of 1GB in file size and 10 minutes run time. Video file size is determined by the video run time in seconds times the bit-rate divided by 8 (bits per byte).
e.g. 3 minutes at 2Mbps = 45MB

For videos of less than 5 minutes use the highest bitrate possible. For a 10 minute video the maximum bitrate would be 13.65Mbps for a 1024MB file size.

If you don’t already have an account at YouTube, register for free http://www.youtube.com/signup?next=/index.

Once signed in to your account, click on the Upload button at the top right. Browse to your local file and select Upload Video. Fill out the fields for Title, Description, Tags, and select a Category and a sharing option.

The fields should be composed with SEO features in mind. Title will be how the video is listed in YouTube and what will be superimposed over the thumbnail. Tags are your targeted keywords that people will search for. In the Description field begin with your website URL first. It becomes a hyperlink to your site and has high visibility in the info excerpt when the video is listed.

Once the file is uploaded it is encoded and takes a few minutes to become available for viewing. You can go back any time to your account videos and edit the information fields about them and also add more details such as a geographic location.

You can also choose a different thumbnail. By default YouTube uses a still image at the mid-point of the video. You may choose to pick a different thumbnail that is at the quarter or three-quarter mark. Changes can takes hours to occur.

If your uploaded video is of sufficient quality as laid out in the specifications here then it will display as wide-screen High Definition as shown in the previous post for Video Editing and Production Tips.