YouTube Encoding Info
Uploading to YouTube is incredibly frustrating. They claim they accept a wide variety of formats, but once you get that clip online, it could be jittery, the audio might be out of sync, or the video might completely turn to static. YouTube's various help pages will even directly contradict their own specs.
I encountered this recently on some videos for a client. They uploaded one of our H.264 Quicktimes as a test and got a jittery picture. We followed all the suggested specs on YouTube's help page. No dice.
Here's what I learned after encoding and testing several different formats.
Don't use Adobe Media Encoder. And don't export your H.264's right from AfterEffects. If you have Quicktime Pro 7, try that. If you upgraded to Snow Leopard and are stuck with the new Quicktime, I'm very sorry. Try using Compressor.
QT Pro 7 and Compressor allow you to change one important little feature – Fast Start. At least, that's the one variable that seemed to do the trick for me.
Here are the specs I used for the successful HD upload:
Video:
• Compression Type: H.264
• Framerate: use the native framerate for your project (not sure what the cap is, but I wouldn't go over 30fps)
• Data rate: Automatic (you may be able to play with this)
• Pixel Aspect Ratio: Square
• Size: 1280x720 actual
Audio: AAC, 44.1Khz
Set Streaming to Fast Start – Compressed Header.
OR, you could just upload to Vimeo.
