Staying out of the rain - youtube posting advice

[dberry]

I wanted to post a short clip shot during a rain shower in Cozumel. It was a cool effect (IMO), until I uploaded it to YouTube. The graininess at less than 1080HD totally spoiled it (again, IMO.) The youtube video at 480 looks grainier than when I save it as lower resolution locally. Are there any tips for keeping finer details from being lost during upload?

Watch it at 480 then again at 1080 to see what I mean.


Thanks.
Don Berry

 

[MaxBottomtime]

The red filter cuts out a lot of light. Cameras need light to focus. Try not to use a filter near the surface.

 

[dberry]

Right, I forgot to pop off the red filter at the safety stop. It wasn't the most thoughtful video, I was intrigued by the pattern of the rain on the surface. But I was curious if there are ways to avoid losing so much resolution when uploading to youtube. Samples saved at lower res on my desktop computer aren't nearly as grainy as what posts after uploading.

 

[MaxBottomtime]

You can upload 8K video on YouTube now.

 

[CuzzA]

I use the backscatter flip filters and "try" to remember to flip it in the right position at the right time.

I believe YouTube automatically reduces the bitrate of a video to 8 which will reduce quality. I'm not an expert in digital video and not aware of a service that doesn't reduce video quality, but if you can host your own content then you can control the quality.

Pretty cool video. I don't believe I've dove in the rain, yet.

 

[northernone]

You'd need to render the footage in post to something you like the look at in 480p.

 

[dberry]

You'd need to render the footage in post to something you like the look at in 480p.

Yah, I tried rendering it at 480p, and it still looked pretty good - until it was uploaded. The problem is the algorithm YouTube uses to re-encode the video is low quality and gives very blocky video. [earlier I described it as "grainy" - blocky is more accurate.]

I also tried saving the video with GoPro Studio's "youtube" mode (360p). Again, it wasn't terrible - until I uploaded it. I guess the bottom line is you get what you pay for (and YouTube is free.)

 

[lowviz]

Vimeo seems (to me) me to be a much friendlier and far more responsive bunch. Yes, they will steer you to their "fee for service" options. But, really...

Give them a shot, love to hear your unbiased analysis....

 

[dberry]

Vimeo seems (to me) me to be a much friendlier and far more responsive bunch. Yes, they will steer you to their "fee for service" options. But, really...

Give them a shot, love to hear your unbiased analysis....

My first impressions of Vimeo are positive. I guess both YouTube and Vimeo try to auto-set the resolution based on your connection speed, but the Vimeo 540 version seems a lot nicer than the YouTube 480p. That is, their lower res encoding may be better, but it's not easy to make a direct comparison.