How to make youtube videos look good?

[~kev~]

Will someone share their tips on how to make their youtube videos look good?

I record in game videos with fraps, and at 30 frames per second. The videos are imported into windows movie maker, exported as an mpeg, at a bitrate of 2 megs and at 640X480. Even at a 2 meg bitrate the video still looks poor. The actual video on my computer looks good, but on youtube the video looks pixeled.

What can I do to improve the quality of youtube videos?

[Circuitous]

http://help.youtube.com/support/yout...16612&hl=en-US

[~kev~]

Originally Posted by Circuitous

http://help.youtube.com/support/yout...16612&hl=en-US

That is what I do not understand, the videos are recorded at 30 fps, 640X480 and saved with a 2 meg bitrate, and they still turn out lousy. Maybe the fraps setting needs to be turned up? Instead of 30 fps, maybe 45 fps?

The fraps AVI file is huge, like over 1 gig for a one minute video. In windows movie maker, maybe instead of saving the file in mpeg, save it as an AVI file.

The video quality starts off good, its good after being converted to mpg, upload to youtube and it turns to junk.

I was hoping Caleb would see this thread. The quality of his "bag o weed" series is pretty good.


The last video I made

YouTube

YouTube

Calebs bag o weed

YouTube

YouTube

Calebs video is so much more clear.

[GeoKill----->]

Caleb uses this codec
http://lags.leetcode.net/codec.html
I got it from here
http://forums.fortress-forever.com/s...ad.php?t=18373

[CaLeB-]

Yeah man, you don't need fraps for source games, silly! That's what Source Recorder technique is for! :P

The link Geokill just posted above ( http://forums.fortress-forever.com/s...ad.php?t=18373 ) is my own thread in this same forum, sticky'd, explaining Source Recorder. It's no doubt the best quality you can get. And it's not even a program, it's a very good recording technique.

The advantages with Source Recorder, even if you have Fraps, is that you can get smooth footage from any sort of mass physics, which Fraps has a big trouble handling. And it's the best quality you can ever get from a source game.


Also, try and find a free video-editor; I've found some before. They're probably automatically better than Windows Movie Maker, and definitely have better encoding options.

[~kev~]

Thanks guys and gals, I will look into the source recorder for my next video.

I did a little video on the pc game "Painkiller". When fraps was not recording, I was getting 90 frames per second. The second I started recording, FPS dropped to 15 - 20, even though Fraps was set to 30 FPS.

In the games Quake 1 and Doom, Fraps can record and there is very little impact on FPS.

On some games fraps does a good job, but when you start dealing with large areas, the frame rates hit the floor. But for my next video I will get that source recorder to working. And look for some other video editing software. But windows movie maker is so easy. You just drag, drop, slice, save.

[wakka]

Just incase anyone is still interested, I seem to be able to achieve pretty high quality on Youtube. I use fraps 60fps, then vegas High-Def 4.8MBps WMV at (Double NTSC) around 59/60fps.

[~kev~]

Originally Posted by wakka

Just incase anyone is still interested, I seem to be able to achieve pretty high quality on Youtube. I use fraps 60fps, then vegas High-Def 4.8MBps WMV at (Double NTSC) around 59/60fps.

A few months after I posted this thread I finally figured out what the problem was - when you save a video in windows movie maker, you select "fit to file size" and then increase the file size all the way. This usually gives a 2 meg bitrate and good quality.

Any other option and windows movie make produces are variable bitrate video, which is about 1/2 the quality it could be.

Here is the last video I posted on youtube about games

YouTube

YouTube

Its a lot better quality then the ones I was making.