Youtube Encoding and Render Settings for Gaming

[otacon237]

Hello everyone!

I recently finished my first gaming build and am working on a gaming-oriented Youtube channel.

However for some reason Youtube keeps degrading my footage severely, I was using Blender for a while and now am using Movie Studio Platinum 13, it's very similar to Vegas.

I have tried uploading every method i can think of, first using mainconcept codec, then h264 encoding, various containers (.mov, .avi, .mp4), at crazy high bitrates as high as 100k and even uploading completely uncompressed. i've tried rendering an high quality intermediate in DNxHD and then handbraking it to h264 youtube specs and still the end result is the same. i have made sure to disable resampling and tried various deinterlacing settings, though as i understand those don't make a difference since it's progressive footage. i might try handbraking from an uncompressed intermediate but that wouldn't be a practical long-term fix.

strangely enough my last few test videos, including uncompressed have an issue where they generate some sort of horizontal artifacts almost like interlacing lines halfway through the vid. the first few seconds where the camera is static looks decent then the moment i start moving it goes full idiot mode. i'll include my channel in the 2nd link because there are too many test videos to link, but all my recent videos are tests of the same clip with different settings.

bit.ly/1nUOSVT
bit.ly/1nURnaL

the issue seems to occur whenever there is movement, i get blurring and pixelation artifacts. for example here i am trying to do a cinematic panning around the tank and it immediately becomes blurry:

bit.ly/1PHceZc

for comparison this is kind of what i was going for, you can see his video suffers from much less quality loss (although still a bit because youtube)

bit.ly/1T5zceS

i am not sure if it's a framerate issue but it shouldn't be. i am recording in native 1080P 16:9 at 30FPS using Dxtory and Lagarith Lossless Codec, i've tried uploading a file with both a 29.97 and 30fps framerate, i might try to record at 29.97 and output at that same setting since i am not sure if youtube prefers that one but their site says it supports multiple FPS rates.

strangely enough when i used my old computer but the same software to render it appeared better, even though i was running at much lower settings and not recording in native 1080p, but still with visible blurring.

bit.ly/1mkEWDm

however now it seems to have gotten worse whenever there is motion, the first is my video and for comparison the next two are a popular and a smaller youtuber who both cover the same game, you can see the jingles video is a bit blurry but the second video is surprisingly good quality, even though she is playing at much lower graphics settings. i noticed when i checked the "stats for nerds" (right click on video) her video is in 25fps. she is doing quite a bit of panning around the tank and it still remains fairly unpixelated.

bit.ly/1L6qeWT
bit.ly/23Q8kmQ
bit.ly/1mkFZ68

are there any youtube gurus that have run into similar issues? sorry about the tl;dr but i have a ton of footage i'd love to publish and it is depressing to spend several hours editing and rendering a sharp-quality video only to have YT take a giant dump on it.

thanks in advance and let me know if i can provide any further information on my rig or render settings

 

[SinxarKnights]

You need to export at stupid high settings so when YouTube recompresses it, it doesn't look as bad. Don't worry though you are not the only one struggling with this. Some games I cannot make look good no matter what I do, Minecraft is a good example. The compression YT uses is just horrible for this game. So here is what I use as my general export settings in Movie Studio Platinum 13. Heavy motion video such as fast paced FPS you will likely need to export at even higher settings.

Now there is also an option that is always enabled that you have to disable on a per video basis to get max quality. In Movie Studio select just the video and right click on it. Under "Switches" set it to "Disable Resample". There is no way to always disable this automatically but it is important that you do so.

Here is a short video of Helldivers with these settings (the video is not perfect because it is downscaled from 2048x1152 to 1920x1080 so there is a bit of blur before it was even rendered in Movie Studio). Another thing to consider is that quality improves over time. On first upload it seems to do a quick pass to get your content out there, then later (up to a few days) it makes more passes to make it look better.

Basically the only solution is more bitrate. When I built this PC I was using an R9 280, it worked great but lacked recording like shadowplay. So I purchased Bandicam after trying lots of different programs to record. I like it because of how adjustable it is. I upgraded to a GTX 970 and tried shadowplay, I didn't like it much, more effort than it is worth considering I already had bandicam.

Those lines are interlacing. Don't want that for internet video! make sure you have all interlacing options disabled. Progressive is the way to do it, in the settings image this is the "Field Order" section. "None" means progressive.

offtopic: don't bother subbing to that channel. It is just used as a testing ground for my main channel.

Here is one that suffered from quality issues from the start, after a while the quality improved quite a bit but I forgot to disable resample for this video and didn't have time to rerender it.
[video="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8XCIe8WVOtA"][/video]

 

[otacon237]

your video looks pretty good! i've heard that before too, that it takes YT a few days to process.

strangely the best video quality i've gotten was using a much weaker rig and keeping it simple with mainconcept AVC, i think the settings were similar to yours. when i upgraded to a new rig the videos for some reason got worse which got me playing with H264, weird codecs and handbrake and stuff like that. i might experiment with mainconcept some more to see if it works.

the interlacing kind of shocked me because that was an uncompressed vid (4.5 gigs!) that i uploaded just to see what youtube would do with a source quality video, and it for some reason kicks in later on in the vid. i'll have to recheck the settings but i swear it was set to progressive...

 

[SinxarKnights]

Yeah YT is weird like that. I've heard of people just uploading raw FRAPS footage and it apparently turns out great. I think it does have to do with the container. Like MKV while it looks epic for the filesize, YT just shits the bed when you try to upload it in that container. Also I found that programs like handbrake can break your video as well if you use too many options or too high of settings like using a lot of B-Frames in h264.

Sorry for the mixed up post before. I was uploading and trying edit the post on the fly, didn't turn out the way I had hoped. 😛

 

[SinxarKnights]

Did you learn anything new you would like to share? I would love to improve the quality of my videos without resorting to high bitrates

 

[otacon237]

perhaps, i noticed you run it at 60fps. i was trying 30 before but i posted the same thread on a different forum and was suggested to run 60fps which apparently improves the steam quality. they also suggested using the Matrox codec instead of lagarith and not going with crazy high bitrates (which i was doing) because apparently that leaves more for youtube to waste during encoding. i did seem to improve the quality of my videos a bit with that advice, i'm still playing around with handbrake and a few other things to try to optimize it further. i'll link the other forum thread for your reference.

https://encodingtalk.com/threads/youtube-bad-video-quality-render-encode-settings.3925/

 

[James Mason]

So I have something to add I guess.

I record some gameplay for Youtube, and this thread got me thinking about the quality of my videos being to low at the raw stage. So I tried to use a higher quality Lossless recording profile in OBS. After recording it and watching the file in VLC, it did look noticeably better than my other videos.

Here's the Losseless recording:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s66tBCFUTcw
And here's my normal "low quality" recording:
https://youtu.be/TqOa3ys3Z8k?t=8m35s
(watch both at fullscreen 1080p 60FPS to really see it)

After uploading to Youtube though, the lossless recording looks worse than the low quality one. And it's filesize is also insane.
The lossless video is a 1min and 12 sec 4.5 gigabyte file.
The low quality video is 29 min 3.7 gigabyte file.

My low quality profile is basically this:
https://obsproject.com/forum/resources/how-to-make-high-quality-local-recordings.16/
but on the lowest CRF of 20. it still "looks good" but has a relatively small filesize.

I would like to get a clearer video on Youtube, but it seems like it's more effort and wasted file size than it might be worth.

 

[otacon237]

i believe i noticed a similar thing where a lossless or uncompressed recording seems worse and more heavily artifacted on youtube, it seems that the youtube compression affects it much more than a lower quality recording.

i record with Dxtory and seem to be getting better results with the Matrox I-frame HD codec (lossy but at relatively high settings), than the Lagarith Lossless codec. I might try OBS and Shadowplay too and see if that makes a difference. I prefer Dxtory because it records and auto splits audio streams but i should probably try the others

 

[otacon237]

well guys i think i found a workable youtube quality, i will post what appears to be working for me in case it helps anyone.

first thing i noticed is recording at 60fps provides better quality, a streamer on a different forum told me it has something to do with youtube providing better stream quality. the below video is limited to 30 since some of the footage i used was already recorded at 30 but i plan to do 60 from now on.

one thing that struck me as a bit odd, it seems Lagarith Lossless provides better quality for static (ish) shots but Matrox I-frame HD provides better quality for high-action stuff where the scene is moving around a lot, Lagarith seems to poop itself for that kind of stuff (at least when uploaded to YT). i plan to experiment a bit with multiple codecs to see if i can get optimum quality.

here in my review video, around 50s where i am showing the tank up close, the codec is Matrox and then later in a similar scene (around 5:30 or so) it is Lagarith and the quality seems a bit better at least to my eyes. All the action footage was Lagarith 30fps (I didn't feel like re-recording the whole thing) and the quality is noticeably worse than the second video which was a test of Matrox at 60 FPS. i am using JackFrags' matrox settings as linked in the last video and will use those settings from now on for all my action footage.

oh and finally my render settings are almost exactly like Sinxar posted except i went for 34mbps max, 30mbps average, 1 slice. i tried uploading a proof of concept video at crazy high mbps (above 100) and it didn't seem to affect the quality noticeably.

thanks for all the help guys and let me know if you have any questions as i'd love to pass on my findings if anyone is interested.


[video="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ryJxe0cnElY&feature=gp-n-y&google_comment_id=z12ec5fxzznutxcrx04cc53bzn32xzgr0ag"][/video]
[video="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YrnCyrbCANM"][/video]
[video="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qlj_ki5htZA"][/video]

 

[otacon237]

hi all, massive thread necro but for some reason I noticed my own answer was selected as the best answer, don't really remember doing that but seems pretty selfish so I selected someone else.

I actually did find a solution and while it wasn't the most technical, I switched to Adobe Premiere Pro which has a YT preset and has been working nicely.

A few things that helped:
Adobe Premiere Pro
Switched to MagicYUV codex for Dxtory to record
SSD to record on for excellent write speed
Recording at 60 FPS - I have anecdotally heard YT will encode your videos less harshly if you use 60 vs 30

Another thing, if you REALLY want crystal clear footage and you're not recording in 2k/4k already, you can record in 1080P and upscale to 2k/4k depending on how long you want to wait to render the video and how big file sizes you want to deal with, this is another anecdotal thing I have heard about "tricking" the YT encoder but it does seem to work.

I have not released much videos to be honest, seems like every time I get back in the groove I get a massive pile of work at my regular job, but here is a recent video, you'll notice the footage when watching at 2k or 4k is almost zero loss from the game itself

[video="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YRNYEbNPDCU"][/video]

 

[SinxarKnights]

Yeah uploading at 2k is a big one. Not sure how I figured that out or if I mentioned it in my last post. It is due to the codex used. If you upload at 2k or greater YouTube uses the VP9 codec and it looks so much better.