ok let me be honest here…I am a newbie to video editing but out grew windows media player.
so I am trying shot cut. here is my issue…when I am done with the video and the picture looks great…coloring,brightness, white balance etc…I will export it using what is suggested for youtube…with 100% quality in the Codec so I dont get degrading of video…however I am still getting alot of degrading of the video…colors brightness sharpness everything is wonky but I dont notice till I play it with another program. Now like I said I am a newbie to video editing but dang nothing I am trying helps…these are what I am using for exporting…resolutiong is 1920X1080…aspect ratio 16x9…codec is libx264…rate control is quality-based vbr…quality is 100%…fps is min.15 I film is 30fps…any help would be greatly appreciated…
What do you mean here?
frames per secon (fps) I have had it set at minimum of 15 but have set it at 30
Hey Lesa! First off all exporting options in all programs the “YouTube” preset is garbage. (atleast I find them to be)
Fist we got to stop using wrong naming on settings. fps is min 15?? You mean to say “GOP 15 Framerate” right? Not mad at you but it’s not helpful to guess what a setting dose and ask for help about it.
quality-based vbr is plainly bad making stuff look shit. Switch to Average Bitrate
(if you don’t like to try your luck with constant bitrate Average bitrate is good enuf. I use Average bitrate btw)
Now I’m going to give you what I think is “good-best” settings. After that try and modify them if you like.
First. You like to upload to YouTube? if it’s Yes! <> I use this setting due to YouTube saying this are the settings they recommend. Or that’s what I think atleast? Don’t quote me on it
Format = Mp4
Video tab.
Resulution = 1920 1080
Aspect ratio = 16----9
Frames/sec = 30
Scan mode = Progressive
Feild order = None
Deinterlacer = YADIF -temporal + spatial
Interpolation = Hyper/Lanczos (best)
Parallel processing: Note: Leav this untickt until you have exported a few videos. It shoud help your render time but it can hurt it to / crash the export.
Codec Tab
Codec = libx264
Rate Control = Avrage bitrate
Bitrate = Note: This one you have to figure out.
GOP = 30 Frames Fixed = no
B frames = 2
Codec threads = 0
Dual Pass = NO Note: I had huge problems with this option. It was making my gaming system unstable. But try it if you like. But first create a working render profile.
Disable video = Yes 
Audio
You shoud match this to your system and stuff. But I don’t give a shit and put it to 11 XD
Sample rate = 48000Hz
Codec = aac
Rate control = avrage bitrate
Bitrate = 384k b/s
Disable audio = Yes ofc
Now. To explain what all this stuff dose.
Video tab you select resolution and frame rate. Your video is 1080p 30fps and that’s easy to understand.
Now why I use Scan mode Progressive. Feild order None. and YADIF Hyper Lanzor is after years of doing video exporting. Not a PRO or anything but is teck interested enough to learn this stuff. But most of this settings here are taken from YouTube Recommended settings.
Codec tab is where you have some options and have to rember to check if you edit FPS or resolution in the future.
Bitrate is like that quality-based vbr % using avrage bitrate you can go above 100% quality more or less. (not ture but give you the basic ide atleast)
30M b/s shoud give you almost a perfect image quality at 30FPS 1080p It’s at the point that playback starts to be laggy on low/mid range PC’s but perfect for uploading to YouTube and keep as mutch quality as you can.
YouTube recommend at most 15M b/s for 1080p 30fps. But YouTube is funny and trowing better ang bigger files at it makes the video better to. But after around 45-50M b/s your wasting your time.
I render at 50M b/s 1440p 60FPS and having playback problems on my high end gaming PC. But after uploading to youtube it looks GOOD! The cost of having a high “M b/s” is that the video file size is HUGE! 5min video can be 1GB in size. 50M-60M b/s is at the extreme end of bitrate. 10M b/s is kinda avrage. Try what you need and try and understand that this stuff takes allot of hardisk space.
When your done with putting this settings in Shotcut you can save it by dragging you mouse to a PLUS icon in the list of presets. Can be hard to find it without knowing about it.
BTW sorry if my English sucks. Trying to do this fast and suck at English.
Edit 2:
Stuff good to know. If you like to save hardisk space you can lower the Audio settings to about
Sample rate 44100Hz
Bitrate 128k B/s
That’s about what YouTube going to play it at anyways. I have hotswap hardrives and don’t care about big file sizes if it helps archival quality.
If you ever going to export at 60FPS it’s a good ide to go into Codec and boost the Bitrate AND change GOP to 30 frames.
GOP means = Group Of Pitches. It’s a big mess trying to explain it. But duble the frame rate duble the group of pitches size to. I can be wrong about this but that’s what I do anyways.
Hope this helps a allot of ppl.
Edit 3: Extra tip.
There is a video setting in the editor too.
Go to setting (top of the screen left side) and go into Video Mode tab.
Here you select the projects resulution AND frame rate. Yes it dose matter…
And if you created a new profile in Custume you can select the better color space! I don’t know what the presets are set to but I’m not going to trust them.
ITU-R BT.709 is the better one. Shoud make your file sizes bigger?? I don’t even know if it dose anything in the end. Just a feel good thing for me.
Remember that YouTube is going to destroy your colors and most likely video quality. Hey it’s atleast better colors and clear video on your PC. To cheat YouTube you have the option to upload at 1440p forcing YouTube to make 1080p videos look allot better too. YouTube maby is going to change this but right now you can cheat it. Google and YouTube seach about it to find out more.
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Thank you for replying!!! lol when the video is done exporting I play it first in windows movie maker to adjust the audio volume there…havent figured out how to do that in shotcut. I dont mess much with audio cuz i dont use a seperrate audio file…I did try the setting you suggested on a short little video didn’t make much of a difference…lol now like I said I am new to doing video editing…but I have out grown windows movie maker…and wanted to beable to use some of the “toys” in shot cut that cant be done in windows movie maker…I do beauty videos so how bad the video is degraded after export was suprising to me…I really wish there was someone here to look over my shoulder to see what the video looks like…I was getting better quality with windows movie maker not as badly degraded as with shotcut…I just want some of the toys…Tho I am not giving up on it…I want those “toys”. lol I will keep playing with things here to see what I can figure out…
I did post this if anyone else also search the forum for help. And I understand that you don’t get this booring settings. Why I took my time to give you a easy way to just tick boxes and select stuff without know what they really do.
And you say that it still looks bad? MMmmm. I remember going over to VLC (free like Shotcut) due to Windows built in player was displaying wrong colors… You can try with VLC and check it if you don’t do that already?
If your sure you used the settings I posted I’m kinda sure the video shoud be good looking, Did you select Mp4 in the top of the settings??? Format = Mp4?
@Turbo50 I didn’t mean to affend you and I really do appreciate all your help…Your right maybe I dont understand all the setting etc. Its not booring…its somthing I want to learn and have to learn doing videos…once again thankyou and sorry if I offended you.
yes its at Mp4
No no no! I just know that setting video stuff is booooring! And I like to punch puppies sometimes in anger. : )
That’s why I like to help anyone that find this post and needs help with video settings. Took me 3years to learn this most basic stuff in video making. (before it was looking professional)
What Bitrate did you use? I had tried 30M and reported back the file size and lenght of your video you try and export. Find it really hard to belive you can have done anything in your editing that make the export look wrong. Make sure that codec settings are right and that your own profile is selected when you export.
Exported a 4h long video ones with the wrong profile…
ok now you lost me what do you mean by my own profile is selected when exporting?? lol maybe that is my problem…heck I would be satisfied with semi amature lol
Umm. You know how you selected all this settings right? Yea with all the settings done you click the big PLUS symbol below the list of presets. After that it adds a new preset in the list. (You give it a name) You have to select it and after that export. I hope it helps.
ok let me see if I understand this…once I change the settings I have to give it a profile (name) in order for it to affect the video i’m exporting??
Umm. No? But it dose help next time you launch the program and not having to redo the setting agen. But your right you shoud be able to export right after your done setting it up. (as long as you don’t select a profile that’s going to change all your settings. Kinda obvius but hey)
Set it up and hit export. It shoud be exporting at your selected settings. Not having to hit the PLUS or anything. Sorry if i confused you. Just me overthinking it.
yes and maybe I have a profile clicked that shouldn’t be clicked and thats why its all wonky…in the list of presets maybe I have somthing clicked that shouldn’t be clicked and even changing the settings is why its still messed up…what should be clicked to start out with or should anything be clicked on in the box with all the names of profiles…
ok so I have a REALLY stupid question…like all the others havin’t been lol Under the video tab…the way I understand it the resolution automaticly reads what the video is…mine says 1280x720 so does it make a difference in if i’m changing that to 1920x1080 or not
Ow… When you hit Export with 1080p set and your video is 720p what it dose is streath it to fit. It loses quality or has black boxes around it. But it shoud not be a dramatic change vs how it lookt in the editor. YouTube preset is 1080p. In editor it’s also set to 1080p, what you see in the edit window is what you get. When you export or view it in editor shoud not make a diffrence if the export settings are good. does that make sense?
What I noticed looking in YouTube preset is that if you change one setting in it (that being quality-based vbr to avrage bitrate at 30M b/s) you should have a as good export settings as you possibly can get. Have you tried a diffrent program to watch your exported video yet? I like many outhers love VLC media player.
ok so dont have black boxes around it …lol is there a way I could send you a 15second video of raw upload from camera and also the same one with the settings you gave me to try and maybe you can tell me what you see?? i’m a visual learner…
ok downloaded the VLC and watch both videos on it…cant see to much of a difference between the 2 videos…a little bit but not much…but what I have found out what I see on the windows movie maker is closer to what I get on youtube…now I do have some videos posted useing shot cut …just a couple I will post a links of using shot cut and one using windows movie maker…and maybe you can tell me what you see…
Shotcut:
Windows movie maker:
top is shotcut with alot of tinkering in the shapness etc dont think there wasn’t somthing i didn’t tinker with to try to fix it lol ok guess i can only do 20 post cant do any more 
I figure get the video quality where i want it then will tackle sound…lol just using the mic on camera and i know audio is not good lol…I will raise the bitrate and see what that does…ty
ty so much for your help…I will do some experimenting over the next couple of days lol
Umm… You removed the post. But hey I now understand how importent the quality is now!
It looks really good bouth of them. (sound I do not like to comment on)
VLC was not the anser. I did not know you had uploaded videos already. Sorry
My best anser to you is to set a bitrate above 20M b/s and try that. When I look at your Shotcut video it’s obvius that the bitrate is to low. Even 100% quality in shotcut don’t mean anything sadly. That’s most likely your problem right now.