4k video from 1080 video

[TimLau]

VP9 is used by Google, because they own it
H.265 & H.264 is owned by MPEG and there has been alot of patent issues over time.

So it more about legal stuff, than it is about quality, YT transcode anything you upload to a lot of different formats and resolutions, so what you see when watching YT, is not the file you uploaded.

So it is a waste of time and resources to upscale you 1080p footage to a higher resolution of YT (IMHO)

VP9

[shotcut]

@ken_wawa

However standard youtube profile in shortcut uses quality based method for encoding and not average bit method. Why it was configured like that? Sure I know I can change that, but I’m wondering why it’s like that.

Because bitrate depends on resolution, and presets are dumb. Quality based VBR is adaptive to resolution.

[ken_wawa]

Ok. Good to know. Thanks.

Btw, do you know is average bitrate option works ok for vp9 as I have doubts here…?

[Austin]

@ken_wawa

if you upload full hd of 4k you still should use h.264. Isn’t it a bit strange?

It’s best to throw away the official YouTube recommendations and pretend they don’t exist. YouTube created those parameters for beginners that don’t know anything about video formats, but still need numbers to enter into their software’s export screen in order to make a video. YouTube provided the most generic parameters possible just to get the beginners rolling.

In reality, YouTube will accept virtually any file type. They accept everything because they don’t want to risk turning away potential customers just because of “unsupported file type” errors. It’s possible to upload ProRes and Huffyuv to YouTube, both of which will provide higher quality than VP9 or H.264 (not counting their lossless modes). So, the YouTube recommendations literally do not matter.

Nor is there an advantage to providing YouTube with a VP9 file. As Tim said, YouTube uses VP9 because they don’t pay licensing fees for it since they own it. They’re interested in the cost savings more than the quality factor. Also, their hardware encoding will be better and faster than most people’s hardware because Google built a custom transcoding farm called Argos VCU. They’re in a different league. Google’s choices do not apply to us. For us, VP9 is a weak contender, and better options exist. Even Google is moving onward to AV1 where possible.

@ken_wawa

standard youtube profile in shortcut uses quality based method for encoding and not average bit method

Average bitrate is useful for streaming environments, where a max transfer rate exists. Examples are over-the-air television (bandwidth limited by frequency spectrum) and Blu-ray discs (bandwidth limited by rotation and read speeds of a physical disc). Mobile services have max data rates, too.

But exporting a file from Shotcut is not a streaming situation. It’s offline. You can take all the time you want and make a file as big as you want in order to achieve the highest quality. The quality percent (CRF) method does this. It allocates more bits to the parts of the video that need it, and less bits to the parts that are easy to encode. This intelligent distribution of bits creates better-looking files with smaller file sizes than fixed-bitrate methods can do. Fixed-bitrate can simultaneous be too little bitrate to look good on the high-detail areas, and too much bitrate for the simple low-detail areas. There is no reason to use fixed-bitrate when uploading to YouTube. It will always hurt you with either suboptimal quality or bloated file size.

Granted, if the goal is to live-stream to YouTube, then okay, average bitrate becomes an option again. But that’s back to the difference between streaming and offline scenarios.

[heru]

The answer to your question depends on how big your YT-Channel is. If you have lot of trafik, YT uses the VP09-Codec for your videos automatically. If not, you must live with the AVC1-Codec up to video formats of 1080p. The VP09 has double the power of the AVC1, as H.256 compared to H.264. This makes a big difference, mainly in critical situations with bad light conditions.
I myself make my videos in 1080p (I don’t know anybody, who can see a difference in a normal view distance of 2x display diagonale between 2k and 4k) and scale it up for YT to 1440p. Then the videos get the VP09-Codec, starting with 720p.

[ken_wawa]

I have a channel approaching to 1k subscribers, and I’ve noticed that for some of my 1080p videos vp09 codec is already used. Around 500 views seems to be enough for video. Although I don’t have details what are exactly the criteria. You can have a look: https://www.youtube.com/c/ITGuyinaction/featured (it’s about vintage computers)