You’ve already been given Shotcut’s YouTube preset. Did you even try that? Did you post a link to it? Or do you think you know what you’re doing and have tried everything but?
Dude i already told you so, just read. “that default setting problably doesn’t give the best quality settings. Besides that the default quality/speed encoding is poor”. The link to youtube above was encoded with youtube preset…
I tried a lot of variations and basicaly didn’t see any improvements after upload to youtube… Or do you think that the sugestions you made were the first time that i tried them 
There is a very good article on encoding videos for Youtube here: https://www.videomaker.com/article/c05/17034-encoding-youtube-videos-at-the-highest-quality
Apparently Youtube trancodes whatever video you upload, so the author of the article recommends uploading the highest quality video you can feasibly do, since compressing an already compressed video is likely to increase video compression artifacts (pixelation and blurring), which is what you appear to be experiencing.
So try increasing the quality of the H.264 encoding from 59% to a higher value, upload that to youtube and see how that fares. My guess is that 59% is probably a reasonable value for a video with a moderate amount of motion in it, but yours is highly dynamic and will have a lot of differences between frames, so probably needs a lower compression ratio (higher quality) to compensate for this.
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Here is that video transcoded to HuffYUV. You be the judge as to whether it is better than what you’ve been getting.
Shotcut has a wealth of export presets. Try them all, particularly the lossless ones, which will require long upload times.
Curiously, YouTube was unable to process Shotcut’s lossless H.264 on this video. I would not lay the blame for that on Shotcut.
I tried transcoding to VP8 and VP9 thinking those formats would be more YouTube friendly, and they looked pretty ugly.
Try shooting a test video at a lower bit rate than 30 Mbps.
Here is a very related thread (motorcycle through forest/countryside) where the poster basically says to use UHD 4K even if that means upscaling:
You can try to do that at Export time in Shotcut, but I suggest to not change the Export > Video > Frames/sec.
His video is already at 30 Mbps.
Er, FYI, it was all shot at 60 fps, edited at 60 fps, rendered at 60 fps, and uploaded to YT at 60 fps. What YT did with it after that is anyone’s guess.
Why 60 fps? I don’t like smearing seen with 25/30 fps. Some people want smearing and “sense of motion”. It just doesn’t make my day.
AFAIK no frame rates were harmed in the process from raw to finished video. 
It was shot at 30 Mbps; see the Mediainto printout.
Sorry for the confusion, I did not mean to suggest you were changing or increasing frame rate. Rather, frame rate is right next to the fields for resolution in Export, and there may be a temptation to change frame rate as well, which is what I was discouraging. Again, the most important thing to note from your post is to use 4K/UHD. Your experience and tests suggest to me there may something different about YouTube’s processing pipeline with that class of input.
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I had the same issues and posted a similar question a few months ago. I’ve tried a multitude of settings, and frankly it seems to make almost no difference what settings are used in Shotcut. (I also tried Handbrake).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hT0rmMa-UAI
is exported using YouTube settings from Shotcut.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i_uG_f4VeIc
This is raw video file direct from the camera. (From about 10:20 on the first video is the same as above). To my eye, in Cinema or full screen there is not a whole lot of difference, so it’s not Shotcut munging the video quality.
I’m not real sure why this guy’s videos seem much sharper:
It’s a YouTube thing 
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YouTube is pretty much a black box. Stuff goes in and comes out in some form that may or may not match what went in. I’m not surprised by the notion they’re trying to get the best content into the least space. Why transcoding from 1060@60 to 4K@60 and sending that to YouTube seems to give better results than sending up the same material as 1080@60 is… it’s a black box. By happy mostly coincidence, I have my video of a pass and the same trip shot by someone shooting 1080@30. Lighting is different as are the cameras. NTL it’s not too hard to see how Alexander’s original video compares with my video.
Original video by Alexander Thiessen:
My video, set to start at 0:50 to get past the titles:
(As a thanks for getting me into this videos and bikes thing, I tried to duplicate Alexander’s video. The open, and transition near the toll booth, start at the same spots, +/- a frame. We didn’t travel at the same speed, making a side by side comparison somewhat iffy. Past the top off the pass, forget it. I got stuck behind a bus. Once clear of the bus, though, it’s the same route and even the same last frame - +/-)
If you want to see how Youtube does its transcoding (in parallel, split over multiple servers, each one processing a small chunk of your uploaded video) have a look at the link below:
https://youtube-eng.googleblog.com/search/label/video%20transcoding
It is quite an interesting read.
@bryanb i have the same opinion as you. Raw video (more quality) or encoded video to match the youtube settings it almost make no difference at all. Slightly difference that i notice the raw video more blury and pixelized in some parts (maybe light transitions).
Raw video (start at 0:35) -> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C0fAocnRUro&feature=youtu.be
Video encoded with youtube preset -> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=20BnA1-wHE0
Both videos are far away from the original ones, Raw and encoded, before uploading.
With just a relatively quick check, the raw video looks generally cleaner than the YouTube preset. I must have
Here’s an example of YT chewing up a 1080@video.
Look at this at 4K and again at 1080. The 4K playback is very close to the original, shot at 1080. Look at the 1080 playback and, in particular, look at the road seen through the windscreen. The original (4K playback) doesn’t have problems with pixelation. It’s an artifact added by YT.
What export setting did you use for 4k?
IIRC I used YouTube with the resolution bumped up to 4K and the frame rate to 60 fps. But that’s a guess. It’s been a while since I’ve posted anything.
Probably for the best results, first set your Video Mode to a 4k resolution at the correct fps for your source video. Then import your video.
Select the YouTube preset, Export File
Well… this is interesting.
I tried importing a video using your suggestion and then exporting, and when Shotcut imported, it was still at 1920x1080. So, I imported the video as normal i.e. default resolution of 1920x1080, but I exported it as 3840x2160.
This is the resulting clip: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UTwqvU5gerg
It has all resolutions up to 2160, play it back at 1080 (or above) and compare to the raw footage I uploaded the other day: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i_uG_f4VeIc
I’d have to say sending to YouTube in an upscaled format has improved the playback quality at the original resolution. A pretty ugly hack, but hey, if it works…
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So basically you recorded it at 1080p, encoded it to 4k and upload it at 4k right?