@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).
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.
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.
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.
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…
FWIW, I’ve been playing around with YouTube uploads and I seem to get a cleaner image by converting from 4;2:0 to 4:2:2 before uploading. I don’t know if this is coincidence or something weird about the way YouTube’s transcoding interacts with the video, but they are cleaner if first converted to 4:2:2. The video comes out of my camcorder at 4:2:0.
I’ve found I can get YouTube to re-encode with VP9 codec by upscaling to (only) 2560x1440 rather than 3840x2160, so upload file is a bit smaller. Here is an example:
