Lately, I have been unhappy with the quality of my uploads on YouTube. I spend hours maximizing my edits and see an obvious decline in video quality after uploading to YouTube. I am well aware of the compression, but I want to upload the best possible quality to compensate for that. If it means overkill, then so be it. Should I just upload ProRes in 100% Quality?
You also get to see a preview of my upcoming video.
Are you seeing a difference on your screen?
HEVC - Broadcast Limited: https://youtu.be/gfbbn1n_pNc
HEVC: https://youtu.be/So3zxKBb8ec
PRORES 422: https://youtu.be/lDUGYl8GY8g
YOUTUBE PRESENT OPTIMIZED: https://youtu.be/ecsslPKcqXw
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I prefer HEVC and YOUTUBE PRESENT OPTIMIZED but can’t really tell which one looks the sharpest.
I think the shadows look too dark in PRORES 422. You’re loosing a lot of details.
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The difference between HEVC and PRORES 422 on my screen:
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If there really isn’t difference between the YouTube Optimized and HEVC, then I will most likely go with HEVC since the file size is dramatically smaller.
I am seeing ProRes as richer but darker
For comparison
YouTube Max:2.17 GB
ProRes: 33.1 GB
HEVC: 373 MB
Not sure I can help, my monitor is a 1080p, thus videos got a YT re-scaling.
But on my monitor this one https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lDUGYl8GY8g → PRORES 422 is darker than the 2 others, especially in the shadows and darker areas.
As of the 2 others I cannot really see a difference between them… Maybe… maybe a tiny preference for Youtube max
The side of the car (where there is the man standing beside) is also darker on ProRes 422
HEVC
Youtube Present Max (look on the left side between the 3 roofs it looks more clean IMHO, as we can see the tiny “wall” between roofs, where on a ProRes 4222 video we cannot see it)
Last but not least, I might prefer the colors of HEVC, which seem warmer than Youtube Present Max, but it’s only me and my PoV 
and might not reflect the reality.
I’ve I captured both YouTube Optimized and HEVC at full screen and switching between the 2 captures in my image viewer shows very little differences. Same quality to my eyes. Just a few pixels here and there that look different.
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Indeed, not sure the very little differences are worth the difference in size, personally I would just keep the HEVC (I’m seeing it in 1080p, though) as it’s a gain of near 2GB of storage’s space
We both tested on 1920x1080 computer screens. A 23" one for my part. Maybe we’d notice a more significant difference between YouTube Optimized and HEVC on a big TV screen.
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23’’ on my part as well 
On ProRes the man’s shirt next to the van is more orange and HEVC the man’s shirt is more pink. I too am noticing the contrast on my 4K TV and my 2K on board, color-accurate monitor.
The consensus seem to be the same on every monitor. No idea why ProRes would have this result since it’s supposed to be a non-compressed, highest quality. (So is this what it’s actually supposed to look like?)
Since the size difference is dramatic and the output seem to me more aesthetically pleasing on HEVC, I think HEVC will be my new output standard.
I think the darker blacks have something to do with limited vs full color range. Does the local prores export also look different? Either youtube is doing something weird with it or shotcut.
Now back to the comparison, I paused the video at 1080p on the same frame and in my opinion the quality is: Prores > youtube preset > hevc. yes, even with crushed blacks, looking at leaves and shadows there is more detail in prores (and youtube) compared to hevc.
That being said, the differences are so small that I wouldn’t be able to tell without pausing.
Here’s what Claude says:
The root cause — Rec. 709 vs. “Full Range” vs. “Limited Range”
ProRes and H.264/HEVC handle color range metadata differently:
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H.264 and HEVC exported from most editors are automatically tagged as limited range (also called “broadcast range” — blacks at 16, whites at 235 on an 8-bit scale). YouTube reads that tag and displays it correctly.
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ProRes is often untagged or tagged as full range (0–255). When YouTube’s player encounters this, it can misinterpret the levels — crushing the blacks and clipping highlights, making the video appear darker and lower contrast than intended.
Why YouTube specifically?
YouTube re-encodes everything it receives. During that transcode, if the color range metadata is missing or misread, it applies the wrong interpretation. The result is a “double-limited” signal — your levels get crushed a second time.
Why ProRes in the first place?
ProRes is an intermediate/mastering codec, not really designed for delivery. It’s lossless-ish and massive, and YouTube’s ingest pipeline is optimized for delivery codecs like H.264/HEVC with proper tagging.
The fix
The cleanest solution depends on your workflow:
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Export H.264 or HEVC for YouTube — this is the simplest fix. Shotcut’s YouTube preset handles the tagging correctly.
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If you must use ProRes, make sure your export explicitly tags the color range as limited/broadcast (Rec. 709) and not full range. In FFmpeg you can force this with -color_range tv -colorspace bt709 -color_primaries bt709 -color_trc bt709.
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In Shotcut, use the YouTube export preset rather than rolling your own ProRes settings — it bakes in the correct tags automatically.
The frustrating part is that ProRes looks correct in VLC or on your desktop because those players are more forgiving about missing metadata. YouTube is stricter, which is where the problem surfaces.
You should export as limited color range. But also, ProRes is overkill unless you are shooting for the moon such as massive effort put in with a big audience expected, or if attempting 10-bit HDR.
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Dan, the “limited color range” is that even a controllable setting or is that built in to the HEVC/H264 preset?
I am concerned by your question because it ALWAYS defaults to limited and you had to change it to Full! It is in your screenshots in Export > Video. Perhaps, the only way it changes from limited is by loading a certain custom preset first.
Are you talking about limited broadcast vs Full JPEG? I don’t know if that’s what your referring to. So what your saying is, I should keep it as Limited Broadcast. I’ll run another test with Limited
Yes, it has the label “Color range” The “broadcast” and “JPEG” are there to provide some context because this difference has also been called TV vs. PC or MPEG vs. JPEG.
I was thinking that I would benefit from the Full JPEG. I guess that’s what’s causing the over contrasty look
I just uploaded
HEVC - Broadcast Limited: https://youtu.be/gfbbn1n_pNc
