Hello, I'm wondering if you can help me.
I have made a 15 minute short film edited on Avid Media Composer and I would now like to put it on YouTube and make a DVD for the cast. But I am confused about how to do this... I have done some research and looked at tutorials on YouTube but each one says something different. My one friend who knows about this stuff is away travelling, so I can't ask him. So I was wondering if someone might be bale to guide me in the right direction.

Here are my questions:

1. Do I save it as a quicktime file or MPEG 4? or does the quicktime file change it into MPEG 4 .... somehow? [I'm a little confused]

2. What settings should I use?
I've read that these are good:
Video resolution: 480x360 or higher [try 640 x 480]
Frame Rate: 24fps or higher [try 30 fps]

3. I need to compress it right? What programme should I use. One tutorial said to use microsoft media encoder, a forum I read said to use DivX.
http://community.avid.com/forums/p/61681/354061.aspx

4. The film is 15 mins long but you can only have 10 mins max on youtube.... so I thought I would cut it in half and upload it in two parts. My question is, when should I cut it in half? Before or after encoding it?

5. Anything else I need to know? I know youtube vids have to be 100mb or less.

Thanks so much…. I feel a bit clueless on the encoding front. I basically taught myself editing on Avid… but feel out of my depth with encoding. I've spent so long editing it and now that it's finished I really just wanna have the finished product (and I feel really guilty the cast don't have a DVD copy yet).

Any help is much appreciated.

Take a look at this document: http://snipurl.com/5m4iy

Also if you are gong to use Sorenson; go here:

 http://www.sorensonmedia.com/training/?m=youtube_hq_settings

I'm not sure about this but I think you are limited to under ten minutes uploads on Youtube.

Take a look at this also: http://community.avid.com/forums/t/63560.aspx

If you don't have Sorensen, just make a 640x480 QuickTime at 1800Kbps. That's a decent size and datarate, so when YouTube re-compresses it, it will look decent. Break it up into 2 peices before putting it up.

I should like to chime in here and discuss the 10-min YouTube limit because a video I uploaded yesterday had a running time close to 11-mins and YouTube did not reject it. (I do not have a special YouTube account and have never had a 10+ min video approved before.)

Also, as Bob has mentioned, check out the guide I did. It is still valid and will generate high quality content, but as you'll find on the post, I have since discovered YouTube is capable of generating 720P HD material for full-screen playback in their player.

Oh, and also, the 100MB filesize limit was increased to 1GB, so if you have the bandwidth and time, it's more flexible now.

Hi there, thanks for your advice. This may seem like a stupid question, but do I cut it up in avid or after I  have encoded it? Cuuld I cut it up in Squared 5?

What do you mean by cut it up? Are you compressing a large file (say, over 10-mins) and want to split it?

If so, you can compress the MP4 file in Streamclip and then load the new MP4 back into Streamclip. Once there, mark in/out points and do a straight Save As for each in/out segment. This will prevent recompressing and split the file successfully for you in a quick and efficient manner.

Thanks for that malfuncktion. I've also found out  from your tutorial that I can mark and in and out point in Avid as well.

Well I thought I'd just test things out by uploading the intro of the film. I followed Malfunktion's tutorial and it was brilliant!! Made it so easy!! Really really good tutorial. I downloaded Streamclip and all has gone smoothly so far. I'm just waiting for Youtube to upload the clip now. [I hope it's normal for it to take a while].

The upload process will depend on your internet connection's upstream speed. Once it's on the YouTube servers, their conversion processes will take time depending on how 'busy' they are.

Do post up a link to your video though, as I've had plenty of views for the guide in these forums and on YouTube itself, but not much in the way of folk showing me what they're actually doing with it.

Right so it finally uploaded successfully! And it has the Watch in High Quality option. Yay!! Looks great!! SO much better than the default version. I have noticed one thing that could be improved though - lines in the image seem appear when there is a fade. Could this be something to do with interlacing/deinterlacing?

Here is the link http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=4Wrofgm1HJE

Ok, so now I will try to encode and upload the rest of the film in two parts.

I'm going to have a another look at that tutorial so you can walk me through it!

Cloud Nine - Believe it or not, a disolve or a fade is the most "intensive" event for highly compressed video to process, as the compressor has to think about every pixel over each frame. For web and esp. YouTube, try to avoid fades/disolves as long as it doesn't comprimise your "art". And if you do need a disolve, keep them short. 12 frames is my fav. And streaming video is deinterlaced, but what you're seeing are "macro blocks" from the compressor.

I will keep that in mind about the dissolves and fades for next time.

Now....what does this mean: "And streaming video is deinterlaced, but what you're seeing are "macro blocks" from the compressor". Streaming video? macro blocks from the compressor?

Also, I'm just deciding whether to use H264 or MPEG4.... for an 8 minute film... how long would it take to encode it as an H264? How long as an MPEG4? My plan is to encode both 8 min parts tonight and then upload them from work tomorrow.

Thanks for your help.

Hello to Scotland from London (I'm an aussie actually)!

Hey I'm an American! - But don't hold that against me. We did manage to elect Obama after 8 years of...umm..W.

Anyway, when you watch the video on YouTube you'll see squares in the image during the dissolves, those are "macro blocks". I wasn't sure if that's what you were referring to. I hope you know what "streaming video" means. If not, check out wikipedia.

No one can tell you how long one of those renders will take it's relavtive to many factors. Stay up around 1800Kbps, 640x480 and fire it off at the end of your day. If you do a lot of this get Sorensen Squeze. Good luck.

Fazz Powell:

We did manage to elect Obama after 8 years of...umm..W.

But you weren't thinking, were you?  What will Letterman do now for "great moments in presidential speeches"?

Fazz, I think that Cloudnine was referring to malefunktion when he referred to Scotland.