YouTube help - how to make vids high quality?

[AnimeGirl]

My brother just created a YouTube account so we can upload trailers and video clips for our anime project Reflections of Shadows, when we uploaded one, the quality was so terrible! It was suppose to be widescreen, the it got stretched upward, and it looked unclear. How do you upload the video where it stays widescreen and is clear? I've watched many videos on YouTube that is clear, in fact, you can select the quality. How do you do that??

[Peanut]

I'm not really familiar with uploading on youtube, though, from some research for a project of my own, I know that there could be a number of things affect your video quality. For one, if you try and make a standard, non-HD video into an HD video, the effect which you are describing will happen. The video will be stretched to fit the screen and there will be a significant drop in quality. So, if you want what you are uploading on Youtube to be widescreen, make sure that the files you are uploading were recorded to fit a 16:9 (HD) format instead of a 4:3(SD) format.

A second thing that may be affecting your video quality (and this one may not apply to you at all) is the codec you are using to compress your files. The codec you use will ultimately determine how good the quality of your video is. Xvid and Divx are to pretty good codec's that are also free. You could also try Laigrath lossless codec, which is what I've been using.

Finally, make sure the files you are uploading to Youtube is an MPEG4 format with MP3 audio. While Youtube will accept AVI files, MPEG4 works better.

Hope that helped.

[AnimeGirl]

Thanks. I'll let you know if it works. We were uploading WMV format.

[AnimeGirl]

I just realized this'll probably never work, we can't make MPEG4.

[Mithrandir]

FYI, there is a way to potentially view videos in higher quality. You may find http://www.mydigitallife.info/2008/03/16/upgrade-video-quality-when-viewing-youtube/ to be helpful.

Also, there are many free applications that will help you convert video. I've used ffmpeg with success, but it's more geared toward the linux/unix platform.

[Peanut]

I just realized this'll probably never work, we can't make MPEG4.

Echoing what Mith said, I know of a program that can convert AVI files to MPEG4 that's at least decent. So, if you can record in AVI, then it will help you. Here's the link.

[maqiqi]

Now that progress from DVD to HD DVD / BD, we see more than just storage media capacity increases, while the video compression technology has been rapid growth in recent years. We can calculate the storage capacity increased by 5 to 10 times, and video compression technology can increase 2 to 3 times, then we will get 10 to 30 times the clarity of a leap!
http://www.convertpdftoepub.net/