Optimized Sony Vegas settings for Vimeo & YouTube HD

YouTube & Vimeo are the most popular video-sharing sites which support HD or "high-definition" mode. While that can mean a number of things, the most important takeaway is: higher quality.

Sony Vegas is a very popular video editing program, and incidentally, it's also my fave. I've done the following steps in Vegas Pro 8, but they'll also work in other recent versions. The cut-down Movie Studio does not support HD, but Platinum edition does.

I've experimented a lot, and altho you do need to set certain things precisely, there's room for variance and adjustment according to specific video context.

Preparation

First of all, before you ever begin filming, whether it's recording your screen or using a DV camera, make sure your footage resolution is at least 1280×720. If it's lower, you may experience unwanted blockiness. If it's a different aspect ratio which isn't widescreen, then you'll have black bars on the side — or your video will be unpleasantly stretched.

I like to quickly record a test clip, then check that my settings are alright before proceeding. It's saved me a lot of misery by ensuring things are right from the get-go.

New Project settings

When making a new project in Vegas from File menu > New, make sure your settings are the same as or close to this:

Frame rate is usually from 24-30 FPS. Generally, set this the same as the source footage to avoid resampling complications. Vimeo claims their HD is "up to 25fps". (Here's a trick: even if you record at a much lower FPS like 10-15, you can give the momentary illusion of greater smoothness by doing Ken Burns-style zooms. Don't overdo this into the Land o' Nausea, but consider it a valuable technique.)

When you drag clips into Vegas, make sure the Preview area is completely filled up. There shouldn't be a letterbox effect unless you're intentionally doing it. And go on your merry way editing, until you reach…

Rendering

Altho there are several codecs which can be exported from Vegas which will work, I prefer WMV (Windows Media Video). "Why not H.264?" you might ask. It's true that'd be a great choice if Vegas had a clean implementation of it. But until proven otherwise, it's broken. You can export to Animation or near-less Photo JPEG, open it up in an app like QuickTime Player which does export well to H.264, but that can be tedious.

So when you go to File menu > Render As:

After you've chosen WMV, next to Template, you can make a new setting or modify an existing one; there are some existing HD templates like "6 Mbps HD 720-30p Video" which aren't quite "on the money" but are decent starting points. After you've selected one, click the Custom button.

To ease your way, I'll show you what to set next:

If you set all those just like I've shown you, you should be… all set! I like to provide the reasoning behind my choices, however:

• In the Audio tab's "Attributes", you generally want to leave sampling rate alone @ "44 kHz" (actually 44.100 kHz). If you know your source footage was recorded at 48 kHz, you can set it to that and it isn't a big deal. I've yet to confirm whether Vimeo or YouTube will make use of a much higher rate but also remember, Vimeo & YouTube's own compression — yes, it gets squashed again after this — won't retain all the subtleties of the source material.
• In the Video tab, you should set "Frame rate" to match the project settings. For convenience, there's a "(Keep Original Size)" option, but I've explicitly shown 1280×720 here to be clear.
• I haven't noticed that much of a difference moving "Video smoothness" in the higher end from 90-100. Some vidtuts I've watched say 100% is best for screencasts but if you have lots of motion, you may want to lower this. Experiment and let me know your experiences.
• In Bit Rate tab, the "Internet/LAN" box should obviously be checked, and a bitrate of 3-5 M is suitable, which is why I put the middle value of "4 M" here. Videos with less motion can get away with having a lower bitrate because the differences between frames are less, and hence, there'll be less pixelation.
• No need to change the Index/Summary tab.
• Be sure to save your setting once you've found it works for you. I like to put the date after a name if I'm revising it, e.g., "Vimeo & YouTube HD (2009-01-15)". The state of web video changes a lot, so be prepared to be flexible and adapt this later. You may want to fill in a Description with a helpful reminder.

You're almost there! Render it, then upload the finished file.

Be patient

Don't worry if after you upload your video, you keep compulsively checking and wonder "Where's the HD?" HD versions take longer to show up. I often find the SD (Standard Definition) version appears, and then, depending on how busy the upload queue is, the HD version will finally appear within minutes to hours. Vimeo gives you an estimated countdown which isn't always reliable, but it's better than the generic placeholder that YouTube has.

I like rendering and uploading before I go to bed. This way, I'm not hanging around waiting for the video to appear, and when I wake up in the morning, it'll be ready. This is especially important if you have a slower computer (both in terms of CPU power and network bandwidth) that ties you up when it renders and/or uploads.

Always be open to iteration. Even with all the videos I've made, I'm still hungry to learn and evolve my skills by watching how other people have figured out problems like this, then applying my own methods. You should too!

Happy video'ing!

Related resources

• YouTube's "Optimizing your video uploads"
• Vimeo's "Compression"
• Tutcast's vidtut on the same thing

Tagged as: General