How to retain best quality of Facebook/YouTube videos?

rafiki_yako wrote on 10/15/2012, 10:33 AM

Hello, my name is Wojtek and I live in Warsaw, Poland.

I received MAGIX VideoEasy as a special version, bundled with the TERRATEC GRABBY video capturing device. [Hence it is a limited version, and I cannot send videos from it straight to Facebook or YouTube.]

Unfortunately, I have a rather simple computer, whose capabilities are rather limited, namely MSI Wind U100, equipped with an Intel Atom processor (1.60 GHz) and 2 GB RAM.  For that reason, I am unfortunately unable to capture videos with the best quality available.

I am capturing videos from an old-type Digital 8 Sony DCR-TRV110E camera with an analogue audio-video output (Cinch) as well as an S-Video output.

I want to capture/record fragments of my videotapes to be able to put them on my Facebook and/or YouTube accounts with the BEST quality possible.  I can see in VideoEasy that there are three options for rcording quality, i.e. very high, high, or user defined, and moreover with each option there is also a possibility of checking  the "optimize for older or low-performance computers" option.  Also, with the "user defined" settings, the number of those parameters depends on whether the above option is checked or not, and with the option chceked the parameters to set are resolution, frame rate, aspect ratio, quality and interlace mode, while with the option unchecked there are many more parameters to choose from, of which of interest to me are MPEG type, interlace mode, video encoder quality, resolution, frame rate, GOP structure (have no idea what this is), P frame (have no idea what this is), bitrate mode, variable bitrate settings, MPEG settings and level.

Given the rather poor parameters of my computer on the one hand, and my need to retain videos for Facebook/YouTube in the best quality possible on the other, what recording quality should I choose (very high, high, user defined), and if it is user defined - how shall I set all the above parameters to obtain the best quality without the computer (and the resulting video) getting stuck, broken etc?  Also, shall I mark the "optimize forolder or low-performance computers" option or not?

Finally, because this version of VideoEasy is a limited version, and I cannot send movies straight to Facebook/YouTube, I need first to save them on my computer.  What save quality should I use (web, DVD, HD1, HD2), and what format (WMV, MPEG2, MPEG4) to make sure that those videos 1) are the best quality possible, and 2) do not cause the videos on some users' computers to get stuck or not to play smoothly?

I would realy be grateful for any hints and responses.

best regards

Wojtek

Poland

Comments

gandjcarr wrote on 10/15/2012, 11:09 AM

Hello Wojtek,

You have many questions in your message, so to start I will try to answer a few and maybe others will come in to the discussion with more suggestins.

First, the best output to use from your camera is the S-VHS output.  S-VHS has a resolution of 400 horizontal lines (definitely not high definition) so there is no reason for you to output your projects in HD1 or HD2.  I personally would use WMV or MPEG4 but WMV will give you smaller files. Youtube can actually deliver higher resolution but if your source material is not high resolution why bother.  Usually for youtube, I use "web" quality unless I have some reason to use something higher in quality.  It really depends on who you want to see your material.  If your audience has older computers anything higher than web quality may be difficult or impossible for them to view.  Optimizing for older computers really depends on who you expect to look at your videos.

I hope this is a start to some answers for you, and welcome to the forum

Good Luck,

George