Optimal video resolution and encoding for recording games for YouTube

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I want to record video from games, therefore I cannot use very large video resolution, but I still want to make the large video view to look as sharp as the original encoded video before upload.

I tried to use YouTube's recommended 854×480 resolution, but it wasn't possible with h264 and the encoding software I used (Handbrake) converted it to a width of the nearest multiple of 4, which I think is a limitation of the h264 format.

The video I encoded was sharp and fine quality, but when I uploaded it to YouTube, it lost a lot of quality and the preferred large video view looks almost as bad as a 320p video. I tried to wait a few days but it never got sharper (in case it didn't process it completely yet).

So, which resolution and encoding options I should use, if I want the large video player to have the sharpest possible video, retaining the original video quality as good as possible?

I noticed that recording with 640×480, the video was sharper than with 1280×720, so I'm not sure what im doing wrong here; both were h264.

Is it anyhow possible to prevent YouTube from re-encoding the videos? I just wonder how people can make so sharp videos, while mine are all blurry after upload, but before upload they looked fine. I also tried YouTube's suggested bitrates with h264, but it didn't work any better.

Best Answer

According to YouTube › Help articles › Video encoding › Suggested resolutions and bitrates the preferred resolutions are:

  • 1080p: 1920x1080
  • 720p: 1280x720
  • 480p: 854x480
  • 360p: 640x360
  • 240p: 426x240

Of these, 360p, 720p and 1080p have both dimensions as multiples of 4. The smallest one of them is 360p. If your encoder creates something slightly smaller than those, the player app is supposed to automatically add suitable letterboxing without this affecting the published file.

However, it is possible (I can't find any good, recent references) that Youtube re-encodes everything that is uploaded, in which case the quality will always be a bit worse on the published video than on your uploaded file. I would choose to encode the video exactly after the specs here to minimise the likelihood of meaningless transcoding. (Not exact bitrates, though.)

Edit:

Sorry, I don't have the experience to reasonably answer the revised question.

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