encoding audio for youtube

Hi All –

I put a piano piece on there (not for public viewing yet, still working out the details).

I had mixed it and compressed it so it was not incredibly soft (not as loud as commercial releases, or even most things on there, but I’m OK with that for the moment).

When I put it on and listened, not only was it softer than others (kind of expected that), but it it also sounded tinny and phasy.

I used iTunes to get it from a .wav to an mp3.

I didn’t see much on-line as far as hints for music prep to get things on youtube. Does anyone have any tips, has anyone seen anything like that on-line?

Thanks!

random thought: Youtube audio quality scales with video compression. If you upload a HD video, youtube will compress it to several lower qualities for people who are not able to stream high quality videos. When making a lower quality video, it also lowers the bitrate of the sound.
In other words, check you are watching your youtube video at the maximum quality level, that’ll give you the best audio quality as well.

Youtube takes some time to make all quality levels available, so if you only just uploaded it could be another hour for all bitrates to show up, and youtube always starts with the lowest.

That would be the easiest solution :wink:

To be honest I have no idea how you could best encode your audio for youtube. I can’t imagine that putting a HD picture in as video makes the soundquality on youtube better, but then again youtube isn’t an audio service so they may just do that…

Hey stroph, thanks for the comments. BTW - I went to youtube, I didn’t find a “listening quality”-type button - would you know whereabouts that is?

If you didn’t know this yet it’ll change your youtube experience forever :wink:
The number shown is an indicator of the vertical resolution of the video and with that indirectly an indicator of the overall video quality. IE: the higher the better.
youtube quality setting.jpg
Hope that helps!

Very cool, thanks, stroph! I am not able to youtube at work, the nerve of these people, oppressing my human rights and such :laughing: , but when I get home I will check out the difference.

I wish youtube would advertise that option more … I’d bet a whole lot more vids would sound/look a whole lot better!