Wallyworld

I've finally found the right compression settings for uploading HDV to YouRube. I shot the video on a Canon HV20 HD camera using HDV on the "Cine" setting at 25 frames per second to supposedly give it a "film look". The top still was the first attempt using H264. On the second attempt I used these settings after editing in iMovie. The third still is after the H264 file is put through DivX (which YouTube recommends) and it appears to have better detail and whiter highlights and none of the yellowish tinge of the others.

• Compressed on H264

• "High" quality - single pass.

• 640 × 480 (YouTube automatically letterboxes the 16:9 aspect footage)

• Frame rate: 25

• Key Frames: every 30

• Bitrate: 2000kbps

• Frame reordering

• Hinted streaming

The original file size was 4.1 Gb for 5.5 minutes and after the first attempt at compression came in at 15Mb. After the second better compression the file went to 75Mb - still well under the 100Mb YouTube limit. I compressed it further with DIVX - YouTube recommends that Codec but some of the other video-sharing sites (like the excellent BlipTV) don't recognise it. The still below is from the DIVX file of 43.7 Mb.