Best Export Settings For YouTube Uploads DaVinci Resolve Export Tutorial
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Best Export Settings For YouTube Uploads DaVinci Resolve Export Tutorial - In this video, Will breaks down 3 different options and gives his recommendation for what the best DaVinci Resolve export settings are for YouTube video uploads. YouTube highly compresses uploaded videos and that can lead to low quality uploads, so this video will teach you the best Resolve settings to use
You've likely worked hard on a video, exported it, uploaded it to YouTube, and then found out that they've compressed the shit out of it, and it doesn't look anywhere as good as when you're playing it from your desktop or straight out of your editing program.
In this video, we'll talk a bit about what you can do during the export stage to give it the best chance of keeping the quality once you upload it to YouTube. If you're new here, we have over 200 videography-related videos, so lots of content for you to learn from. If you want to know the music or the equipment we use to make our videos, all links are in the description of the video linked above, or at the top and bottom of this page. Let's jump in.
Okay, I'm in Resolve, and I have a basic edit complete. I am ready to export, so let's head over to the Deliver page, and I'll give you some recommendations on what the best export settings are.
First, you want to make sure that you have your In and Out Point selected. So right now, our In-N-Out is set to here; that's why the clips look a little gray. So let's go to the end, we'll hit 'O' on our keyboard, and you'll see that the render selection changed to the entire timeline. If you go to somewhere in the middle, let's say, and hit 'O' there, then you won't be selecting your entire timeline, and that's why the render selection here changed to the In-N-Out range.
So let's go back to the entire timeline. Then up here, under the Render Settings tab, we have a few different presets. Obviously, the custom one means you can enter your own settings from scratch. You can go down to the format, pick your format, change your codec, and enter any of the settings.
However, if we scroll over, Resolve has a whole bunch of other presets, and you may see this YouTube one. So let's click on this one. This is the one you may be tempted to use, or you may already be using this one. Personally, I wouldn't recommend it. I think the bit rate isn't high enough. We can assume, because the encoding profile is high, that it's going to be a higher bit rate, but it would be nice to have a little bit more control. Even if we go to the 4K option, it just changes the resolution, but all the other settings are the same.
Instead of going here, let's stick between these options here. The first option I would suggest is ProRes. Now, this is going to give you a massive file size. However, ProRes is a finishing codec, and it's going to give you the highest quality out of Resolve that you can get. This is an industry-standard codec. When we are working on our commercial projects within our video production company, most of the time, when we're delivering our files, we're delivering in ProRes just because our clients and marketing agencies, in general, often request that type of file. But again, it makes extremely large file sizes, so I would only suggest doing this if you have a lot of hard drive space. YouTube will be able to upload this file, process it, and this will be a great option.
Before I give a second recommendation, I do want to note that if you're in the studio version, you'll likely have this, or if you're on the Mac version, you likely have this. But if you're on the Windows free version, you may not have ProRes. In that case, you'll just have to skip ahead to the next option that I say later in this video.
For the ProRes preset, make sure your format is QuickTime, and you want to set it to 422 HQ. This means high quality, or if you want to export in the full bit depth that your footage was shot in, then you can go to 4444. However, YouTube will not be able to display the full color bit depth, so I would suggest, if you're just going to YouTube, to stick to 422 HQ. Or if your camera doesn't shoot anything higher than 10-bit 422, this is the option you'd want. All the other settings should be good to go. Just double-check that your frame rate is correct. Like I said, upload this file to YouTube, and since it has such a massive bit rate and is such a large high-quality file format, YouTube will be able to process it, and you'll get a high-quality upload.
The next option is H.264. For several years, this is what I was using. Under Format, I would change it to MP4. Make sure your resolution matches your timeline, and the same with your frame rate. In this next section, we'll keep the quality to automatic, and we'll make sure that the encoding profile, instead of Auto, is set to High so that it matches the YouTube preset.
However, in this section, under the H.264 preset, we have multi-pass encoding. This is an option that we don't have here under the YouTube preset, so we want to make sure that that is enabled. Essentially, what this does is it does a second render of the exact same timeline, but it only creates one file. Now, that does take additional time. However, if you have any fades or darker spots where there's lots of shadows, like here, enabling multi-pass encoding will render those sections a lot better, and you'll get a much cleaner export.
Because H.264 highly compresses your footage, if you're not multi-pass encoding your footage when you're using H.264, that may be a reason why YouTube isn't uploading your footage in the best quality. This is the preset I was using for years. However, in the last year or so, I've actually switched to H.265. The reason is, in the past, YouTube would not allow H.265 uploads. However, they do allow it to be used now, and H.265 is a much more modern codec. While it is a little heavier on your system, it's a significantly better codec.
If you're not familiar with H.265, it's basically like the upgraded version of H.264, and the best way I can explain it is it gives you the quality of ProRes with file sizes smaller than H.264, which is, of course, pretty amazing. If you're running a production company, you'll probably stick with ProRes, but for YouTube, I would stick with H.265 now.
Make sure your format is QuickTime, or you can choose MP4. When you do that, you might have to go back to H.265, so make sure that is selected. Confirm that your resolution and frame rate are good. Further down, it has, by default, multi-pass encoding selected. I am a fan of that, so I would recommend keeping that on. Then, of course, you can name your file, choose a location, add it to the render queue, and you are good to go. That's the file that you can upload to YouTube, and it should give you higher-quality results.
All right, that's how you can export videos to give them the best chance at retaining the quality when uploading to YouTube. I hope this video was helpful. If it was, give it a thumbs up and subscribe to see more videos from us in the future. We have over 200 videography-related videos, so lots of content for you to learn from. If you want to know the music or the equipment we use to make our videos, all links are in the description. Thanks so much for watching, and we'll see you next time.
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