Suggest a Camcorder Please + YouTube Bitrate Question

[bigdogchris]

• I'm looking for an affordable camcorder ($2-$500)
• I want to be able to record 3 hours of HD video (targeting 720p on YouTube)
• h.264/mpeg4 (videos are going to YouTube)
• Microphone input
• USB 3.0 (if they even exist yet)

I have a couple other questions also:

1. If you upload an HD video, does YouTube automatically offer the lower bitrate, or do you need to also upload lower bitrate videos?
2. What is a good bitrate to encode the video for a decent image @720p for YouTube?

 

[Poplap]

Cant help you with the cam, haven't looked at them in years, but i can answer your questions:

1) Youtube does auto formate the videos so no worry there
2) the Best quality possible/rational, you can even do 4k videos if you have them, youtube will take care of encoding them for the website. keep in mind the larger they are the more your uploading and the more you have to wait on youtube to make the the different bitrate streams.

Look at youtube's help page they have all the info you need.

 

[agentdomo]

If your recording yourself, a basic 1080p webcam will do. If your recording other things, get a go pro = 60FPS @ 720p!

 

[NoxTek]

I have a couple other questions also:

1. If you upload an HD video, does YouTube automatically offer the lower bitrate, or do you need to also upload lower bitrate videos?
2. What is a good bitrate to encode the video for a decent image @720p for YouTube?

1. Youtube will automatically downsample your video into various resolutions (usually if you upload a 1080p video it will offer 720p, 480p, and 320p versions as well.
2. As someone above said if upload bandwidth (and time spent uploading) isn't a concern you always want to use as high a bitrate as reasonably possible. Even as high as 12 to 14mbit for 720p if bandwidth is no object and you want the highest quality. We're talking H.264 here...

If your upload bandwidth is a concern (as well as your time) you probably want to vary your encoding bitrate based on the content of your video. If it's a blog video where you're just standing against a static background then you can easily get away with much lower bitrates - 2 to 4mbit at 720p is perfectly fine for a blog-type video. On the other hand if you have a video with lots of action and changing scenes and quality is a topmost concern you will probably want something between 8 and 16mbit for 720p.

If you're uploading 1080p you'll want to increase the numbers above markedly.

When you get your camera spend some time with small clips trying out different bitrates to see what balance between filesize and quality works best for you.

Me personally for 1080p / 24fps videos I tend to tell Sony Vegas to encode (Mainconcept MPEG4/AVC) at 10 to 12 mbit with two encoding passes.

 

[bigdogchris]

Static background

This does not need to be a high quality recording. It's to record presentations. As long as it has a microphone input port and has enough storage to record 3 hours of decent video, I'm happy.