How do I make videos of Doom look good on YouTube?

[Bedingungsl.Grundeinkommen]

Today I recorded myself playing DOOM for a little while, just to get a friend interested in playing DOOM. The video turned out to be 3GB for only 9 minutes (recorded with GeForce Experience). How come it looks like mud after uploading it to YT?

When I watch the raw recording (I did not render the file) it looks just as good as when playing. But on YT, especially when moving fast, for instance at 0:43, things look blurry and just a lot worse than in the original recording.

 

Will it help if I render the video? If so, which program should I use and which settings should I apply?

 

Again, my skill is average and I only ever record short clips to show friends what I'm playing. But I'd love to learn how to make videos look better on YT. Please help.

 

 

 

Edited April 17 by Bedingungsl.Grundeinkommen

[TimeOfDeath666]

The video looks fine to me, did you wait for it to finish the HD processing before you watched it?

[MrHellstorm17]

I'd suggest recording demos and rendering them via viddump. You can choose any quality you want, as far as your PC can handle it

[PsychEyeball]

Video looks good for me on 720p. Maybe you were watching the 240p version of it and the other options were not ready yet?

[ChaingunChaCha]

Looks perfectly crisp to me in 1080p@60. Just like other Doom videos on YouTube.

 

YouTube does have it's own compression algorithm and some Doom videos can suffer in darker areas. Also low contrast textures. But aside from that it's generally fine.

[No-Man Baugh]

Youtube takes some time to render HD content even after it uploads the Standard Quality versions for viewing, so when you watch it after it's immediately uploaded then it will look pretty bad because anything above 720p isn't technically available yet

In short: Just give it some time and it'll look fine (as it does now)

Edited April 17 by No-Man Baugh

[Zerofuchs]

If you're using Shadowplay and have an older GPU it could just be the version of nvenc you're using.

If you've got a decent CPU, try software x264 at 10mbps, 2s keyframe interval, veryfast preset. Works well for me and if you're on a fairly recent CPU, works well for most titles at 1080p even with a fair amount of motion.

 

I recommend OBS overall as a far more flexible and generally higher quality option, and it's got solid nvenc and AVC support if you really want GPU encoding. Always a penalty in quality for it though. 

 

Last consideration, Youtube "optimises" videos for their site which often means edges lose a little crispness, dark and light levels lose some saturation, and high motion moments or noisy visuals may get artifacts.

 

Quick sample video: 

 

 

And an OBS setup guide for quick reference: https://obsproject.com/kb/quick-start-guide

[Geniraul]

YouTube's processing is quite peculiar, as it often requires the video to be in the H.264 codec and to have stable FPS, preferably 30 or 60 frames/second. Personally, Shotcut can serve as a good open-source software to tweak things, as well as for editing purposes.

[Bedingungsl.Grundeinkommen]

7 hours ago, No-Man Baugh said:

Youtube takes some time to render HD content even after it uploads the Standard Quality versions for viewing, so when you watch it after it's immediately uploaded then it will look pretty bad because anything above 720p isn't technically available yet

In short: Just give it some time and it'll look fine (as it does now)

7 hours ago, ChaingunChaCha said:

Looks perfectly crisp to me in 1080p@60. Just like other Doom videos on YouTube.

 

YouTube does have it's own compression algorithm and some Doom videos can suffer in darker areas. Also low contrast textures. But aside from that it's generally fine.

8 hours ago, PsychEyeball said:

Video looks good for me on 720p. Maybe you were watching the 240p version of it and the other options were not ready yet?

9 hours ago, TimeOfDeath666 said:

The video looks fine to me, did you wait for it to finish the HD processing before you watched it?

Yes, I did wait until HD processing was done. The screenshot taken at 0:43 from my original post was taken after applying 1080p on YouTube's end. But it looks like 240p as you can see. Thank you for your encouraging feedback but I think it could look quite a bit better when compared to the original footage, especially at certain points like 0:43. Please look at the screenshot and look for that bit in the video. It doesn't look that great.

 

8 hours ago, MrHellstorm17 said:

I'd suggest recording demos and rendering them via viddump. You can choose any quality you want, as far as your PC can handle it

Thank you for your input. This sounds smart. But I think I'd prefer optimizing a more general procedure for now that I could also apply when uploading footage of other games than Doom. 

 

4 hours ago, Geniraul said:

YouTube's processing is quite peculiar, as it often requires the video to be in the H.264 codec and to have stable FPS, preferably 30 or 60 frames/second. Personally, Shotcut can serve as a good open-source software to tweak things, as well as for editing purposes.

Thank you, I just downloaded Shotcut. Can you tell me the exact settings I should apply when importing and exporting my source video? It would only take a few screenshots.

Someone told me to increase the resolution because then YT would apply better settings or something so I rendered my raw gameplay footage at 4k res and some other high settings (using Shotcut) and I ended up getting a file (in H.264) that I can't even play properly. I update my codec pack regularly and I have never had a video file I was unable to play without stuttering (4k+ etc).

Edited April 18 by Bedingungsl.Grundeinkommen

[Geniraul]

13 hours ago, Bedingungsl.Grundeinkommen said:

Someone told me to increase the resolution because then YT would apply better settings or something so I rendered my raw gameplay footage at 4k res and some other high settings (using Shotcut) and I ended up getting a file (in H.264) that I can't even play properly. I update my codec pack regularly and I have never had a video file I was unable to play without stuttering (4k+ etc).

 

What software do you use to play videos? I'd suggest VLC Media Player, as its perfomance is on a very decent level, IMO. I usually don't have any issues with playing 4K videos even on an older machine when using VLC, including those rendered in Shotcut with significantly high settings. Here are some officially recommended upload encoding settings for YouTube videos which might help you. Make sure your initial video's FPS value is not less than the one set in the export configuration window.

 

If you want your 1080p video to be rendered as 4K in Shotcut and uploaded to YT, a good start is to choose 'YouTube' for preset in the 'Export' window and then get to the settings in the 'Advanced' mode (a button at the bottom of the screen) which may be suitable in different ways, depending on both source video and hardware characteristics. 2560x1440 resolution would make sense. I wouldn't recommend checking the 'Parallel processing' option though, since it can make the video choppy. These web pages can give you more idea about the additional flag options.

 

The video you attached in the OP doesn't look too grainy overall. The reason why it does look as such at 0:43 is possibly due to the way YT processes videos with unstable FPS.

 

P. S. Also, maps with the Fireblu texture mess up the bitrate in YT videos quite a bit. To my knowledge, there isn't any solution to this so far.

[Fireseth]

On 4/17/2024 at 6:36 PM, Bedingungsl.Grundeinkommen said:

Someone told me to increase the resolution because then YT would apply better settings or something

Whoever told you this is right. For smaller YouTube channels, in order to get the best possible YouTube codec, VP9, the minimum resolution you have to upload the video at is 1440p. So, since your gameplay is 16:9, the video resolution needs to be at a minimum of 2160x1440. You can check which codec your video has by right clicking the video, click "Stats for nerds" and you'll see it. VP9 > AV1. If you do not see a difference, record in a higher bitrate and render the video at the same or higher bitrate (obvious). YouTube also just has a crappy encoding process, so it'll degrade the quality no matter what.

 

I also specifically said "for smaller YouTube channels" because you'll notice that larger channels, with higher monthly viewers, VP9 will automatically be applied, no matter the resolution.

Edited April 19 by Fireseth

[Maximum Matt]

Don't play any levels that have a lot of FIREBLU

[Bedingungsl.Grundeinkommen]

On 4/20/2024 at 12:54 AM, Fireseth said:

Whoever told you this is right. For smaller YouTube channels, in order to get the best possible YouTube codec, VP9, the minimum resolution you have to upload the video at is 1440p. So, since your gameplay is 16:9, the video resolution needs to be at a minimum of 2160x1440. You can check which codec your video has by right clicking the video, click "Stats for nerds" and you'll see it. VP9 > AV1. If you do not see a difference, record in a higher bitrate and render the video at the same or higher bitrate (obvious). YouTube also just has a crappy encoding process, so it'll degrade the quality no matter what.

 

I also specifically said "for smaller YouTube channels" because you'll notice that larger channels, with higher monthly viewers, VP9 will automatically be applied, no matter the resolution.

 

Thank you! Apparently I did manage to force YT to apply VP9 by recording in 4K! 

 

 

However, this video was ridiculously large (25GB for 14min) because I set the video bitrate to 10000 Kbps and some other stuff to high or highest as well.

[Fireseth]

55 minutes ago, Bedingungsl.Grundeinkommen said:

However, this video was ridiculously large (25GB for 14min) because I set the video bitrate to 10000 Kbps and some other stuff to high or highest as well.

Interesting... I record with OBS at 24,000 kbps for DOOM and after exporting with Adobe Premiere at 50,000 kbps, a 15 minute video for me wouldn't be as high as 25 gigabytes... I would mess around with recording file types and formats, making sure you're recording in .MP4 because that helps file size, compared to .MOV

EDIT: Oh, I see! That's because you RECORDED at 4k. That's why the file size is so large. In my case, I RECORD at 1080p and then EXPORT at either 1440p or 2160p, both resolutions force YouTube to use the VP9 encoder.

Edited April 29 by Fireseth

[Bedingungsl.Grundeinkommen]

2 hours ago, Fireseth said:

and then EXPORT at either 1440p or 2160p

 

Is that on OBS?

 

Edit: Sorry, you were saying that part is done by Adobe Premiere.

Edited April 30 by Bedingungsl.Grundeinkommen

[kalensar]

I can add to the conversation from a different angle that may be helpful to others in the future.

 

I'm on a linux box potato using a modified Linux Mint base. The app that did the best job for me was Simple Screen Recorder. I export as Mp4 video and mp3 audio, with a FPS max of 20fps mainly for balance of recorder rss use and GZDoom balance. I dont do voice over or anything and just upload whatever I'm recording. The easiest way to put it is that it produces usable video that you can run through a video editor afterward if so inclined.  My video sizes record at fullscreen 1600x900 and generally export at 1gb per 20min with the settings I use.

 

Example:

Spoiler

 

 

[Bedingungsl.Grundeinkommen]

9 minutes ago, kalensar said:

I can add to the conversation from a different angle that may be helpful to others in the future.

 

I'm on a linux box potato using a modified Linux Mint base. The app that did the best job for me was Simple Screen Recorder. I export as Mp4 video and mp3 audio, with a FPS max of 20fps mainly for balance of recorder rss use and GZDoom balance. I dont do voice over or anything and just upload whatever I'm recording. The easiest way to put it is that it produces usable video that you can run through a video editor afterward if so inclined.  My video sizes record at fullscreen 1600x900 and generally export at 1gb per 20min with the settings I use.

 

Example:

  Hide contents

 

 

Thank you but I think I am happy with my new approach for now. The only downside to my method is that the file size is a bit large but that doesn't really matter. I delete those files anyway once I have uploaded them and I don't care if the upload takes like an hour. Plus I just do one take, I don't have to do anything at all with the raw footage after recording it while playing. No editing, no upscaling, no rendering. I can just dump it on YT, it looks amazing, and that's it. :)