I reached the top! Video quality on YouTube
 

... or so I think... Feel free to watch full screen:

YouTube - hdtest01

Was anyone out there able to achieve better quality?

Thanks,

WOW!

I was unimpressed until I realized I hadn't clicked on "View In HD" then EVERYTHING changed. Please share your "secret"!

Nice job. What format did you shoot in and and what where your export settings?

thats so good, think youve nailed it. What was it shot with? this looks better then anything ive seen on vimeo. great depth.

I am at a lost here. Shaun say's he is unimpresses til he hit view in HD. Is there an english version button that I am not aware of? This looks like russian to me.

i think you got one of these lucky case where content almost perfectly match the encoding.
in your case, fixed, dark background with no fine details, large surface with uniform colors, few change from picture to picture, so prediction is easy etc....
you can see that the encoder is still on the edge when the baby turns the head, and the details on the hairs goes fuzzy.

Blue text IMMEDIATELY under the right side of the video window, in case somehow YouTube thinks you're NOT viewing in English (which I ASSUME would be strange).

Thanks Shaun, indeed it was Russian, for some reason Youtube opens in Russian when I open it. I agree great quality, thanks for the tip.

I think using 1280 x 720p settings will get you there.

This film for the DV Challenge was sent in a letterboxed HD format before 16:9 announcement was made. They converted it after the change over, to my surprise.
But even it shows that things will look good in the future:

YouTube - Light Rider

Here's take two.

Camera zooming out, background is changing, lots of changes from frame to frame (TV in background is SD).

YouTube - hdtest03

If YouTube opens in Russian, shouldn't you have responded to me by writing "Spaciba"?

Double post deleted (either the server or my internet is misbehaving).

Looks good, but playback here is very jerky! Nice furniture though. Is it Christmas already? Damn!

So I wonder - you guys will probably have good computers, but just what proportion of the public out there can actually watch HD videos..?

One experiment I did that was very interesting was when I'd downloaded a regular video off YouTube I'd worked on long ago and then tidied it up and put it on Vimeo. There was a huge increase in quality! Here's the original YouTube - James - Tomorrow and here's is the same video on Vimeo James - Tomorrow on Vimeo NOTE: make sure to switch HD to off (click the 'HD is on' icon). Yup, the same Flash file, and even downgraded a bit by Vimeo. Notice how much better the sound is too? Why can't YouTube play it back with the same quality?

The upshot of this is that YouTube encoding, though far from perfect, turns out to be not nearly as bad as their playback quality would suggest. it also begs the question (to me) whether a clever person could design a window that played YouTube live but at a better quality than YouTube themselves offer. And would YouTube object...

Anyone here care to do the equivalent experiment with some YouTube HD videos? See what turns up?

The James video on Vimeo isn't playing. I get a 2 second animated still for your zombie trailer.

There's always one...

Did you read this bit? "NOTE: make sure to switch HD to off (click the 'HD is on' icon)"

Tut tut...

http://vimeo.com/2361290