I was using H.264, 12 Mbps for Target Bit Rate, and 40 Mbps for Max Bit Rate, High Profile 5.1, and checking lower box for rendering at max quality

Any reason to use such big difference for max and target bitrate? Usually it works good only if you use 2 passes, and youtube will kill it anyway.

@matt_gh2

All depends on your video. If it is more or less same - use constant or slightly variable bitrate.

Youtube will still kill it to almost constant low one.

@Vitaliy_Kiselev Okay, I think I have more info to get to bottom of this. It plays just fine on new Macs, old Macs, iPhones, Samsung phones (no explosion!), and iPads. But it plays bad on a Windows PC machine. Also it's mostly underexposed areas that are breaking up. I know underexposure leads to blocking/banding, but why would the same YouTube video with this underexposure look beautiful on a Mac but horrible on a PC? Separately I looked at some Hollywood trailers on YouTube and some of them had same issue. They tended to edit so it was only on screen for a half second so you don't notice. Problem is, I need to stay on some of these shots for a full 10 seconds. Any tips to make it look good on Windows machines?

Thanks

@matt_gh2

Note that youtube actually have different encoded versions. And browser with flash and without one can get completely different looking videos.

I export H.264 4K at CBR 120. I've seen variable results, but I want it to be reasonably future proof. Some ppl use 1 frame GOP, I just hit the button and don't look back.

I believe that CBR is the way to go for uploads, and leave to their encoder to figure it out how to allocate target, max bitrates and GOP length, since it will do it anyway no matter how you render it, just feed it with something reasonable to work with.

Youtube used to re-encode and stream HD video at 4 Mbps max, don't know how is it now, but I don't believe they have raised that much. I've heard people upscale their video to 2K and upload it, because Youtube encodes 2K at higher bitrate, but really it needs to be put to test whether it really gives better results at all.

If you have noise added, like film grain etc. this is where it gets messed up, since fine round grain become those typical h264 worms, and second encoding creates total mess and chaos with that, so sometimes I upload Prores directly to Vimeo, but I don't know if Youtube supports that.

YouTube does accept ProRes uploads as well as DNxHD but you should test to see what the results are like since the upload will take a lot longer for the bigger renders.

Thanks-will try those as well

Thanks guys - I tried a lot of suggestions. CBR at 120, CBR at 25, and even tried adding some grain. Nothing helped. Had a friend watch on a new Windows machine on Internet Explorer and it looked great. So not quite sure why my Windows machine doesn't like it. Must be what Vitaliy said about some browsers without flash, or some other particular detail I'm missing. But I'll just chalk it up to the limitations of Web video, and know that it will be fine on most machines, and will avoid underexposure when shooting in the future.

Here's the 15 second clip - notice the bottom half of the screen - that's where the image breaks apart on my Windows machine...but all macs, phones, iPads, and other's Window's machines appears just fine. Let me know if you guys are seeing image break down...or holding up when watching full screen. Thanks!

@DrDave I looked through full export media panel settings in Premiere for gop1 - couldn't find it - where do you see it? I'll try that and mjpeg. Thanks for all your help.

@davedv Thanks - great info. Will take a look tonight.

Yeah, I saw that too where some browsers seem capped at 720 and others are at 1080.