Recommended upload format
In short, we recommend uploading the best available quality.
Format
File container formats such AVI, MOV or MP4 are not too important if the encoding quality is sufficient. Select a container format which supports h.264 video, we recommend the MKV or MP4 container.
Codecs
If you have the option to select your video and audio codecs, we recommend selecting H.264 and AAC.
Frame rate
Recommended frame rate is 60 fps unless the frame rate of your source video is lower, then use the frame rate of your source video.
Bitrate and resolution
The general recommendation is to use as high a resolution as possible (but never higher than the quality of your source video). The bitrate should at least be high enough to provide good quality for the selected resolution which means that if you have a very high resolution video you need to select a higher bitrate. The table below gives a bitrate recommendation for different resolutions (16:9 and 4:3 aspect ratios both listed). Note that the recommendations are based on using the H.264 video codec which is a high quality codec. If you use a lower quality codec you will probably have to use a higher bitrate to get good results.
Quality | Bitrate (kbit/sec) | Resolution (16:9) | Resolution (4:3) |
Low | 1000 | 640x360 | 480x360 |
Medium | 1500 | 854x480 | 640x480 |
High | 2500 | 1280x720 | 960x720 |
Full HD | 5000 | 1920x1080 | 1440x1080 |
QHD | 10000 | 2560x1440 | 1920x1440 |
4K | 20000 | 4096x2160 | 2880x2160 |
Very long videos
If your videos are very long, using a high bitrate will produce very large files. The max file size of uploads is 40GB which still gets you over 9 hours of full HD video (using the recommendation chart above) but the file size can make it hard to manage. You may want to consider uploading with FTP if you are not doing that already.
Prefer progressive over interlaced
For new recordings published online, we suggest filming with cameras in progressive scan mode (not interlace) since interlace is designed for older TV sets. If your content is only available in interlaced form then that will work too. Quickchannel automatically detects and corrects interlaced video but the quality may suffer slightly.
Using Adobe Premiere?
If you are creating your videos using Adobe Premiere, please read this post.