Compression settings for YouTube

Probably been discussed, I apologise if it has, what are people's settings for compressing for YouTube, can't nail mine, has anyone tried uploading prores and letting YouTube deal with the compression perhaps? Cheers...

First, I stopped using YouTube for a variety of reasons. But when I did use it, a ProRes did great. Never had an issue. Long uploads, but it was worth it. Now I use Vimeo (Pro account), and have no issues like I did with YouTube.

have you tried YT own recommendations?
support.google.com/youtube/answer/1722171?hl=en

Karsten is correct. I did once set up a Compressor custom preset according to YT's own guidelines, and it worked great.

The simplest way is just using the built-in Youtube export preset which also uploads it for you. Going from FCP X's estimated output file size, and dividing by the program length in seconds, this appears to be about 15 megabits/sec for 1080p/29.97 material. That is higher than Youtube's 8 megabit/sec recommendation for that type, but it's unclear if that's a minimum recommendation.

You can also export to Master File>Computer using H.264 and 1080p/29.97 will produce about 20 megabits/sec. I do that a lot since H264 is still pretty small and it allows inspection of the file before upload.

Of course using Compressor you can fine tune the export characteristics.

I second what Ben said about Vimeo Pro. That works really well and has other nice features like ad-free presentation and framing portfolios to display your videos without requiring any programming.

The built-in YT encoder and uploader take FOREVER! I've yet to see it do that quickly. I can encode it myself and upload it manually in a fraction of the time FCPX's preset takes to do that.

But, export as a Master File, and set it to H.264 "Web" use, and that works great.