Video Quality

I record in HD 1080/60P or 1080/24p, I edit and export in the same format but when I upload to youtube I could never achieve the quality I see of some videos online, why is that? what am I doing wrong?

But are you saying that the quality is good to begin with ( the unaltered footage straight from the camera)? So there is a degradation of the footage at which point?

Does the exported footage still look good?

Or is the footage only degraded once it is online (after going through youtube or videos compression)?

As simonpwood mention would be good to know at what point you are loosing the quality.
But if it's youtube make sure you have 1080 selected when playing it back... but youtube does have there own magic with compression.

Agreed with all the comments here. Acquisition is everything, so maybe the videos you think look great were captured on really outstanding cameras to begin with. Your footage is the key.

After the export in fcp the quality is fine on my computer, only when I upload it to youtube is when I see a major degrade in quality

I usually see some slight degradation after a video has been uploaded to vimeo or youtube. The usual culprits are:
1) Less fluid playback (sometimes seems to stutter slightly)
2) Banding is sometimes more pronounced on flat areas
3) Sometimes there is macro blocking artifacts

This depends upon the the viewing resolution I guess (better to watch HD videos in full HD).

What are you actually seeing specifically in terms of the quality degradation?

lost of quality, not as clear, shows grainy

This could be on Youtube's side of the house.

Exactly how are you exporting it for YouTube upload?

www.macprovideo.com/hub/final-cut/prepar...quicktime-compressor

Cityboy wrote: lost of quality, not as clear, shows grainy

What is the bit rate of the file you are uploading? I'm guessing it is higher than the approximate 4.3 Mbit/s that youtube uses for H.264 1080p video (assuming the wikipedia page on youtube has current bit rate data).

This is why I put a limit of 5 Mbit/s when compressing for youtube. Anything higher is destined for a re-compression to lower its rate.

Since we are on the youtube topic. Has anybody successfully uploaded a video within Final Cut Pro X to YouTube?
For some reason no machine in the shop has successfully uploaded a project. Maybe it is the customers YouTube account.

I have several students and FCP User Group members who do it regularly without problems.