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72 P a r t I I Producing Your YouTube Videos

In addition, YouTube translates videos into a special, even lower resolution format
for playback on smartphones and other mobile devices. The aptly named Mobile
format has a 176×144 resolution (and an odd 11:9 aspect ratio), perfect for a
phone’s small screen.

Choosing the Right Resolution

With all these possible resolutions available to you, which should you use to shoot
and edit your videos?

When I wrote the first edition of this book, I recommended shooting at the highest
available resolution available at the time, which was 480×360, or what YouTube then
called HQ. I didn’t see much point in going with a higher resolution if YouTube
wouldn’t display it; in fact, YouTube would downgrade higher-resolution videos to
its HQ quality.

It’s a different story today, however. Now, I recommend producing high definition
videos, in either the 720p or 1080p HD resolutions. An HD picture will look great
on both computer monitors and big screen TVs; it’s perfect for showing the detail
in those close-ups you might need in a how-to video.

Note

Both 720p and 1080p look pretty darn close on a standard computer mon-
itor. I’d go with whichever resolution your camcorder supports.

Note

There’s no need to go the full 4K video route because that produces files
that take way too long to download. The 4K format is more for professional
filmmakers shooting for the super-large screen.

Note that whatever resolution you upload, YouTube will process the video so that
it’s available at a variety of lower resolutions, as well. That’s because most viewers
still watch YouTube in the default 480×360 or 640×360 (widescreen) window. In
most instances, viewers have to click a button to display a video at higher resolu-
tion. (It’s to ensure maximum playback capability.) As I said, YouTube does this
conversion automatically; you provide a single file at the highest resolution and let
YouTube do the rest.