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I created a video from a bunch of images off my camera using FFMPEG. I set it to 10fps. The output video looks fine. As soon as I upload it to Facebook or Youtube the quality is reduced significantly.

Here is the command I used to create the video:

ffmpeg -framerate 10 -pattern_type glob -i 'resized/*.JPG' -s:v 1280x720 -c:v libx264 -profile:v high -crf 20 -pix_fmt yuv420p out.mp4

Each image has been resized to 1000x1500 pixels.

Screenshot from video from ffmpeg: https://www.dropbox.com/s/r3v30lj15a5hl6a/local.png?dl=0 Screenshot from video from Youtube: https://www.dropbox.com/s/qrur54r7xsnnrxs/youtube.png?dl=0

If you look carefully you can see the Youtube one is missing a lot of sharpness and detail. It looks much worse when playing through the video.

FYI - I know nothing about video encoding, I just googled for the ffmpeg command so most likely I am doing something silly.

Thank you!

1 Answer 1

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YouTube re-encodes whatever you give it. The process is lossy so there will be a quality reduction. All you can do is give it a very high quality:

ffmpeg -framerate 10 -pattern_type glob -i 'resized/*.JPG' -vf scale=1280:-2 -c:v libx264 -crf 17 out.mp4
  • Use -crf 17 or -crf 18 for higher quality.

  • Try without -pix_fmt yuv420p. I'm not sure what YouTube uses for pixel format conversion, but perhaps it will look better than the FFmpeg swscale if they are using something different.

  • No need for -profile:v high. Let the encoder choose. You usually only need to set a profile when your target device is limited in profile support.

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  • Great, thanks I will give it a shot. Nov 14, 2019 at 19:52
  • Wouldn't 4:2:2 be a better option?
    – stib
    Nov 15, 2019 at 12:18
  • @stib It is unknown if the OP additionally wanted to play the output in non-FFmpeg based players. Also, the JPG input pixel formats may be 4:4:4, so choosing 4:2:2 would not be ideal in that case if a user wanted to let ffmpeg automatically choose the "best" pixel format (yuvj444p in this case) and make YouTube do the conversion.
    – llogan
    Nov 23, 2019 at 21:37
  • Of course. I realise I misread "try without" and thought you'd suggested "try with".
    – stib
    Nov 25, 2019 at 0:49

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