Need proper setting to upload 16:9 video to youtube w/o squishing

[slobizman]

I'm having trouble uploading a 16:9 video to YouTube. I've uploaded lots of videos to Youtube in the past, but now I have a new HF100 HD camcorder and uploaded my first video to Youtube , that I filmed at 16:9. I uploaded it as a MP4 file. When I went to view the video on Youtube, it sometimes showed it in the proper dimensions with the black bars on the top and bottom. But then, it also sometimes showed it squished into 4:3. Never consistent. So, I made the video private while I try and figure this out.

Can someone please tell me the proper settings to get the video into YouTube so it shows as a 16:9 aspect ration inside youtube's 4:3 box, with the black bars on the top and bottom, properly letterboxed?

We've tried so many different methods, from the standard youtube selection to many various Expert Settings.

Is it also possible that YouTube is messing up? It is odd how it was going back and forth sometimes showing it right and sometimes not (on several computers).

Much appreciated!!!

 

[RemarkabLee]

Youtube re-encodes any videos uploaded to it to save disk space.

You may have better success if you produce a letterbox version of the clip instead of an actual 16:9 video (i.e. you add the borders around the 16:9 video to produce a final version at it's native 4:3 aspect)

 

[ppc_michael]

Oftentimes 16:9 video is the squished 4:3, and FCP (for example) adjusts the aspect ratio to make it look correct (google "anamorphic video"). So YouTube isn't really distorting anything, it's just not making adjustments on the fly like your editor is doing.

I have had luck rendering my 16:9 video to explicitly 16:9 dimensions, such as 640x360. YouTube has treated that properly in all cases.

Your other option is to manually letterbox your content to "actual" 4:3 before you export it.