iPhone XS new to heavy video use on iphone, format Efficient vs compatible?

[kofman13]

I have been doing serious video on my new iphone XS, mainly low light music videos of myself and friends. eventually doing a youtube channel so im concerned about the best quality. For video, is there a huge difference between High Efficiency and Most Compatible? the file size difference is great, but am i really missing out on quality? whats the best way to go about this if i want best quality? or are they both good?

 

[now i see it]

Record two test clips and compare for yourself. You're as good of a judge of how you want it to look as any.
I'd choose "Most Compatible".
YouTube will recompress your videos to multiple resolutions anyway, degrading the quality a bit, and many people are throttled to 480P downloads anyway.

Shoot two similar test video clips with both formats and upload to a private channel that only you can view / and compare the results.

 

[Nerdyaf]

I have been doing serious video on my new iphone XS, mainly low light music videos of myself and friends. eventually doing a youtube channel so im concerned about the best quality. For video, is there a huge difference between High Efficiency and Most Compatible? the file size difference is great, but am i really missing out on quality? whats the best way to go about this if i want best quality? or are they both good?

im not a youtuber nor do i edit videos, but i believe that your concerns should be more than just video quality. e.g. you may want to shoot at the highest resolution possible, so you can zoom into interesting parts of a video and still make a relatively high quality video. the problem then is how much storage do you have? you may have to shoot a lot of different clips to make the final product, and if you are shooting at 4k, you may find yourself constantly running out of memory or having to transfer the clips to free up space. that certainly isnt ideal.

also if youtube is your medium, then quality may not be the most important factor due to further compression and people watching on a small screen as mentioned in above post. i think the main benefits of shooting in higher quality and higher resolution is for creative freedom and just keeping the option of reusing the clips for other purposes, e.g. making something for a bigger screen.

you also have the option of upgrading your gear when you gain popularity making this discussion less important right now

im sure there are many other considerations that im not aware of, but this may also not be the right forum to ask.