Video Compression Help

It's hard to ensure good video quality on YouTube, since it's optimized internally for streaming. One thing that you can control is the format in which you submit the video -- since YouTube is Flash-based, it follows that if you upload your video in Flash format, it will require less internal processing, which will potentially result in fewer problems (YouTube is notorious for -- in addition to fairly low video quality -- de-synchronizing video and audio tracks, which for a music video, is that much more of a concern. I've heard that this de-syncing doesn't happen if you submit the video in Flash). If you own a copy of Flash, the package includes a Flash Video Encoder. Adobe offers a free trial if you don't own it, and there may be some free alternatives out there for you.

Hope this helps!

Take care,
Sojourn

P.S. Handbrake is for ripping DVDs to iPod/TV format; if you are working with video files, I'd recommend something like MPEG Streamclip or iSquint (both free, very useful programs). But if you're trying for .flv (Flash video) encoding, those won't be able to help you out -- just something to keep in mind for the future.