Does zooming reduce quality when compressing for Youtube?

[king2d3d]

I just recently purchased the Vixia HF G30. I shot some zoomed-in footage of ducks in the bay with lots of water movement. The raw footage looks fabulous but when I compress it for Youtube it seems that the quality is degraded quite a bit. If there is not much movement then it's not as poor quality. Just wondering if it's the zoom or the movement. I'm using the settings that are recommended by Youtube and using Compressor.

[VideoGeek]

What output settings are you using when you export the video for upload to YouTube?  Oops, I see you are using the recommended settings for YouTube.  Will you elaborate on those settings?  Is it exporting as an mp4 format or something else?  Have you tried playing with the settings to see if it produces better quality video after uploading to YouTube?

[king2d3d]

Thanks for responding. I've tried playing with different settings. I've posted two different versions.

This first one was shot AVCHD, 28Mbps LPCM(59.94p) and uploaded a .mov to Youtube.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ut78tIXTROA

This second one was shot AVCHD, 24Mbps LPCM, frame rate PF29.97and uploaded a .mov

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wLx12ftbx40

The last scene of the second video has very nice quality but it is a calm scene.

I suspect that compressing something with lots of motion is throwing out alot of the data that makes it look so good in the raw format. 

[VideoGeek]

What shutter speed did you use to capture the video?  Seems like a higher shutter speed would make a difference when recording motion.  One can definitely tell a difference in the two videos.

[king2d3d]

It was set to automatic.

[VideoGeek]

Try experimenting with different shutter speeds and see if that helps.  Automatic may not work so well with zoom as you go from a scene with little motion to a scene with a lot of motion. Are you using autofocus as well?  If yes, then that could be part of the problem as autofocus may have difficulty deciding what to focus on with so much motion.  Also, if you are using autofocus, are you zooming quickly or slowly zooming in?

[king2d3d]

OK, thanks. I was using autofocus but I was already zoomed in when I started recording. I will play around with the shutter speed. 

[VideoGeek]

You may want to consider using a manual focus as well.  If you do then zoom in as much as you would like and then manually set the focus.  When you zoom back out everything should be in focus as well as when you zoom in.