Hi Everyone. I'm been struggling to get a really crisp image onto YouTube from our streams and was wondering if anyone had any suggestions as to what we cold do to improve it. The feed going in is from an AS7s HDMI output into a BMD Decklink Mini Recorder 4k PCI card. The image quality all the way through from the camera to vMix is awesome. Also, if I record in vMix at high settings the file looks great.

When I stream to YouTube and watch it back I feel like the quality is just not as good as it should be. The best I've managed is with the following settings:
- Bitrate 15000
- Resolution 1920 x 1080p
- Profile High
- Preset very slow (not sure what this does but I feel like the image is better, could just be imagining it as it's marginal)
- Aspect original
- Keyframes 2 seconds
- Threads 4
- Network buffer 20

It's quite good but it's still nowhere near as good as an uploaded video or "TV like" quality.

To cut a long story short, the questions is, does anyone have any fantastic secrets/advice for settings for streaming to YouTube that will give us the least reduction in image quality.

Thanks a lot!

Thanks for the reply. I'll give CPU encoding a go tomorrow and see if it's any better. Cheers!

I disagree. It's maybe not the best platform for image quality, but when the source is excellent, YT transcodes are pretty good. However it clearly reveals weaknesses when "bad" cameras are used or too low bitrates are transmitted, especially for the blacks and general contrast, it will also amplify banding effect in the background gradients.
That's the reason why I don't want to use highly already compressed IP streams (like RTSP feeds or NDI|HX from my cams) for my productions. When the source input in vMix is already highly compressed, then encoded with even lower bitrates by vMix for RTMP, chances are you get poo after YT transcodes indeed. But that's not YT's fault! And biggest part of the "poo" effect is between the cam and vMix in the first place...