You can look me up on YouTube (jawaadahmadkhan) and you can also find me on Vimeo (Jawaad Khan). (By the way, if you do join Vimeo, you can join a group I created called “Muslim Filmmakers” because it’s very small at the moment, but Alhamdulillah)

Wasalaamu Alaikum

You can have a very good quality video on YouTube without going the HD route. Sure YouTube compresses all videos but it depends on what quality you start off when you upload the video. Using the correct video codec is key in optimizing your videos.

For example, this video of Charlie Rose interviewing Bill Gates is in good quality even though it is “Normal View”:

The Charlie Rose production always has good quality videos in normal view. I’m sure they spend a lot of time (and money) optimizing their videos.

Here is a great resource to optimize your videos. I really recommend it. I have used it for 30 min Google videos and was quite pleased with the quality.
“How to make YouTube videos look great”
http://www.squidoo.com/youtuberight

Also, very useful; recommended settings from Youtube:
http://help.youtube.com/support/youtube/bin/answer.py?answer=132460&topic=16621

Hope that helps,
Ibrahim

If you’re looking for maximum exposure, then you have to go high quality (Standard Def) on Youtube.

If image quality matters to you, you’ll most likely want to switch to vimeo, which provides HD, and their sd version of the hd does not look like a pixellated mess.

My work is more along the lines of “news reporting”, which requires instant access, as provided by streamed viewing.

However, for your kind of work, i.e., documentaries and such, downloading a file to one’s computer would be acceptable, especially as the film is likely to be longer than ten minutes, and viewing a partitioned work is quite annoying. ibn Halal’s idea of hosting a short trailer video on YouTube makes sense here.

I think I only wanted to use HD cos of the ‘bling’ factor. It looks good, and stays true to what you intended the viewer to see. But for news reporting, high quality isn’t so bad either, and HD is certainly not essential.

If the intended purpose of broadcast justifies a larger audience over a better viewing experience then sacrificing high definition may be the better option. And vice versa. But that is the producer/distributors decision to make.

Given all the feedback you seem to have if I were in your position I would be inclined to republish on YouTube to allow for an HQ version at best, rather than an HD version. But I would provide a link for a free download of the video from my own website, not just at standard definition and 720p HD, but also at 1080p HD, much like the Apple Trailers website.

Feel free to disagree, for I will momentarily be facing the same dilemma.

If I make two versions, I could use the annotations feature to point viewers to the HD version at the start of the standard definition video, for those who may be interested.

Having trialled this technique using my next few videos, insha’Allah, if I find that only a small proportion of the total number of viewers click through to the HD version, I can assume that either:

a) most viewers can’t handle HD videos,

or

b) people are happy with the Hiqh Quality, standard definition version, even if they have the ability to watch the HD version,

or

c) the annotation technique wasn’t successful in pointing people to the HD version.

I don’t have enough dedicated viewers to carry out a meaningful survey right now, so this might be a half-decent alternative?