How can I improve the quality of my videos?

How could I improve the quality of my YouTube videos?

• I am an experienced YouTuber and Let's Player. I record Let's Plays with a Dazzle, then have to do some editing to fit my liking. But the thing is, my video quality turns out to be not too great. The raw VOB file looks great, but I have to use Windows Live Movie Maker to add my audio files in. When it goes into Movie Maker, the quality becomes a bit bad. I do render videos to HD with Camtasia, but it's still not as good quality as the VOB file. Any suggestions on what I should do to make the videos come out to look as good as the VOB file? The thing is: I don't want to spend money on better video editing programs.

• Answer:

  What sometimes works, depending on what codec is used to produce your VOB files, is to just rename the video file extension of the VOB file. I edit a friend's VOB files (from a Sony Camcorder) and all they need is a change from myvideo.VOB to myvideo.mpeg. I rename my own MTS video files to AVI and their quality in Movie Maker is great. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cc1UmdTz-d8&feature=related