How do I upload HD videos in youtube?

How can i upload HD youtube videos with my Sony DCR-SR42?

• I have an HD cam, the Sony DCR SR42 and i edit most of my videos with imovie on my macbook. youtube just seems to rape the quality right of my videos. Any help would be greatttt

• Answer:

  The Sony DCR-SR42 is a standard definition, hard disc drive, based camcorder - the acronym is HDD. HD is the acronym for high definition. The SR-42 is not a high definition camcorder. YouTube compresses the video a lot. Since you did not tell us which file format you are using for the files when you upload to YouTube and you did not tell us which version of iMovie you are using, I can only tell you that I have had good luck with decent video quality on standard definition video uploaded to YouTube by sharing them using the custom file settings and selecting the medium or high quality selections in the MP4 file type process. I will guess you are sharing the video as a low quality (and highly compressed) .mov QuickTime file. While this makes the file smaller for quicker upload, you have learned the hard way what video compression does to video - YouTube merely compresses it more - making it worse. YouTube limits are 10 minutes or 1 gig on file size. Take advantage of that. The last high definition video I uploaded was about one minute 17 seconds and at nearly 290 meg. Video compression = discarded video data = reduced video quality Conversely, Less video compression = more video data = improved video quality Keep the video in the best quality possible until the last steps - and even then, the platforms you target will have different requirements - YouTube and Vimeo have different compression requirements than an iPod or HDTV... or an email attachment... One size does not fill all...