“Do you like to share videos on YouTube? I’m a YouTube Vlogs upper, and I often upload my own videos to YouTube. Recently, I met a problem that I upload video file with poor speed. So I’m asking for help here, I hope that an experienced veteran can help me.” – Alice

Many factors will contribute to slow YouTube upload. It is frustrating for people to take several hours to upload a 3-minute video to YouTube. In the vast majority of cases that we encountered, the two main causes of slow YouTube uploads are:

  • Bad internet connection: Slow internet connection can be resulted from many reasons, like internet bandwidth, the internet bill that you buy, the infrastructure of internet connection in your city, the period of a day when you upload a video, and even your WiFi rooter. I suggest you check your internet connection to make sure that it works good and avoid to upload videos to YouTube during a busy time.
  • Video File Size, Video Format and Video Resolution: It is very obvious that bigger video file size will take longer time for a video to be uploaded, and higher resolution and an inefficient video format will lead to bigger file size, without mentioning that a video with 4K resolution will take much more time for YouTube to analyze.

It is not quite feasible for us to fix the slow internet connection in a short time. So, it is a practical option for us to focus on compress the video file size for shortening YouTube uploads.

Before we start the reduce the video size, let’s take a look at the recommended upload encoding settings provided by YouTube officially:

  • No Edit Lists (or the video might not get processed correctly)
  • moov atom at the front of the file (Fast Start)

  • Channels: Stereo or Stereo + 5.1
  • Sample rate 96khz or 48khz

  • Progressive scan (no interlacing)
  • High Profile
  • 2 consecutive B frames
  • Closed GOP. GOP of half the frame rate.
  • CABAC
  • Variable bitrate. No bitrate limit required, though we offer recommended bit rates below for reference
  • Chroma subsampling: 4:2:0

Content should be encoded and uploaded in the same frame rate it was recorded.

Common frame rates include: 24, 25, 30, 48, 50, 60 frames per second (other frame rates are also acceptable).

Interlaced content should be deinterlaced before uploading. For example, 1080i60 content should be deinterlaced to 1080p30. 60 interlaced fields per second should be deinterlaced to 30 progressive frames per second.

The bitrates below are recommendations for uploads. Audio playback bitrate is not related to video resolution.

Recommended video bitrates for SDR uploads

To view new 4K uploads in 4K, use a browser or device that supports VP9.

TypeVideo Bitrate, Standard Frame Rate
(24, 25, 30)		Video Bitrate, High Frame Rate
(48, 50, 60)
2160p (4k)35-45 Mbps53-68 Mbps
1440p (2k)16 Mbps24 Mbps
1080p8 Mbps12 Mbps
720p5 Mbps7.5 Mbps
480p2.5 Mbps4 Mbps
360p1 Mbps1.5 Mbps

Recommended video bitrates for HDR uploads

TypeVideo Bitrate, Standard Frame Rate
(24, 25, 30)		Video Bitrate, High Frame Rate
(48, 50, 60)
2160p (4k)44-56 Mbps66-85 Mbps
1440p (2k)20 Mbps30 Mbps
1080p10 Mbps15 Mbps
720p6.5 Mbps9.5 Mbps
480pNot supportedNot supported
360pNot supportedNot supported

Recommended audio bitrates for uploads

TypeAudio Bitrate
Mono128 kbps
Stereo384 kbps
5.1512 kbps

The standard aspect ratio for YouTube on a computer is 16:9. When uploading other aspect ratios (vertical, square, etc.), the player automatically adapts itself to the size of the video, giving the best viewing experience based on the aspect ratio and device.

Then, how to solve this problem?

Compress your video files with Video Converter Ultimate

Would you like to reduce your video file size so that you can upload it faster to YouTube? We only need to make some changes to the video without reducing the visible image quality. Now, let’s see how to do it.

Aiseesoft Video Converter Ultimate is the tool that can help us change the video format, encoding and resolution with high conversion speed.

  1. Convert video/audio format to other popular formats. Such as convert MP4 to MKV, M2TS to MP4, M4A to MP3… Here we will convert video for MP4 with h.264 encoding since it is the most efficient video format that YouTube recommended.
  2. Edit Video. For example, add image/video watermark for copyright protection; add extract audio tracks and subtitles; adjust the 2D video to 3D effect.

Step 1 Make sure you have a stable internet connection.

Step 2 Download and install Aiseesoft Video Converter Ultimate on your computer.

Step 3 Click Add File to import your videos to this software. You can also put all the files in a folder. And then click the small triangle button beside Add File. In the list, choose Add Folder.

Add Video File for Compressing

Step 4 Choose the output format under Profile. You could also type the format that you want to convert to in the search bar. We choose MP4 with h.264 encoder as the output format.

Compress Video to MP4 with H.267 Encoder

Step 5 On the bottom of the interface, you can see the Settings button, click it. In the pop-up box, you can adjust Frame Rate, Resolution, Video Bitrate, Audio Encoder, Sample Rate, Channels, and Audio Bitrate according to the recommendation from YouTube.These all will help us faster upload HD videos to YouTube with original quality.

Settings Video

Note: Don’t want to bother about the complexity of video configuration, you can convert video to Stream Video and choose a YouTube preset format as the image below.

Convert Video to Optimized and Preset Video Format

Step 6 After making all settings well, click Convert to start converting your video files. You will have the converted video file in a short time. In my case, I have compressed the video file size from 80MB to 37.5MB without visible quality reduction.

Step 7 Log in your YouTube account and publish the processed video.

Are you eager to try it? Do it now. This software will not fail you. You will enjoy a 50% faster speed with its help.

Switch to another way for Uploading video to YouTube

If the uploading speed is still very slow, you can change a platform for the uploading. If you tried on a mobile phone then try to transfer to a computer and upload it via web browser and vice-versa.