Upscaling Longplays for Youtube

Last updated on 2 years ago
Spazbo4
Youtube has the worst encoder for videos that are smaller than 720p so here is a good way to upscale longplays for best youtube quality.

First is this will not be replacing the longplay that we have on archive.org. This will be a separate video file from the longplay specifically just for youtube so that the people on youtube can enjoy our longplays better.

For games that are in 240p or around that resolution then it is best to upscale it by 3x to get it up to 720p. Pretty much all consoles that are made for the N64 and earlier will fit into this category. If you use Bizhawk for dumping PS1 and Sega Saturn games so it comes out in 480p then just double the resolution to 960p and it will be fine.

For consoles that run native 480p/480i then it is recommended to upscale them to 1080p as the youtube encoding doesn't look good on those if you upscale it to just 720p for example:
i.imgur.com/DUFVtOR.png

and if you cant see a difference from that then here is a close up:
i.imgur.com/1P43DVX.png

Now if you don't want to wait for megui to upscale a longplay to 720p or 1080p as upping the resolution means upping the time it takes to encode the file then here is a solution that will save on time depending on how good your PC is. Using the latest version of Handbrake has now included the ability to upscale AND the audio encoding has been fixed so it doesn't sound terrible anymore.
Download Handbrake https://handbrake.fr/downloads.php
Once you have it downloaded you need to get the settings proper before you start encoding. Create a new preset and use these settings under the video tab video:
i.imgur.com/cMKipX5.png

As for upscaling you go to the dimensions tab and make sure cropping is set to custom so it doesn't automatically crop the image as this should have already been done in megui when the longplay was originally encoded.
Make Sure Anamorphic is set to none, now checkmark optimal size and allow upscaling. If you are doing a game that is native 480p then resolution limit should be set to 1080p and if it is a game that is native 240p you can set resolution limit to 720p
These settings should look like this:
i.imgur.com/01LRRH8.png

Make sure you save the changes to the preset so you don't have to do this every single time. I recommend saving a preset for both 720p and 1080p, depending on if you do longplays that are native 480p or not

Also DS and 3DS longplays act a bit different since they are more vertical than the average video, and Youtube acts weird if you upscale them to 720p, so I suggest doing 1080p upscale for DS and 1440p or 4K upscale for 3DS

VERY IMPORTANT!!!
Handbrake doesn't encode audio too well, sometimes you can get away with it but other times it can really ruin the audio quality
Under audio tab you have to click selection behavior, then click on the X to remove the audio when it encodes and save it in the preset. Example:
i.imgur.com/BBvaWUO.png


If you do not have the original audio by itself anymore then you can use MKVToolNix and put the longplay in there, uncheck the video codec and it will give you a .mka audio file that you can use to mux together with the finished Handbrake export.
Here is an example of how to uncheck the video then just hit Start multiplexing:
i.imgur.com/QcTN4kq.png

Then you can reencode the audio through megui by dropping the mka file in audio encoding and mux that file with the Handbrake export


Recommended Upscale Resolutions:

720p Landscape --->NES/SNES/Gameboy/Gameboy Color/Gameboy Advance/PSP/Anything else that uses similar or smaller resolutions than these. 1080p upscaling for PSP stuff is optional but recommended.

720p Portrait ---> Nintendo DS (except shmups)

1080p Landscape --->Gamecube/Wii/Dreamcast/PlayStation 2/PlayStation 3/PS Vita/Xbox/Xbox 360/Anything that uses similar resolutions as these. Also that anything in the shmup genre must be upscaled with this setting independently of the platform.

1080p Portrait ------> Nintendo DS (shmups), 3DS
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