Final Cut Express to Youtube

I have created a video in FCE and no matter what I save it as the quality on my youtube site is horrible! I captured the video right from my HD video camera directly into FCE. I have tried exporting the video by QuickTime Conversion as an Mpeg-4 and .mov. I tried saving at 1280x740 16:9, 640X480, H.264, at different bitrates with different frames per second...I have tried it all and still horrible quality. It seems to have great quality only when I export it from imovie08...but I don't want to use imovie08 because they don't have as much to offer as FCE does.

Any suggestions?

If there is no way to get good quality from FCE could I create a movie in FCE and export it to imovie08, then save it from imovie to youtube?

Also, could this have to do with a slow internet connection?

check out my youtube channel and you will see what I am talking about.
youtube.com/mybodysitetv (watch "shopping with ava")

See if this video helps How to export a video made in Final Cut Express to YouTube | Wonder How To

First, when I choose the "watch in high quality" option (lower right of video), the detail was great. Second, I had the feeling the aspect ratio was off. Third, I think you should use a wireless body mic for recording in places with distracting sounds such as that supermarket.

Your internet connection has nothing to do with the quality you are uploading. Of course if someone doesn't have high speed download ability, then they may be limited to the lower quality version for practical time reasons.

As I said, I found the quality great, but my video export guides may give you some further ideas.

You have to remember that YouTube re-compresses your uploads and the `normal' quality compression is very destructive to the quality. To make things worse, they display it 50% larger than the smaller size they converted it to. The great thing about it is that a small file is created which allows users to view the videos without delay, for the most part.

If you are placing the videos within a third party page, there is a way to link to the high quality version. See this link for an explanation. This link discussing the same think may be helpful too.

Thanks for the responses.

"See if this video helps How to export a video made in Final Cut Express to YouTube | Wonder How To"

....yes I found this video in the past and watched it but I do not have quicktime pro.

The HD quality in all my videos are fantastic but I want the quality to be amazing in regular as well. If you visit youtube.com/hotforwords their videos are fantastic in regular viewing.

In my video called "shopping for ava" I had the dimensions all wrong, but I was pointing out that the quality is still awful regardless of the size. I made a new video on final cut express and got the dimensions right this time.
I saved it as..

quicktime compression
Mpeg-4
(in options)
H.264
30fps
1500 data rate
1280x720 HD size

Sound
ACC
192kbps
48 khz
best

It came to 90MB and the video is 6 minutes long. I uploaded it to youtube (its set to private so you wouldnt be able to view it) and the HD is AMAZING but the regular quality is awful!! I don't get it, what am I doing wrong???

As I said, you are not doing anything wrong. YouTube re-compresses your video to the formats it is going to display. The default video displayed on YT seems to be the old smaller overly compressed version. There is a link to the bottom right of the video for people to choose a higher quality, but no way to default it to that higher quality. You are SOL. All you can do is give your YT users a short blurb to click to see the higher quality.

You might want to consider other video sites such as vimeo.