Trying to maximize streaming quality of my uploads; confused.

[MarkC9]

Hey guys, I'm trying to maximize the quality of my Youtube uploads and find myself struggling. I have no idea what there criteria is when they re-encode your videos; it seems random.

http://support.google.com/youtube/bin/static.py?hl=en&guide=1728585&topic=1728573&page=guide.cs

At first it lists 8,000kbps max bit rate. Anything more than that and it starts compressing. Yet it then lists 50,000kbps as "high quality".

What exactly should I be doing here? If I upload at 15k vs 12k, will the video quality be better? Or does it really not matter between 8-49k, and only matters once you pass 50?

So confused.

 

[Padmasana]

It will NOT compress if you go over 8000kbps. It is just "recommended" by Google.
If you read this part:
Variable bitrate. No bitrate limit required, though we offer recommended bit rates below for reference
And my personal opinion: It makes no sense putting a "recommended bitrate", as you should actually go as high as possible, if you are going for pure quality.
One thing I've noticed, though, is that they never re-encode my AVI videos, but about every other codec I've tried, gets re-encoded.