To fill everyone in coming to this page, I capture my videos (mainly all video games from Xbox 360) in High Definition. These are my output settings for sites such as mainly YouTube. These settings will work for you, you may need to change a few variables such as the frame rate and variable bit rate if mine is much higher than your source quality. But otherwise, you should be set and good to go. This page was last updated March 11th, 2010.

My Vegas Pro 9 Settings:

Save As: MainConcept AVC/AAC (*.mp4)
Video rendering quality: Best
Frame Size: 1280×720
Profile: Main
Frame Rate: 59.94
Method: Variable bit rate
Maximum (bps): 9,100,000
Average (bps): 9,000,000

I no longer use Sorenson Squeeze for any of my videos. But if you do, these settings should be very useful to you for an output of 720p. Again as above, adjust the data rate to what you want or if you want 1080 on YouTube.

My Sorenson Squeeze 5 Settings:

Codec: MainConcept H.264
Method: 1-Pass VBR
Data Rate: 9000
Frame Size: 1280×720
Display Aspect Ratio Policy: Maintain Aspect Ratio
Frame Rate: 1:1
Key Frame Every: 30
AVC Profile: Main
Interlace Mode: Progressive
Encoding Effort: Best

Everything else default if those were not already.