Okay. I finally solved the mystery here. At least partly. If you upload a video to youtube and you're not getting the clarity you want, these are the steps I took.
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1. Download a trial of Sony Vegas 7.0 or a similar video editor that lets you manually set the resolution, bit rate, brightness and contrast. Movie Maker 2 will
not include this.
2. For Sony Vegas, you'll probably want to increase the contrast of each clip to .15 to .25. Click the "Event FX" icon on the clip. Then click "Sony Brightness and Contrast" on the window that appears. Select "Add." Then "Okay." Now you have a slidebar for contrast.
3. Doing this tends to make sky graphics look washed out, so you can lower the brightness to -0.03 or so to counter this. Raising the contrast center will restore detail to bright areas; lowering restores details to dark.
4. When done editing, go to File -> Render As...
5. Select "Save as Windows Media Video V9 (*.wmv) in the drop-down list.
6. Leave the checkboxes unchanged.
7. Click the "custom" button.
8. In the Custom Templates Dialogs enter these settings...
Project Tab: Use "Best" quality.
Audio Tab: Set "Mode" to CBR. Set "Format" to Windows Media Audio 9.2. Set "Attributes" to 128kbps, 44kHZ, stereo (A/V) CBR
Video Tab: Set "Mode" to CBR. Set "format" to Windows Media Video 9. Set "Image Size" to Animation (320x240). Frame rate (fps) = 30.000. Seconds per keyframe = 3. Set "Video smoothness" to 100 (sharpest). Leave everything else at default.
Bit Rate Tab: Select the "Internet/LAN" checkbox and type in "1M" in it's text field.
9. Give this template a name at the top of the Custom Template dialog, then click the disk icon. Click okay.
10. Now that you're back in the "Render As" dialog. Click "save" and your .wmv will begin rendering.
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Those are the steps I went through and there was a vast improvement in video quality. If there are some other tricks anyone knows, feel free to add to this. Anyway, here are the two videos I did using these settings.
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Tribes Vengeance - Ride! Ride! Ride!
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Tribes Vengeance - Danger Zone!