YouTube what am I doing wrong ?

Brett...scrub my last reply. I must have had my playback settings wrong. Your vid looks good at 1080P. I am struggling to playback higher than that too !

Look pretty good. What settings did you use to export / share

Look pretty good. What settings did you use to export / share

VIRB Edit settings:
Resolution: 1080p
Frame Rate: 60 FPS
Target Quality: Max

Both front an rear footage was exported with overlays, then imported into Sony Vegas v13 for picture in picture processing (Feature request VIRB Devs! :-) )

Rear footage was flipped horizontally for mirror image.

Sony Vegas export settings:
Sony AVC template "Internet HD 1080p" with these settings modified:
Framerate: 59.940000
Variable bit rate:
Average bps: 18,000,000
Max bps: 24,000,000

I see that the VIRB raw footage and VIRB Edit exports are in the 25-50 mbps bit rate, so I'm going to try increasing the bitrate for the next upload. It seems keeping it at 1080p / 60 FPS / 25-50 mbps bitrate is the way to go.

PS - I downloaded the videos from Vimeo and YouTube to see how much compression took place. Results:

Vimeo: I got the exact same file originally uploaded.
YouTube: File size was reduce from 441 Mb to 115 Mb. Bit rate reduced from 18 mbps to 6 mbps.

Bitrate is key to maintaining quality. Seems Vimeo is the winner quality wise.

Here is the list of various encodes from both YouTube and Vimeo. It appears only Vimeo maintains the original upload for viewing/downloading ('Plus' and above subscriptions. Basic subscriptions keep the original file for a week):

YouTube:
[info] Available formats for 6vIj_IHdDjQ:
format code extension resolution note
171 webm audio only DASH audio 6k , vorbis@128k (44100Hz), 54.06KiB
140 m4a audio only DASH audio 127k , m4a_dash container, aac @128k (44100Hz), 2.53MiB
278 webm 256x144 DASH video 108k , webm container, vp9, 30fps, video only, 1.97MiB
160 mp4 256x144 DASH video 114k , avc1.4d400c, 30fps, video only, 2.23MiB
133 mp4 426x240 DASH video 250k , avc1.4d4015, 30fps, video only, 4.91MiB
242 webm 426x240 DASH video 266k , vp9, 30fps, video only, 4.56MiB
134 mp4 640x360 DASH video 649k , avc1.4d401e, 30fps, video only, 12.63MiB
243 webm 640x360 DASH video 670k , vp9, 30fps, video only, 9.75MiB
244 webm 854x480 DASH video 1063k , vp9, 30fps, video only, 16.31MiB
135 mp4 854x480 DASH video 1188k , avc1.4d401f, 30fps, video only, 23.12MiB
247 webm 1280x720 DASH video 2305k , vp9, 30fps, video only, 33.39MiB
136 mp4 1280x720 DASH video 2365k , avc1.4d401f, 30fps, video only, 46.17MiB
298 mp4 1280x720 DASH video 3494k , h264, 60fps, video only, 69.10MiB
302 webm 1280x720 DASH video 3745k , vp9, 60fps, video only, 56.64MiB
248 webm 1920x1080 DASH video 4122k , vp9, 30fps, video only, 57.85MiB
137 mp4 1920x1080 DASH video 4372k , avc1.640028, 30fps, video only, 86.36MiB
299 mp4 1920x1080 DASH video 5808k , h264, 60fps, video only, 115.04MiB
303 webm 1920x1080 DASH video 6797k , vp9, 60fps, video only, 97.07MiB
17 3gp 176x144 small , mp4a.40.2, mp4v.20.3
36 3gp 320x240 small , mp4a.40.2, mp4v.20.3
5 flv 400x240 small
43 webm 640x360 medium , vorbis, vp8.0
18 mp4 640x360 medium , mp4a.40.2, avc1.42001E
22 mp4 1280x720 hd720 , mp4a.40.2, avc1.64001F (best)

Vimeo:
[info] Available formats for 159505532:
format code extension resolution note
hls-meta mp4 multiple Quality selection URL
hls-690 mp4 640x360 690k , avc1, mp4a
http-360p mp4 640x360 , 30fps
hls-1932 mp4 960x540 1932k , avc1, mp4a
http-540p mp4 960x540 , 30fps
hls-3252 mp4 1280x720 3252k , avc1, mp4a
hls-5111 mp4 1280x720 5111k , avc1, mp4a
http-720p-0 mp4 1280x720 , 30fps
http-720p-1 mp4 1280x720 , 60fps
hls-5664 mp4 1920x1080 5664k , avc1, mp4a
hls-8159 mp4 1920x1080 8159k , avc1, mp4a
http-1080p-0 mp4 1920x1080 , 30fps
http-1080p-1 mp4 1920x1080 , 60fps
Original mp4 1920x1080 421.37MiB (best)