version: "1.0.0" name: youtube-export description: DaVinci Resolve Deliver settings for great YouTube quality without 25 GB files - bitrate, profile, audio, burned-in subtitles and the colour tags that stop the "faded on YouTube" look. Use when the creator asks about export or render settings.

YouTube export (Deliver page)

"Quality: Automatic" with H.264 picked ~300 Mb/s: 25 GB for an 11-minute video. YouTube re-encodes everything; anything far above its recommendation is wasted upload time.

Video

• Format QuickTime, codec H.264 (hardware acceleration on, Network Optimization on).
• Resolution and frame rate: timeline.
• Quality: Restrict to 50,000 Kb/s for 4K-class frames (≈4.2 GB for 11 min). 40,000 is fine too (≈3.3 GB). Smaller: H.265 at ~30,000 (≈2.5 GB) at the same quality.
• Encoding profile High, Multi-pass on (if available), key frames Automatic.

Colour tags (check the project first)

Read the project's timeline colour space. If the project is Rec.709-A (common on Macs), set Color Space Tag and Gamma Tag to Same as Project. Tagging Rec.709 / Gamma 2.4 makes the video look lighter and washed out on Macs, iPhones and Chrome compared with the Resolve viewer. Data levels Auto; don't retain sub-black/super-white.

Audio

AAC, 320 kb/s, 48 kHz.

Subtitles

If the creator wants captions always visible (people watching on mute): Subtitle Settings → Export Subtitle, Format Burn into video, tick the subtitle track (if it's unticked, nothing is exported). Optionally also export the SRT and upload it to YouTube as closed captions.

File

Output to the workspace's export edited video/ folder. Then save all of this into their preset ("…" → Update preset) so every export is one click.