These are the editing guidelines we made after doing a bit of research on quality vs filesize. We ended up on a sort of middle ground, leaning only slightly towards quality.
All videos MUST:
Be recorded in .mkv or fragmented MP4
Be recorded in at least 60 FPS, in anything divisible by 15 (e.g. 60, 75, 90, etc.)
Be encoded in H.265, AV1, or anything QSV, AMF, or NVENC, depending on what GPU brand you have.
If you don't have a graphics card that does multimedia well or is unsupported, buy an Intel Arc A380. No I'm not joking, that is by far the best mutimedia card at the price it's at. If it's used for multimedia only, it can beat the 3090Ti in encoding and decoding. At ~$130 USD it has AV1 support and LA-ICQ (CQP on steroids with look ahead), but runs on 8 pin pcie power.
Have audio encoded in Opus or Flac at 320kbps
Rate Control Tier List for recording:
LA-ICQ > ICQ > CQP >>> Everything Else
Be named with RAW at the beginning of the filename. This can be done through Settings > Advanced > Filename Formatting > add RAW- to the beginning
If sending or saving a compressed version delete the RAW- to make it easier to distinguish
Be edited in Davinci Resolve (best free video editing program with no watermark, thank the Australians) or Kdenlive (open source made by KDE, also no watermark)
Make sure to save semi-regularly. Video editors are known to crash, so to save your sanity please save your project.
Have at least a compressed version of the video saved SOMEWHERE (raw file is better). If you are running low or out of storage space, you may delete the video, if it has already been sent or uploaded (NAS HDDs are so cheap that deleting is a last resort)
If you send a video, try to compress it in Handbrake. Videos take up a lot of space and most people don't have a full on NAS server (yet). I've had luck getting a 28GB video down to ~8GB after lots of testing.
If you must send a video to someone else, that can be done with QBitTorrent, WinSCP, or Google Drive (try to avoid Google Drive, as even with very good uploading speed it can take hours to upload ~1 hour of footage, not even mentioning downloading that).
Have all audio tracks Volume Normalized through ITU-R BS.1770-4
For Desktop Audio
dBTP at -2.5
LKFS at anywhere between -18 to -13
Independant Mode
These settings should be loud when editing. Use your volume to make it quieter, not the mixer in Resolve.
Better yet, don't touch the mixer unless you know exactly what you are doing. This completely negates the normalization and you can add filters in the Fairlight tab if absolutely necessary anyways.
Youtube has a volume slider, so don't try to edit the volume level after normalization unless there is a clipping problem.
Have color coded subtitles (if adding subtitles into the video itself) per talker.
Be outputted in either 60 or 30 FPS. More than 60 is nice to watch (in raw form), but a PITA to edit, and will get uploaded at 60 FPS anyways
IT IS RECOMMENDED that you upscale (from your editor) to 1440p. Youtube gives 1080p videos horrible bitrates and we don't want a GTA V pipe situation
If you export from Davinci Resolve in a codec that is not recommended, it can be converted using HandBrake or Davinci Resolve (again). HandBrake is usually slower, but can be higher quality (and smaller file size), but requires configuration to do so.
NOT HAVE CLIPPING AUDIO
Clipping audio should be fixed in OBS, but if it still clips, it can be made quiter in Davinci Resolve so you don't make anyone deaf.
Normalization can usually fix loud voices, but if your audio is truly clipping, fix it. I usually edit out the peaks or soften them.
Not have copyrighted music in the video (obviously)
Be proof-watched in a good video player
Groove player is not that great, and if your video is in HEVC, you have to pay for the codec.