What video format should I pick if I want to minimize up upload time to YouTube?

I mainly record "screencasts" of MMO games. Which of the various video formats that YouTube accepts will result in the smallest file size and what settings for that file type would I use?

Of course this is also constrained by a desire to have video quality that is not noticeably worse that the other options.

From web app MatthewMartin

• The .wmv format seems to be the smallest. As an addition try to be on a fast connection. Do you know anyone who has a symmetric connection? It was also reported that using public wi-fi (especially on airports) seem to provide a fast upload speed.

  Evan Plaice : I just wanted to point out that Airport internet connections usually aren't free to access so that might not be the best option.
  From neo

• If you use h.264 as a codec, Handbrake lets you fine-tune the bitrate of the video.

  

  Wikipedia has a list of the bitrates of common mediums for comparison. With some experimentation, you'll eventually be able to decide which bitrate provides the best tradeoff between quality and size.

  From Simon Brown

• YouTube support a number of different options for uploading:

  • WebM - VP8 for video, which really isn't that great
  • MPEG4 (h264) - pretty much the standard
  • AVI - a container format, not a codec
  • MPEG2 (DivX, XviD) - higher filesizes for similar quality as compared to h264
  • WMV - not used by many outside of Microsoft for good reason
  • FLV - previously used to contain VP6, but currently uses h264

  Really, for general-purpose video, everyone should be using h264.

  The audio codec you choose is not going to make much a difference for a standard YouTube-length video, as long as it's lossy. I don't believe that YouTube accepts any lossless audio anyways, not to mention that it would be a ridiculous waste of disk space.

  Realistically, if you want to produce really small encodes that don't take up much disk space, you'll have to spend many hours tweaking settings. I assume that your upload bandwidth is not capped enough to make this kind of effort worthwhile, but it would be nice to see what kind of change you're hoping for.

  See also Google's help article on optimizing videos for upload.

  Xiong Chiamiov : Due to spam prevention, I am not allowed to post more than one hyperlink in my answer, which is rather irritating. A page describing the downfalls of VP8 is at http://x264dev.multimedia.cx/?p=377 , and Google's help article is at http://www.google.com/support/youtube/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=132460 .

  Evan Plaice : +1 good answer. Don't worry about the posting limitations. They're one of the main reasons there's no spam on Stack Exchange sites. Once you break the 100 threshold, any Stack Exchange site you sign on to will automatically start you @ 100 rep.

  Evan Carroll : Just link your accounts and set up a biography you start at 100 then.
  From Xiong Chiamiov