I have a Sony CX115 and I have a little footage I'd like to put on youtube. I've downloaded Arista from the Ubuntu Software Center and then I've downloaded its Youtube HD plugin. I've converted my video and uploaded it to youtube... The result is a flashy video with a lot of grey in it:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1V08e5PkVDI
What could I do to publish it in high quality so it'll be viewable?
As an alternative, can I suggest you use OpenShot to edit video and also upload HD quality video to Youtube.
You export the video similar to this picture.
You can then use the inbuilt upload feature to send to Youtube
This may help:
Transcoding is made easy by using several GUI's or command line tools. Of which I previously posted this answers, I hope this help you.
What is the best tool for converting and reading video to be played on DVD players?
How can I maximum compress video files?
Additionally, there are a few other answers in this forum under the "video" tag which may be useful for you.
Good luck!
P.S. If you are using a 64 bit system you may be interested in this: How to install 32 bit software in 64 bit system from within the Israel Linux Remix Team, posted by me in the past. Certain software may misbehave when using this procedure but it is yet good for transcoding or downloading from youtube the appropiate video file (.flv).
BTW: You can upload almost any video file with almost any codec which Youtube will transcode, suggested by Youtube:
Best Formats for Uploading
Upload mp3 to youtube on ubuntu 14.04
Here's a shell script that uses avconv (which is available on Ubuntu 14.04):
Also available as gist.
Probably YouTube made some adjustments but I managed to upload an ogv video file directly on YouTube.