audio export settings for youtube using premiere elements

Question

Pretty simple question(I think). I am using Adobe Premiere Elements. I would like to create a simple video using a 44.1 khz WAV audio clip and a still image and then export it to youtube.

What would the best settings be in order for the clip's audio to remain as good as possible, at all youtube settings(as in, sound as good as possible at 360p, 720p, etc)?

For some reason, even though I use the HDV 720p export settings, there is a large gap between my 360p and my 720p, whereas in a clip like this one the difference is barely noticeable.

Thanks!

Answer 1

Let's start saying that if you have an still image, it doesn't make much sense to make the video at 1080p resolution (I'm actually watching it at 360p and looks good). Furthermore, audio and video are two totally different animals, so there's not such a thing like 'sound as good as possible at this or that resolution'.
As far as audio I would first see what your source is: it would not make sense to export the audio at 48 KHz if you extracted it from an mp3 file from a CD which samples up to 44.1 KHz. If you made the music, you may know what your export settings were when you created the final audio track. YouTube actually recommends a maximum of 384 kbps as bit rate but I never went over 192 kbps (128 kbps if is't only speech).
By the way, the song you put as example is nice, did you make it?
Good Luck!