Is the Canon Vixia HF S10 already set to HD?

The Vixia HF S10 is rated at 1080p so yes, it is HD…

However, YouTube HD is only capable of 720p resolution (still HD) and recommends these setting for your video:

H.264, MPEG-2 or MPEG-4 format
1280×720 resolution
44.1KHz Stereo MP3 or AAC audio
Frame rate as the original video
Up to 1GB file size and 10 min. duration

Also, you must have Flash Player 10 or later installed in your computer to be able to watch higher resolution YouTube videos.

You also need to set-up you YouTube account for HD viewing by doing the following:
On your YouTube Account page, click on Playback Setup and you’re now able to choose “always show me higher quality when available” or “I have a slow connection. Never play higher-quality video” which is set by default.

So if you want to turn on HD, you must set “I have a fast connection. Always play higher-quality video when it’s available” but only if you have a fast internet connection, otherwise you might find that videos don’t play as quickly or smoothly.

Can you view the video on your computer locally, without uploading it first to YouTube? You can try QuickTime Player for either Mac or PC.

You can choose the recording quality on your camera. MXP gives you the highest resolution and bitrate (1920×1080/24Mbps), but also takes up the most space, and gives you the least amount of recording time. I don’t think the camera is set to the highest quality setting by default.

@simpleD I did upload the video to my computer first but I noticed that when I’ve uploaded the video to my computer it’s not .avi or any video format that I know about. It’s in a video format of .MPL and I was also wondering how do I convert the video to the regular video format. Should it be in the format of .MPL? Cause it’s not in the Quicktime format either so yeah…

@simpleD Oh wait my bad the format is .M2TS

M2TS is a wrapper for MPEG. I guess that allows you to go straight to Bluray with the software Canon provides. If you want to watch it in QuickTIme or Windows Media, it needs to be converted. I import via Log and Transfer in Final Cut for Mac. iMovie imports them, as well. I wouldn’t know what to recommend on the Windows side.