I use PAL too, withou prob

I use PAL too, withou problems. Have you set the Projest as Widescreen when creating it? In Adobe Media Encoder, you have the “Output” windows where you see the resulting video. If you see the black bars there, your setting are incorrect.

Check also in the Media Encoder settings that you have choosen Widescreen.

For YouTube use H264, no other codec.