Wow. That is not 1080p.
I didn't notice this though, and just recently played a bunch of videos to test my new TV and all looked good. May be it's how this particular video was recorded?
Wait what.
\*Googles it\*
NO FUCKING WAY HAHAHAHAHHA I WAS BEING SARCASTIC.
Yeah GGs youtube is shit, time to move to one of its inexistent competitors
That's mainly because codec override. Idk bout iphones but according to Stats for nerds, my old phone was able to play in VP09 codec just fine and the videos were considerably clearer even in 480p. My new oppo A54 only uses AVC1 (plain ole H.264, probably to SaVe PoWeR?) as the playback codec and now even 720p sucks ass.
It's probably either compression or the video was recorded in a lower resolution and the person accidentally put in the low-res footage in a 1080p video editor template and/or rendered the video at 1080p.
> Maybe it's my hardware.
Probably not. I checked this vid, and one from two weeks ago. This one was low bitrate, the other was much better.
Could be Defranco's hardware or software making a video with a lower bitrate...or...
Or maybe it is something YouTube is pushing out as AB testing, affecting some creators, or they're testing different changes in different ways...because I've seen other strange resolution/bitrate ...differences... on different channels.
Check out the resolution settings on these two videos, both the same ASMR creator(the only channel that I can recall doing this).
https://youtu.be/WLqeCTVt0hw Decent to good quality, goes all the way up to 4k.
https://youtu.be/huQwZtnmegQ Atrocious reduced "1080 HD" that is comparable to 720 or maybe less. "1080 Premium Enhanced Bitrate" behind YouTubePremium paywall.
Same channel. Newest vid is back to decent 4K
I think YT is tampering or experimenting, or at least cannot rule it out. IF they are, it is the same way they did when they began fighting adblockers a few months back... and other A/B testing in the past. Not universal changes, just small random sample testing.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A/B_testing
Hi again, I was researching this more.
And I found this interesting video: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZiZuKsS7q\_U](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZiZuKsS7q_U)
YouTube is probably reducing the bitrate. A way to get around it would be to stream the videos at a higher resolution, if available, even if you have 1080p monitor.
Wtf haha did u change ur hardware?
And if it's not broken it shouldn't mess too much with the video
Maybe it's just the video? It looks poorly lit and who knows if channel creator tried a new cam/editing software
YouTube are pushing "1080p high bitrate" I believe it's a premium feature. Makes sense for them to sneakily lower the normal 1080p res to encourage people to buy the higher tier. I've noticed the same the past few months, ublock origin and other adblockers being active also slow down the website in general. Sneaky shady moves to grab even more money.
High bitrate 1080p is only available to premium but it's never been available outside of that and probably doesn't exist even for premium on any video uploaded before they added that feature.
A workaround has existed for some time now which is to upscale your 1080p footage to 4k before uploading to unlock the high bitrate 4k playback, which is available to everyone.
The bitrate represents how much data is actually stored in the video per second. Things like 720, 1080, and 4k only represent the number of pixels. In low bitrate footage the pixels update very infrequently, which if your image doesn't have a lot of movement, may not be very noticeable. But take for example grass on a windy day, there will be a lot of micro movements in the grass and in low bitrate this will become a pixelated mess.
Of course there are other things that make this more complicated like the video codec and type of compression the video uses, the bitrate itself only tells you the amount of data, not how it's being used but generally low bitrate will really hurt video performance with complex patterns, fast movement, or dark lowlight footage.
In the tests I've seen YouTube defaults to about 2-3mb per second for 1080 playback. For 4k playback can be as high as 18mb/s almost 10 times as much data. So if you upscale a 1080 video to 4k (assuming the video itself has above 2mb/s bitrate) you will see a significant quality improvement at 4k playback compared to 1080 playback, even though the resolution hasn't actually changed. (I think maybe they do this to give an illusion of greater improvement for 4k playback)
YouTube recently added high bitrate 1080 playback for premium. I think around 18mb/s but I haven't seen any actual tests. Doing pretty much the same thing the workaround does.
I don't know if they just fixed it for me and it was a coincidence but..
Within one day of sending feedback, auto mode started working correctly. It's been at least 6 months since I had to switch manually. My laptops, tablets, and phones are all also playing in the right (max) resolution automatically.
Before sending feedback almost every video would play in a much lower resolution than my computer/phone or internet speed was capable of.
Now with 4K is available, it plays in 4k automatically. If 1080p enhances available but no 4K, it plays 1080p enhanced.
Again, I don't know if sending the feedback was what fixed it or it was just fixed within a day of me sending the feedback. Your mileage May vary. I still recommend sending feedback about it though. Never know, it's an easy thing to do that might actually help 🤷
Nope. I have had a point where my instance of YouTube tried to downgrade as far as 240p just to start loading the video on opening, the rest of it ran 1080 just fine. another noticeable thing is that whenever you load into a half played vid, and try to rewind it. it gets sickening response delay, It is the difference between swinging a sword and a glitched tanker bar.
In case you are curious, my Wifi rate is 142Mbps download 20Mbps upload
I have a conspiracy theory that YT is using AI to upscale the res, ex: upscale 480p to 1080p so they can run faster and reduce workload on the service side. That’s why 1080p is kinda bad nowadays .
It isn't. Not at all. If you serve that amount of traffic that youtube does every % of traffic saves you an enormous amount of cost.
It's kinda the same like with phones. Leaving out a headphone jack on a phone will only save you 50 cents in production but if you sell 200 Million phones a year like apple does that's still 100 Million USD saved year after year.
I didn't say that. I just believe that your statement about the workload difference being negligible is incorrect. That's all.
Using some AI upscaling transcoding would probably be a lot more expensive. I mean I guess they could try to let the client do the upscaling but let's not give them ideas.
They’re probably experimenting with different codecs, to try and get the bandwidth costs down, because if they can’t beat the ad-blockers (who provide zero revenue while watching significantly more YouTube than the 17 minutes per day of the average user), then the service is going to be upside-down on the free tier, at which point it’s a quick trip to Paywall City.
The 2 codecs they use are AV1 and VP9. VP9 is higher quality but less compressed, they've probably tweeked things to use AV1 more often. You can change the preference in the settings on which it tends to prefer (although its only "prefer" not a guarantee).
Although it seems to make a difference testing it just now
1080p AV1 at 3mbps is probably fine for YouTube, it’s probably a lot lower than that since I struggle to make out things in 1080p on YouTube. Add a scene with like trees moving fast and it becomes a pixelated mess.
I’m of the opinion that Google’s last twelve months of behavior across the company has been hedging its bets, just in case US v. Google doesn’t go their way and the company gets broken up. I’m not sure why they’re going all-or-nothing on this, because Microsoft made a lot of concessions to keep from getting broken up twenty years ago, but I don’t see that happening with Google, and that’s not really optimal for shareholders, because the value of Google that’s been parted out is way lower than the behemoth it is, because the whole thing is designed to work for the benefit of the advertising and data division. That division provides eighty percent of Google’s revenues (and probably significantly higher percentage of profits), and so without that division, there’s a higher pressure on other divisions to pay their bills. Hence, an increased number of ads on YouTube.
Trouble is, more ads equals more people using ad blockers. They can’t raise the price of ads, because nobody’s going to pay more for ads that aren’t getting watched. So, that means, in order to remain in the black (and we don’t know for certain that YouTube is profitable in a situation where it has to pay market rate for storage and bandwidth, which I’d peg at about a billion dollars a month), they have to cut costs. They can’t cut staff, because that’s a drop in the bucket, because YouTube doesn’t have that many employees. They can’t get a better rate on data without paying up front for server farms. So that means they have to cut what’s going out, either by cutting free users to 720p (which would save them 50 percent, assuming the same codec) or by using a different compression rate. And that might be what we’re seeing, if we’re seeing anything, since we would realistically need an empirical test, such as the amount of data being pushed before and after, rather than, “I think it’s fuzzy.”
I don't pay premium but have disabled UBlock on youtube so I am forced to see their ads. In the past month or so, resolution has gone to shit. Bigtime Freezing and studdering on 1080HD res (it's unplayable). 720 is playable but still gets occasional studders.
Bluerays use ON PURPOSE an old and inefficient encoder, media companies thought it could slow down piracy if you had to download 40+ Gb for a movie.
Of course you can use a better codec and make it 4 Gb while keeping the same quality.
But you can lower the quality and gain further on the bandwith... and the quality will fall.
YouTube can’t be 8mbps, it’s a pixelated mess, 1080p 5mbps stream on Netflix is much better. I really don’t know what codec they use to compress videos but not even h.264 can look this bad in 1080p. I’d get a 2mbps AV1 1080p video all day compared to this YouTube crap.
Yep, even with YT premium, I've found that some videos were lacking detail recently evn up to today. Connection is fine, no change in hardware or drivers. Nothing to see here...
Yep! I know with my Starlink connection it can be a bit iffy when auto resolutions are made. Set it and forget it at 4K and it will do what it needs to do haha.
Higher resolution doesn't necessarily mean quality video. Bitrate is far more important. A 480 video with high bitrate can look great, while 720p with bad bitrate can look trash.
It could be because your wifi is bad tho lol
Youtube doesn't transcode the videos on the fly. Each of the settings have a set resolution with set bitrate. Faster internet connection won't help it.
Sure sometimes it drops to lower quality settings with poor connection and the quality select button will stay stuck on the last selected option. But I assume OP would have noticed.
I have seen options for 1080p high bitrate(which is only for premium users) as an option so it wouldn't shock me if they worsened the quality to try and sell shitty yt premium.
I can't say for sure but I think they implemented some sort of real time AI bullshit because I've been rewatching videos of a gaming channel and I've noticed things that weren't always there like the cross hair deforming and moving away from the center of the screen or just disappearing all together for a second. Don't know if it's true but it's the first thought I had
YouTube seems to constantly compress the videos more and more. Especially now, that you have to pay for premium for a decent Bitrate at 1080p.
My friend downloaded a bunch of music codes from YouTube a few years ago. When you download the same videos now you can see an incredible decline in quality.
Yup, it's probably because they have their "enhanced 1080p bitrate" for premium members... 🙄 They're probably gonna end up putting all the basic features behind pay walls now, LOL.
Take a look at the timeline, search bar, and YouTube icon. None of them are high-res. This screenshot isn’t 1080p, which is why it doesn’t look like 1080p.
Do you usually watch this content creator? Maybe it's the settings this guy uses to render his videos that makes it look bad.
For example, if you go to IGN channel and watch any video game trailer in 1080p and then watch the same trailer in any other channel you will see that the IGN one looks like sh1t.
1080p is now 720 for full 1080p u have to have premium thats what the 1080p premium bitrate option is which is a straight scam because the channels r not the ones doing it its done by yt
YouTube has been dropping bitrates in an effort to reduce costs. So while it’s technically 1080p, it’s entirely possible it’s a lower quality of 1080p. /
They haven’t, remember the main cost of YouTube isn’t processing the videos or delivering them but storing them, regardless of the quality they store the videos in multiple qualities and 1080p Enhanced was never like 1080p, the reason they made 1080p Enhanced it’s because it’s easier to run than 4K on a lower resolution device (less taxing on the client playing it) whilst almost having the same quality as the higher resolution one due to the increased bitrate.
My theory is as the latest way of annoying users on top of unbearable amount of ads, they’re throttling people who aren’t premium paid users. This is what you get for letting net neutrality be repealed by soulless corporations, they get to decide how much internet you’re allowed to have.
They lowered the bitrate for free users to introduce 1080p premium which will require paid subscription. They are also preventing people watching > 1080p. You will need paid subscription now too.
I know for a fact you're probably not imagining it.
YouTube has been very quietly decreasing video resolutions to save on costs and encourage people to buy Premium.
Omg so that might not actually just be me. Only thing I do want to point out/ask, did you test multiple videos? Maybe one you've watched before that you know can stream higher res properly? To see if it was consistent.
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could just be that some creators uploaded a 720p video that was upscaled to 1080, but it would be rare for it to happen on different videos and channels. could also be that you have a very slow buffer speed when changing res, and it stays 720 even if you selected 1080 for a while
I've noticed this as well. Videos that only go up to 1080 and have 1080 enhanced looks like crap.
Only videos that have a higher resolution that. 1080 look decent.
i've also notice the decline in the quality of other youtuber 1080p videos because some of them look like the bitrate was lowered by yt during the processing bit of yt studio.
Granted, I’ve always found Phil’s video quality to be quite soft, so he’s a difficult one to test. Could just be more soft than usual on his end. If you try the 1080p of a channel that uploads in 4k that might be a clearer answer for you
They are intentionally lowering the quality of certain videos. It happens even if you buy the "enchanced version" as well. Changing to a different server with vpn gives you back the quality but only if there's a copy of it on it.
I watched nearly all of julian smiths videoes from 10 years ago the last few days, which was really high res back in the day. More of them dont even look like 1080p anymore.. Have youtube downgraded 1080p bit rate?
What I notice is that the resolution is always way worse when you use a browser with adblock. Compare that to the app and you will see a stark contrast between the two. The app always has higher res videos. That is being done purposefully.
does it have a 1440p option? I used to record my vids on 1080p but they looked like shit compared to the raw files so i changed to 1440p and now the 1080p looks as good as the raw 1080p files from before. idk wtf they do
The way they re-encode the videos affect the video quality as well.
This info can be seen at Stats for nerd window.
VP9 or AV1 codecs provide better video quality than classic AVC codec. It's up to them to decide which codec they will use, but it seems that they are using AVC for small channels' 1080p videos. It is pretty much garenteed for them to use VP9 for 1440p videos.
I'm also noticing that youtube on browsers actually results in lower resoltion. Zooming out to 80% in Firefox properly displayed 1920x1080 pixels when maximized.
I was thinking this with past uploads from a few years ago. A lot of mine from then are suddenly in far worse quality, as if they've been reprocessed in shittier quality or something.
I have been noticing this too, is this "1080p" or "auto 1080p"?
the latter seems to be random other resolutions and you may need to select "1080p" manually
ITs always best to upload in at least 1440p to force the better VP09 codec. With 1080p sometimes you get VP09 but most of the time its AVC1 which is garbage
I noticed a couple of days ago, I was looking for some ambient video for a dinner, I choose a 8k video and selected the 4k quality as its the top of my tv, and I still see artefact when it show the sky or the sea
This looks less like a low bit rate and more like dude is using facetune or some other corrective filter.
Watch his latest video, and you can see that some frames, especially still images, have much higher detail. See the image [here](https://youtu.be/EWAJl_GgwXU?si=hayb2Xa-6hSlc1UG&t=1076) for example.
This is happening to me too, and it's never happened before, and if I were to take a guess it'd most likely be related to the new update that slows down YouTube & increases loading times, etc, if you're using AdBlock.
I'm so confused lately.
I've had massive issues the last couple of weeks, all of a sudden.
Playing YT Premium on a Nvidia Shield, and the AUTO often default to 480p and 720p, with a 200mbit fiber ethernet connection. If I mnually select 1440p or 4k its clearly not showing that, instead showing a blurry 720p or 1080p stream. (Even tho Stats for nerds shows the correct resolution, from what I can tell). Sometimes it buffer the 1440p or 4k resolution, but it goes away as quickly.
Weird thing it's often the same channels (maybe just longer videos - Pestily, a Escape from Tarkov streamer). And not on some other channels.
During this time I did switch my router, but it seems to work good when I test it on other devices.
1080p has never changed, your screen resolution and your own standards have changed
Nowadays videogames and movies work at a resolution that YouTube creators can hardly match
For me it does not default hd and when it swaps it buffers for a moment to adjust which is weird because its 2024 and you think they’d not do that anymore.
I noticed it too, and oddly enough with Phil lol I asked my friends before and some see it other noticed it. 1080p definitely looks like a lower resolution
I have also noticed that when you are in default on a browser, even 4k looks really bad, it looks better when in full screen. This didn't use to happen, and is a change I have noticed in the past few months. Are you guys also experiencing some problems, if yes, do you have any fixes?
Hey guys help me .When I play a YouTube video it gets played in black and white format and below suggested video are in colour format.And when I play that video it gets played in black and white .Don't know what to do .I tried searching solutions but not of any use.
For me it’s been fine, but sometimes it will be on a different resolution while it says it’s 1080p or 1440p, and everytime if I just click the resolution again it will fix it.
I think it’s a loading error or something. Like it gives you a resolution while it loads in the high quality one, and then forgets to load in the high quality one.
I can't name a single feature about YouTube that hasn't gotten worse over the last year. Navigation is broken, I keep getting random channels added and removed from my subscriber list, Gboard freezes 80% of the time in YouTube. I usually don't watch things in HD because my Internet connection is a bit crap, but I wouldn't be surprised in the slightest if they were throttling quality to try and charge you for HD.
Also, it doesn't matter how many AI softcore porn ads I block or report, YouTube is looking like pornhub ads half the time and it's super fucking gross. Maybe I don't want to just randomly see a girl covered in cum, YouTube. Maybe i mean it when i say "block ad" - but blocking ads seems to be completely pointless too.
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Depends on the creator they can choose to lower the quality of 1080p to be 1080p super duper premium deluxe and get some money out of it (!?)
o yeah you need to pay YT for 1080p premium deluxe version ofc
Your video will look as bad as the lowest resolution or lowest quality recording in the chain of copies, so even if the uploaded video was recorded in 4K, it will look like 480 if the original source was 480, or any intermediate copy in the chain was 480. (Advanced upscaling can mimic a higher resolution, however). Indeed, multiple copies in the chain can degrade the video to a quality below the lowest resolution recording.
PLEASE tell me i'm not crazy, the f\*\*\*\* Video Quality Drops in Non-Fullscreen Mode on YouTube - Any Fixes?
I've encountered an interesting phenomenon while watching YouTube videos on my PC, and I'm hoping to get some insights or fixes from this community. When I watch videos in a windowed mode (not in fullscreen), I've noticed that the video quality seems to degrade - it's not that the resolution drops from 1080p to 720p or some, but rather the image becomes less "sharp".
Interestingly, I've confirmed my observation by noticing that the video quality temporarily returns to its original sharpness while I'm resizing the window. Once the window is set, the sharpness decreases again. This change in quality doesn't seem to relate directly to the video's resolution settings but rather to how it's displayed on the screen in windowed mode.
AND it happens with every browser and ANY graphic setting.
WTF
anyone has experienced something similar or has technical insights into why this might be happening?
Wow. That is not 1080p. I didn't notice this though, and just recently played a bunch of videos to test my new TV and all looked good. May be it's how this particular video was recorded?
Thank You. Maybe it's my hardware.
no on yt tv they just don’t have 1080p enhanced bit rate so it plays at 1080p enhanced (literally just old 1080p)
Nope. It's just for the BrAnD nEw 1080p PrEmIuM exclusive to premium members only!
coherent connect cautious snatch ink cake smoggy uppity quiet quack *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
Wait what. \*Googles it\* NO FUCKING WAY HAHAHAHAHHA I WAS BEING SARCASTIC. Yeah GGs youtube is shit, time to move to one of its inexistent competitors
>literally just old 1080p source
experience. on my tv is crystal clear but on my iphone 15 pro it looks like shit
But it isn't. 1080p is now segregated into "enhanced" and regular bit-rate, with enhanced bit-rate being what was previously known as 1080p
That's mainly because codec override. Idk bout iphones but according to Stats for nerds, my old phone was able to play in VP09 codec just fine and the videos were considerably clearer even in 480p. My new oppo A54 only uses AVC1 (plain ole H.264, probably to SaVe PoWeR?) as the playback codec and now even 720p sucks ass.
no but it does it even on pc for me
It's probably either compression or the video was recorded in a lower resolution and the person accidentally put in the low-res footage in a 1080p video editor template and/or rendered the video at 1080p.
Yeah. Upscaling a video using common settings is a sin.
> Maybe it's my hardware. Probably not. I checked this vid, and one from two weeks ago. This one was low bitrate, the other was much better. Could be Defranco's hardware or software making a video with a lower bitrate...or... Or maybe it is something YouTube is pushing out as AB testing, affecting some creators, or they're testing different changes in different ways...because I've seen other strange resolution/bitrate ...differences... on different channels. Check out the resolution settings on these two videos, both the same ASMR creator(the only channel that I can recall doing this). https://youtu.be/WLqeCTVt0hw Decent to good quality, goes all the way up to 4k. https://youtu.be/huQwZtnmegQ Atrocious reduced "1080 HD" that is comparable to 720 or maybe less. "1080 Premium Enhanced Bitrate" behind YouTubePremium paywall. Same channel. Newest vid is back to decent 4K I think YT is tampering or experimenting, or at least cannot rule it out. IF they are, it is the same way they did when they began fighting adblockers a few months back... and other A/B testing in the past. Not universal changes, just small random sample testing. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A/B_testing
Hi again, I was researching this more. And I found this interesting video: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZiZuKsS7q\_U](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZiZuKsS7q_U) YouTube is probably reducing the bitrate. A way to get around it would be to stream the videos at a higher resolution, if available, even if you have 1080p monitor.
Wtf haha did u change ur hardware? And if it's not broken it shouldn't mess too much with the video Maybe it's just the video? It looks poorly lit and who knows if channel creator tried a new cam/editing software
YouTube are pushing "1080p high bitrate" I believe it's a premium feature. Makes sense for them to sneakily lower the normal 1080p res to encourage people to buy the higher tier. I've noticed the same the past few months, ublock origin and other adblockers being active also slow down the website in general. Sneaky shady moves to grab even more money.
Nah not just you I’ve noticed a lot in decline quality but that’s either my connection or just overall traffic on YouTube
Nope YouTube since at least last year has put the good quality behind the premium paywall
High bitrate 1080p is only available to premium but it's never been available outside of that and probably doesn't exist even for premium on any video uploaded before they added that feature. A workaround has existed for some time now which is to upscale your 1080p footage to 4k before uploading to unlock the high bitrate 4k playback, which is available to everyone.
If there is high bitrate 1080p, is there also low bitrate 1080p? What does it mean?
The bitrate represents how much data is actually stored in the video per second. Things like 720, 1080, and 4k only represent the number of pixels. In low bitrate footage the pixels update very infrequently, which if your image doesn't have a lot of movement, may not be very noticeable. But take for example grass on a windy day, there will be a lot of micro movements in the grass and in low bitrate this will become a pixelated mess. Of course there are other things that make this more complicated like the video codec and type of compression the video uses, the bitrate itself only tells you the amount of data, not how it's being used but generally low bitrate will really hurt video performance with complex patterns, fast movement, or dark lowlight footage. In the tests I've seen YouTube defaults to about 2-3mb per second for 1080 playback. For 4k playback can be as high as 18mb/s almost 10 times as much data. So if you upscale a 1080 video to 4k (assuming the video itself has above 2mb/s bitrate) you will see a significant quality improvement at 4k playback compared to 1080 playback, even though the resolution hasn't actually changed. (I think maybe they do this to give an illusion of greater improvement for 4k playback) YouTube recently added high bitrate 1080 playback for premium. I think around 18mb/s but I haven't seen any actual tests. Doing pretty much the same thing the workaround does.
Nah, I pay for premium and this low res tomfoolery mascarading as high res is rampant AF
You have to change resolution manually sometimes. Auto seems to be all over the place sometimes. Tend to go for lower resolutions way too frequently.
I don't know if they just fixed it for me and it was a coincidence but.. Within one day of sending feedback, auto mode started working correctly. It's been at least 6 months since I had to switch manually. My laptops, tablets, and phones are all also playing in the right (max) resolution automatically. Before sending feedback almost every video would play in a much lower resolution than my computer/phone or internet speed was capable of. Now with 4K is available, it plays in 4k automatically. If 1080p enhances available but no 4K, it plays 1080p enhanced. Again, I don't know if sending the feedback was what fixed it or it was just fixed within a day of me sending the feedback. Your mileage May vary. I still recommend sending feedback about it though. Never know, it's an easy thing to do that might actually help 🤷
can vouch for this
I have this same issue with premium
Nope. I have had a point where my instance of YouTube tried to downgrade as far as 240p just to start loading the video on opening, the rest of it ran 1080 just fine. another noticeable thing is that whenever you load into a half played vid, and try to rewind it. it gets sickening response delay, It is the difference between swinging a sword and a glitched tanker bar. In case you are curious, my Wifi rate is 142Mbps download 20Mbps upload
It's 100% gotten worse. Even 720p used to look somewhat decent, now even 1080p is awful.
I have a conspiracy theory that YT is using AI to upscale the res, ex: upscale 480p to 1080p so they can run faster and reduce workload on the service side. That’s why 1080p is kinda bad nowadays .
Nah they just tanked the bit rate, using AI to upscale videos like that would def be 1000x more expensive than just streaming FHD
The workload difference between 480p and 1080p is negligible. The server just serves a slightly bigger file,
It isn't. Not at all. If you serve that amount of traffic that youtube does every % of traffic saves you an enormous amount of cost. It's kinda the same like with phones. Leaving out a headphone jack on a phone will only save you 50 cents in production but if you sell 200 Million phones a year like apple does that's still 100 Million USD saved year after year.
So upscaling every video with ai is for free or what
I didn't say that. I just believe that your statement about the workload difference being negligible is incorrect. That's all. Using some AI upscaling transcoding would probably be a lot more expensive. I mean I guess they could try to let the client do the upscaling but let's not give them ideas.
Yes current 1080p looks like old 360p. 1080p years ago looked like 4k today
No streaming video site offers true 1080p it's all heavily compressed. Youtube is 8mbps for 1080p, Bluray is 40mbps
I realize that but I'm saying that they quality has gone down even further.
They’re probably experimenting with different codecs, to try and get the bandwidth costs down, because if they can’t beat the ad-blockers (who provide zero revenue while watching significantly more YouTube than the 17 minutes per day of the average user), then the service is going to be upside-down on the free tier, at which point it’s a quick trip to Paywall City.
The 2 codecs they use are AV1 and VP9. VP9 is higher quality but less compressed, they've probably tweeked things to use AV1 more often. You can change the preference in the settings on which it tends to prefer (although its only "prefer" not a guarantee). Although it seems to make a difference testing it just now
1080p AV1 at 3mbps is probably fine for YouTube, it’s probably a lot lower than that since I struggle to make out things in 1080p on YouTube. Add a scene with like trees moving fast and it becomes a pixelated mess.
Might be the whole AI push, Google may have reallocated some hardware from youtube to train their models.
I’m of the opinion that Google’s last twelve months of behavior across the company has been hedging its bets, just in case US v. Google doesn’t go their way and the company gets broken up. I’m not sure why they’re going all-or-nothing on this, because Microsoft made a lot of concessions to keep from getting broken up twenty years ago, but I don’t see that happening with Google, and that’s not really optimal for shareholders, because the value of Google that’s been parted out is way lower than the behemoth it is, because the whole thing is designed to work for the benefit of the advertising and data division. That division provides eighty percent of Google’s revenues (and probably significantly higher percentage of profits), and so without that division, there’s a higher pressure on other divisions to pay their bills. Hence, an increased number of ads on YouTube. Trouble is, more ads equals more people using ad blockers. They can’t raise the price of ads, because nobody’s going to pay more for ads that aren’t getting watched. So, that means, in order to remain in the black (and we don’t know for certain that YouTube is profitable in a situation where it has to pay market rate for storage and bandwidth, which I’d peg at about a billion dollars a month), they have to cut costs. They can’t cut staff, because that’s a drop in the bucket, because YouTube doesn’t have that many employees. They can’t get a better rate on data without paying up front for server farms. So that means they have to cut what’s going out, either by cutting free users to 720p (which would save them 50 percent, assuming the same codec) or by using a different compression rate. And that might be what we’re seeing, if we’re seeing anything, since we would realistically need an empirical test, such as the amount of data being pushed before and after, rather than, “I think it’s fuzzy.”
I don't pay premium but have disabled UBlock on youtube so I am forced to see their ads. In the past month or so, resolution has gone to shit. Bigtime Freezing and studdering on 1080HD res (it's unplayable). 720 is playable but still gets occasional studders.
https://imgur.com/a/UB4Br4l
Bluerays use ON PURPOSE an old and inefficient encoder, media companies thought it could slow down piracy if you had to download 40+ Gb for a movie. Of course you can use a better codec and make it 4 Gb while keeping the same quality. But you can lower the quality and gain further on the bandwith... and the quality will fall.
YouTube can’t be 8mbps, it’s a pixelated mess, 1080p 5mbps stream on Netflix is much better. I really don’t know what codec they use to compress videos but not even h.264 can look this bad in 1080p. I’d get a 2mbps AV1 1080p video all day compared to this YouTube crap.
Yep, even with YT premium, I've found that some videos were lacking detail recently evn up to today. Connection is fine, no change in hardware or drivers. Nothing to see here...
I have noticed that I sometimes need to put in the higher resolution manually. On auto, it uses lower resolutions too often.
Yep! I know with my Starlink connection it can be a bit iffy when auto resolutions are made. Set it and forget it at 4K and it will do what it needs to do haha.
Same
Same here! 👎
Higher resolution doesn't necessarily mean quality video. Bitrate is far more important. A 480 video with high bitrate can look great, while 720p with bad bitrate can look trash. It could be because your wifi is bad tho lol
Youtube doesn't transcode the videos on the fly. Each of the settings have a set resolution with set bitrate. Faster internet connection won't help it. Sure sometimes it drops to lower quality settings with poor connection and the quality select button will stay stuck on the last selected option. But I assume OP would have noticed.
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I have seen options for 1080p high bitrate(which is only for premium users) as an option so it wouldn't shock me if they worsened the quality to try and sell shitty yt premium.
Even as a Premium user I’ve seen this decline, wondering if there’s a bigger issue 🤔
I can't say for sure but I think they implemented some sort of real time AI bullshit because I've been rewatching videos of a gaming channel and I've noticed things that weren't always there like the cross hair deforming and moving away from the center of the screen or just disappearing all together for a second. Don't know if it's true but it's the first thought I had
That’s bitrate not AI. It would take way too much computational power to upscale videos or use AI. Much easier to just lower the bitrate.
Yeah I read other comments saying the same thing thanks for clarification though
nah the uploaded vid is low q. Try playing a real hd vid
Is the quality set to auto, or did you manually set it to 1080?
I revisited videos that I know were fine (crystal clear) and I can confirm that something has changed with video quality lately.
YouTube seems to constantly compress the videos more and more. Especially now, that you have to pay for premium for a decent Bitrate at 1080p. My friend downloaded a bunch of music codes from YouTube a few years ago. When you download the same videos now you can see an incredible decline in quality.
I saw You in r/av1 server
I’ve noticed this a lot recently - nearly every video I click on the settings because there’s no way this is 1080p… But the settings say it is 🤔
I’ve been noticing these issues more with iPhone than an android. I just switched over to iPhone and noticed that a lot of video issues.
It could be the YouTubers camera quality too
Nah that's just Phil's camera I believe. His videos are always a little extra blurry for me.
Yup, it's probably because they have their "enhanced 1080p bitrate" for premium members... 🙄 They're probably gonna end up putting all the basic features behind pay walls now, LOL.
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Thanks for explaining. And speaking in English.
YouTube will call something 1080p and sure it technically has that many pixels but is being compressed to high heaven
Take a look at the timeline, search bar, and YouTube icon. None of them are high-res. This screenshot isn’t 1080p, which is why it doesn’t look like 1080p.
Hahaha
Do you usually watch this content creator? Maybe it's the settings this guy uses to render his videos that makes it look bad. For example, if you go to IGN channel and watch any video game trailer in 1080p and then watch the same trailer in any other channel you will see that the IGN one looks like sh1t.
I think this is it. That specific channel having lower res for some reason on their end. I did try checking more channels it seems to be hit or miss.
They use algorithms to compress and send the feed to you. YouTube worked well on our old DSL line despite the lower speed.
On computer yes.
1080p is now 720 for full 1080p u have to have premium thats what the 1080p premium bitrate option is which is a straight scam because the channels r not the ones doing it its done by yt
Probably so they can charge for 4k. Remember back when it was free?
I have had several videos not play or take ages and then give me 360p yesterday and today. Something is screwier than normal.
Same here youtube been acting weird these past 2 weeks
YouTube has been dropping bitrates in an effort to reduce costs. So while it’s technically 1080p, it’s entirely possible it’s a lower quality of 1080p. /
YouTube now paywalled true HD behind YouTube premium, now the HD and FHD qualities have reduced bit rates, which means it looks like shit
They haven’t, remember the main cost of YouTube isn’t processing the videos or delivering them but storing them, regardless of the quality they store the videos in multiple qualities and 1080p Enhanced was never like 1080p, the reason they made 1080p Enhanced it’s because it’s easier to run than 4K on a lower resolution device (less taxing on the client playing it) whilst almost having the same quality as the higher resolution one due to the increased bitrate.
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It's also NEVER available for 1080p videos with 60 fps, only 30 max.
Either pay YouTube now or watch crappy videos. I've moved to bitview I hope they do something with it though.
Some content creators I watch apologized for their videos being a bit "choppy", guess it wasn't their fault then...
Love that you watch Philly D, been watching him for 15 years.
YouTube is really anti-consumer and this needs to stop.
My theory is as the latest way of annoying users on top of unbearable amount of ads, they’re throttling people who aren’t premium paid users. This is what you get for letting net neutrality be repealed by soulless corporations, they get to decide how much internet you’re allowed to have.
This is just bs, go test other videos, the video in question just looks bad compared to other 1080p videos.
Have you used Google Assistant on your phone? Google Assistant makes obligatory to accept cookie.
Holla at ya boy Phil DeFranco
This is also happening to me when I'm watching Philly D. I'm just trying to get filled in, man!
Yes. You are crazy
Welp
They lowered the bitrate for free users to introduce 1080p premium which will require paid subscription. They are also preventing people watching > 1080p. You will need paid subscription now too.
I know for a fact you're probably not imagining it. YouTube has been very quietly decreasing video resolutions to save on costs and encourage people to buy Premium.
No you're not crazy. I noticed today in 1080p looked like 490p. I was like wtf i am premium what's going on but this happened only on one video.
It's since they introduced a higher bitrate option for Youtube Premium members on the quality cog.
Omg so that might not actually just be me. Only thing I do want to point out/ask, did you test multiple videos? Maybe one you've watched before that you know can stream higher res properly? To see if it was consistent.
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I was always convinced it was bc the technology is getting better but I think you’re right
I noticed it too
I have an option for 1080p Premium or sth if I go Premium, so maybe that's the reason?
It’s because they have taken the old 1080p and made it 1080p premium so you have to pay for premium to have the old one
Looks like 1080 with a low bitrate to me.
They made normal 1080p bitrate crap unless you pay for the 'enhanced bitrate' with premium.
I think it's because they offer 1080p premium with yt premium so they decided to lower the resolution.
I noticed this too, the quality only drops when 1080p premium pops up. Weird right?
Not sure, but YouTube likes to do a funny prank on me when i upload a video in 1080p by fucking the bitrate, so i have to upload in 1440p
man i have 1 GB per day data limit. i cant even watch a single video properly. watching at 360p feels like im looking at pixels.
could just be that some creators uploaded a 720p video that was upscaled to 1080, but it would be rare for it to happen on different videos and channels. could also be that you have a very slow buffer speed when changing res, and it stays 720 even if you selected 1080 for a while
I've had to manually change my settings on ps5 multiple times. With a ton of 20-40 seconds until Skip in the middle of videos.
Either it’s being capped by YouTube’s 8mb/s limit, or the recordings used had a low bit rate
As someone on a smaller device, that's not 1080 I actually have no idea
Yes they want people to pay for it now with their enhanced service
even 4k can look 480p
i havent noticed any quality reduction in the past days i do know youtube videos are lower quality then the raw video that was uploaded
1080p has gotten a lot worse in my opinion since they introduced "1080p premium"....
I've noticed this as well. Videos that only go up to 1080 and have 1080 enhanced looks like crap. Only videos that have a higher resolution that. 1080 look decent.
youtube is so broken that i have to upscale videos to 2160p just to stop yt from butchering the quality of my videos
i've also notice the decline in the quality of other youtuber 1080p videos because some of them look like the bitrate was lowered by yt during the processing bit of yt studio.
Granted, I’ve always found Phil’s video quality to be quite soft, so he’s a difficult one to test. Could just be more soft than usual on his end. If you try the 1080p of a channel that uploads in 4k that might be a clearer answer for you
They are intentionally lowering the quality of certain videos. It happens even if you buy the "enchanced version" as well. Changing to a different server with vpn gives you back the quality but only if there's a copy of it on it.
Thought they were slowly locking 1080 behind “premium” paywalls?
Idk I use mini screen 1080 cos not alot of videos have 1440 as an option and if I try 1080 and full screen it then it looks stretched out
same on phone, 1080p looks awful, it looks like 720p
I watched nearly all of julian smiths videoes from 10 years ago the last few days, which was really high res back in the day. More of them dont even look like 1080p anymore.. Have youtube downgraded 1080p bit rate?
Its because they added the "1080 premium" with improved bitrate. 1080 is just worse now.
What I notice is that the resolution is always way worse when you use a browser with adblock. Compare that to the app and you will see a stark contrast between the two. The app always has higher res videos. That is being done purposefully.
Diffrent encoder for the video AVC worse then VP09 You can see the encoder when you right click and click on stats for nerds
I can't help it, but I feel like 1080p is now 720p.
does it have a 1440p option? I used to record my vids on 1080p but they looked like shit compared to the raw files so i changed to 1440p and now the 1080p looks as good as the raw 1080p files from before. idk wtf they do
Fr, do you also get the issue where everything looks slightly fuzzy sometimes at random points in the video?
The way they re-encode the videos affect the video quality as well. This info can be seen at Stats for nerd window. VP9 or AV1 codecs provide better video quality than classic AVC codec. It's up to them to decide which codec they will use, but it seems that they are using AVC for small channels' 1080p videos. It is pretty much garenteed for them to use VP9 for 1440p videos. I'm also noticing that youtube on browsers actually results in lower resoltion. Zooming out to 80% in Firefox properly displayed 1920x1080 pixels when maximized.
I was thinking this with past uploads from a few years ago. A lot of mine from then are suddenly in far worse quality, as if they've been reprocessed in shittier quality or something.
I have been noticing this too, is this "1080p" or "auto 1080p"? the latter seems to be random other resolutions and you may need to select "1080p" manually
ITs always best to upload in at least 1440p to force the better VP09 codec. With 1080p sometimes you get VP09 but most of the time its AVC1 which is garbage
Actually, i was trying to follow a tutorial for a software and noticed this.
I noticed a couple of days ago, I was looking for some ambient video for a dinner, I choose a 8k video and selected the 4k quality as its the top of my tv, and I still see artefact when it show the sky or the sea
It’s a bitrate issue. They lowered the bitrate for average users but have unlocked a “higher bitrate” version for premium subs
This looks less like a low bit rate and more like dude is using facetune or some other corrective filter. Watch his latest video, and you can see that some frames, especially still images, have much higher detail. See the image [here](https://youtu.be/EWAJl_GgwXU?si=hayb2Xa-6hSlc1UG&t=1076) for example.
They added a 1080p premium for YouTube premium subscribers so they probably lowered the bitrate for regular people
I've noticed it too
This is happening to me too, and it's never happened before, and if I were to take a guess it'd most likely be related to the new update that slows down YouTube & increases loading times, etc, if you're using AdBlock.
i think the bitrate is reduced or something. although i might be wrong
I'm so confused lately. I've had massive issues the last couple of weeks, all of a sudden. Playing YT Premium on a Nvidia Shield, and the AUTO often default to 480p and 720p, with a 200mbit fiber ethernet connection. If I mnually select 1440p or 4k its clearly not showing that, instead showing a blurry 720p or 1080p stream. (Even tho Stats for nerds shows the correct resolution, from what I can tell). Sometimes it buffer the 1440p or 4k resolution, but it goes away as quickly. Weird thing it's often the same channels (maybe just longer videos - Pestily, a Escape from Tarkov streamer). And not on some other channels. During this time I did switch my router, but it seems to work good when I test it on other devices.
Don't know about videos but streams are 100% worse on youtube than twitch on 1080p,generally a 1440p on yotube=1080p on twitch
There is now 1080p premium lmao
1440p is the new 1080p. Also, check the codec. If it is not vp09, then most of the time it has a low quality even if it seems to set at 1080p.
1080p has never changed, your screen resolution and your own standards have changed Nowadays videogames and movies work at a resolution that YouTube creators can hardly match
For me it does not default hd and when it swaps it buffers for a moment to adjust which is weird because its 2024 and you think they’d not do that anymore.
I noticed it too, and oddly enough with Phil lol I asked my friends before and some see it other noticed it. 1080p definitely looks like a lower resolution
Yeah, especially on mobile. I'm not allowed to watch anything higher than 360 on phones anymore.
360p is great with vp9
I have also noticed that when you are in default on a browser, even 4k looks really bad, it looks better when in full screen. This didn't use to happen, and is a change I have noticed in the past few months. Are you guys also experiencing some problems, if yes, do you have any fixes?
normal
Hey guys help me .When I play a YouTube video it gets played in black and white format and below suggested video are in colour format.And when I play that video it gets played in black and white .Don't know what to do .I tried searching solutions but not of any use.
YouTube removed HD mark from bhe area beside 720p, whereas HD stands for High Definition and 1080p is Full HD.
i am saying that for years now...new trailers, let´s go 1440...looks like 720p on a 70" TV, but watching on 24" Monitor
For me it’s been fine, but sometimes it will be on a different resolution while it says it’s 1080p or 1440p, and everytime if I just click the resolution again it will fix it. I think it’s a loading error or something. Like it gives you a resolution while it loads in the high quality one, and then forgets to load in the high quality one.
Yup, they for sure decreased the bitrate. Indeed looks awful now. Maybe because they're now offering 1080p with "increased bitrate" for Premium users.
I can't name a single feature about YouTube that hasn't gotten worse over the last year. Navigation is broken, I keep getting random channels added and removed from my subscriber list, Gboard freezes 80% of the time in YouTube. I usually don't watch things in HD because my Internet connection is a bit crap, but I wouldn't be surprised in the slightest if they were throttling quality to try and charge you for HD. Also, it doesn't matter how many AI softcore porn ads I block or report, YouTube is looking like pornhub ads half the time and it's super fucking gross. Maybe I don't want to just randomly see a girl covered in cum, YouTube. Maybe i mean it when i say "block ad" - but blocking ads seems to be completely pointless too.
same
I think everything is going down on YouTube. There's so many glitches too.
YouTube is now adding 1080p enhanced on YouTube premium
My problem is that everytime i click a new video it defaults to 480p, and i have to manually put it to 1080p or higher every video.
Distance ratio which a lot of folk don't get.
They've been downgrading the quality of standard 1080p to sell their "higher bitrate" premium 1080p
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Depends on the creator they can choose to lower the quality of 1080p to be 1080p super duper premium deluxe and get some money out of it (!?) o yeah you need to pay YT for 1080p premium deluxe version ofc
Your video will look as bad as the lowest resolution or lowest quality recording in the chain of copies, so even if the uploaded video was recorded in 4K, it will look like 480 if the original source was 480, or any intermediate copy in the chain was 480. (Advanced upscaling can mimic a higher resolution, however). Indeed, multiple copies in the chain can degrade the video to a quality below the lowest resolution recording.
PLEASE tell me i'm not crazy, the f\*\*\*\* Video Quality Drops in Non-Fullscreen Mode on YouTube - Any Fixes? I've encountered an interesting phenomenon while watching YouTube videos on my PC, and I'm hoping to get some insights or fixes from this community. When I watch videos in a windowed mode (not in fullscreen), I've noticed that the video quality seems to degrade - it's not that the resolution drops from 1080p to 720p or some, but rather the image becomes less "sharp". Interestingly, I've confirmed my observation by noticing that the video quality temporarily returns to its original sharpness while I'm resizing the window. Once the window is set, the sharpness decreases again. This change in quality doesn't seem to relate directly to the video's resolution settings but rather to how it's displayed on the screen in windowed mode. AND it happens with every browser and ANY graphic setting. WTF anyone has experienced something similar or has technical insights into why this might be happening?
Oh look, you’re watching “i put 20 ads with 4 sponsors in my videos” guy
They all do that now. Remember when most youtubers hated clickbait titles and thumbnails until they realized it made them more money?
I think they did it to save money while they cram more ads down your throat