When you think about video quality, the first thing that probably comes to mind
is that little gear on YouTube that allows you to adjust the vertical resolution,
720p, 1080p, 2160p,
but that isn't the only factor impacting how good your streaming videos look.
In fact, YouTube kinda tells you this themselves with that 1080p premium option
that pops up on certain videos, which is part of the YouTube premium paid subscription.
But how is this different from just plain 1080p? Seeing as the two options
give you the exact same number of pixels. The answer is bitrate,
and it's part of the reason more pixels doesn't always mean a better picture.
On a fundamental level, bitrate is exactly what it sounds like.
A higher bitrate means that each frame of the video you're watching
has more data that ultimately forms the image.
You see, streaming video on the internet is often compressed,
so it doesn't take up as much bandwidth and loads on your device more quickly.
To do this, some of the information from the original video that's uploaded to YouTube
is discarded. To put this in perspective, uncompressed 1080p video at 30 frames per second
can take up around a gigabit and a half of data per second,
which is a higher bitrate than many home internet connections
would be able to easily handle. Compressed video, on the other hand,
might only take up a few megabits per second, or even below two megabits per second,
depending on the service. Immediately, you can see how important video compression is.
There are several ways to compress video, but a simple example is to only keep data
representing how pixels change from one frame to the next
and discarding the rest instead of storing two complete raw frames.
Another is to discard data for parts of the image that look very similar,
such as on a large green football field. These techniques make it possible
to save lots of bandwidth with, hopefully,
minimal or even imperceptible loss of quality.
But all video compression isn't created equal.
Too much compression will make your videos look like a blocking mess,
even though they still might be at a high resolution,
while too little will put more load on your network or device for no appreciable gain.
Google hasn't publicly disclosed their typical ranges
for YouTube video bitrates for either regular or premium 1080p videos.
We can tell you that YouTube does use variable bitrates,
meaning the bitrate at any given moment will depend on exactly what's happening in the video
with scenes featuring lots of constantly changing
visual elements, generally using a higher bitrate.
And we can also tell you that both the regular and enhanced versions appear to mostly be
in the single digits of megabits per second, both of which are, of course, far lower
than uncompressed video. As to whether it actually looks better,
after all, it's a feature you have to pay for. Some users have said that videos have more detail
and fewer weird artifacts that can result from compression,
but that the differences can be relatively subtle and challenging to notice
unless you're doing a side-by-side comparison, which does make some sense,
considering bitrate, like resolution, is one of only a number of factors
that go into exactly how good a video looks
with other factors like HDR support, color grading, frame rate,
and the equipment used to record and play the video, all making a big impact.
Of course, with Google being relatively opaque as to the actual numbers,
there was speculation that they actually lowered the quality of non-premium 1080p
in order to sell premium subscriptions, but there hasn't been any hard evidence of this.
Putting a higher bitrate option behind a paywall, as unpopular as it might be,
does provide a way for Google to dangle a carrot in front of folks who might be interested in paying,
primarily to remove advertisements, while also ensuring their pipes don't get clogged,
trying to deliver high-quality video to the massive number of free users
watching content on their service. We can't tell you whether it would be worth it,
as only you can decide whether a higher bitrate is worth a monthly fee.
But if you do want to give it a test run and you end up not being impressed,
just make sure to cancel before your trial runs out, as I'm sure you don't need yet another recurring bill
you might have forgotten about. Hey, thanks for watching. And if you liked this video,
check out our other video on how the term 4K can be misleading.
Don't trust it. It's shifty, it's a shifty term.