Sharp Video Goes Blurry on YouTube

[PointJoe]

Early morning crisp coastal scene by M2P. Hasselblad at its finest. Uploaded to Apple Photos. Still tack sharp. Successfully uploaded onto YouTube. Sent it by email to myself for final review. Blurry. Does anyone know where the problem is and/or how to fix it? Thank you.

 

[brett8883]

Early morning crisp coastal scene by M2P. Hasselblad at its finest. Uploaded to Apple Photos. Still tack sharp. Successfully uploaded onto YouTube. Sent it by email to myself for final review. Blurry. Does anyone know where the problem is and/or how to fix it? Thank you.

Make sure you have your YouTube settings so that you get the highest quality playback possible. Also YouTube will encode you’re video to a lower bit-rate so some quality degradation is expected but they also will encode lower resolution versions of your video so it can be played on different devices and for people with differing quality internet connections. They encode the lowest resolution video first and the highest resolution last. Often it is pretty quick for them to encode the highest quality and make it available but I’ve seen on occasion it take several hours before the high quality are made availible. If you watch the video right after it’s uploaded you are probably seeing a lower resolution version because the high res version isn’t available yet

 

[PointJoe]

Make sure you have your YouTube settings so that you get the highest quality playback possible. Also YouTube will encode you’re video to a lower bit-rate so some quality degradation is expected but they also will encode lower resolution versions of your video so it can be played on different devices and for people with differing quality internet connections. They encode the lowest resolution video first and the highest resolution last. Often it is pretty quick for them to encode the highest quality and make it available but I’ve seen on occasion it take several hours before the high quality are made availible. If you watch the video right after it’s uploaded you are probably seeing a lower resolution version because the high res version isn’t available yet

What a wealth of information you provided. Thank you.

 

[brett8883]

What a wealth of information you provided. Thank you.

No problem. Oh and last thing. YouTube uses a type of encoding for 4k or higher res videos called VP9.

I’m assuming since you said you uploaded to Apple photos that you have a Mac or iPhone/iPad. Well Apple is boycotting VP9 in favor of their preferred codec called HEVC (aka h.265 which is what the M2 uses.)

As part of their boycott, Apple does not allow video encoded in VP9 to be played on Safari. Therefore, when you watch videos on YouTube using Safari you are not given the option to select 4K quality and best you will get is 1080p.

To remedy this you can download Google Chrome for Mac or iPhone/iPad to see the highest quality video on YouTube.

 

[PointJoe]

No problem. Oh and last thing. YouTube uses a type of encoding for 4k or higher res videos called VP9.

I’m assuming since you said you uploaded to Apple photos that you have a Mac or iPhone/iPad. Well Apple is boycotting VP9 in favor of their preferred codec called HEVC (aka h.265 which is what the M2 uses.)

As part of their boycott, Apple does not allow video encoded in VP9 to be played on Safari. Therefore, when you watch videos on YouTube using Safari you are not given the option to select 4K quality and best you will get is 1080p.

To remedy this you can download Google Chrome for Mac or iPhone/iPad to see the highest quality video on YouTube.

Very helpful. Thank you.

 

[Gizmo6257]

Another reason not to have an overpriced Apple Product. Lol

No problem. Oh and last thing. YouTube uses a type of encoding for 4k or higher res videos called VP9.

I’m assuming since you said you uploaded to Apple photos that you have a Mac or iPhone/iPad. Well Apple is boycotting VP9 in favor of their preferred codec called HEVC (aka h.265 which is what the M2 uses.)

As part of their boycott, Apple does not allow video encoded in VP9 to be played on Safari. Therefore, when you watch videos on YouTube using Safari you are not given the option to select 4K quality and best you will get is 1080p.

To remedy this you can download Google Chrome for Mac or iPhone/iPad to see the highest quality video on YouTube.

 

[GadgetGuy]

As part of their boycott, Apple does not allow video encoded in VP9 to be played on Safari. Therefore, when you watch videos on YouTube using Safari you are not given the option to select 4K quality and best you will get is 1080p.

To remedy this you can download Google Chrome for Mac or iPhone/iPad to see the highest quality video on YouTube.

I have an iPad Mini 5, and using the Google Chrome app to view my 4K YouTube videos limits them to an even lower 720p resolution through m.Youtube.com. Choosing the Desktop version of the Chrome page automatically loads the iOS YouTube app, which then limits the resolution to the referenced 1080p. Would love to view in 4K on my iPad Mini 5. What is your methodology?

 

[Jet skier]

Make sure you have your YouTube settings so that you get the highest quality playback possible. Also YouTube will encode you’re video to a lower bit-rate so some quality degradation is expected but they also will encode lower resolution versions of your video so it can be played on different devices and for people with differing quality internet connections. They encode the lowest resolution video first and the highest resolution last. Often it is pretty quick for them to encode the highest quality and make it available but I’ve seen on occasion it take several hours before the high quality are made availible. If you watch the video right after it’s uploaded you are probably seeing a lower resolution version because the high res version isn’t available yet

Only Google Chrome browser supports 4K is what I’ve heard

 

[BingErr]

No problem. Oh and last thing. YouTube uses a type of encoding for 4k or higher res videos called VP9.

I’m assuming since you said you uploaded to Apple photos that you have a Mac or iPhone/iPad. Well Apple is boycotting VP9 in favor of their preferred codec called HEVC (aka h.265 which is what the M2 uses.)

As part of their boycott, Apple does not allow video encoded in VP9 to be played on Safari. Therefore, when you watch videos on YouTube using Safari you are not given the option to select 4K quality and best you will get is 1080p.

To remedy this you can download Google Chrome for Mac or iPhone/iPad to see the highest quality video on YouTube.

I did not know that about Safari. Thanks for the info.

I always get in a rush to watch my vids once I upload them to Youtube but can confirm that sometimes it goes 4K in just a few minutes, but other times I have to wait and hour or more until 4k is available to stream. Probably just determined by how many youtubers are uploading at certain times and how much video they are processing at once.

Also, when I'm watching on my 4k tv I like to go to the "Stats for Nerds" button in the youtube app and make sure it's actually streaming at 4k.

 

[TheRock]

Another reason not to have an overpriced Apple Product. Lol

Not so actually. GoPro, the GH5 and many others use this, which would be paired with your aerial footage in making a video unless all you shoot is aerials. So having an updated MAC is a real plus in processing the MP2 files. FCPX works well with it.

 

[brett8883]

I have an iPad Mini 5, and using the Google Chrome app to view my 4K YouTube videos limits them to an even lower 720p resolution through m.Youtube.com. Choosing the Desktop version of the Chrome page automatically loads the iOS YouTube app, which then limits the resolution to the referenced 1080p. Would love to view in 4K on my iPad Mini 5. What is your methodology?

I’ll be darned you are right. Still applies to MacOS though. iOS might not be able to play VP9 at all. I’m not sure

 

[GadgetGuy]

I’ll be darned you are right. Still applies to MacOS though. iOS might not be able to play VP9 at all. I’m not sure

I do wish you had been right. Ironically, the iPads used to play the older 60mbps P4 4K video in up to 1440p! The newer 100mbps video from the P4P and M2 must have something to do with the current iPad 1080p limits.

 

[GadgetGuy]

Only Google Chrome browser supports 4K is what I’ve heard

On the iPads, it actually dumbs it down to 720p, instead of 1080p. No 2160p joy.

 

[dannybgoode]

One other thing I found is that it takes the servers sometimes a few hours to fully process your video.

It shows blurry at first then after a while it’s fine. It does mention this somewhere on the site but it’s far from made clear.

 

[GadgetGuy]

I have also found that the 4K stream can get choked up during periods of heavy internet/YT use, and YouTube will never offer the 4K stream by default Through any browser. You have to manually select the 4K stream from the Settings options, and while there, you can also set the Playback Speed to 2x to cut your viewing time in half! If it turns out the video is worth it, you can slow it back to Normal.

 

[PointJoe]

I have an iPad Mini 5, and using the Google Chrome app to view my 4K YouTube videos limits them to an even lower 720p resolution through m.Youtube.com. Choosing the Desktop version of the Chrome page automatically loads the iOS YouTube app, which then limits the resolution to the referenced 1080p. Would love to view in 4K on my iPad Mini 5. What is your methodology?

I use the MacBook Pro to view 4K images/vids in QuickTime Player. If they're any good I move to Apple Photos, edit, then upload to YT.

 

[brett8883]

I use the MacBook Pro to view 4K images/vids in QuickTime Player. If they're any good I move to Apple Photos, edit, then upload to YT.

You know you can use iMovie which is probably already on your MacBook Pro and is a much better place to edit from then Photos and also better for workflow.

iMovie will store your raw footage in a Library which doubles as an archive folder. When you are done editing you can then export the video to Photos.

I learned after accumulating hundreds of gigabytes worth of raw footage that they get unmanageable inside of photos and iCloud is always trying to upload them to the cloud and then erase from my MacBook so I have to download again ?.

So very much wish I had started with a better system in the beginning so I wouldn’t have the cluster I have today.

Not only that but Apple is holding my videos hostage. I have close to a terabyte of video in iCloud photos that I have to pay $20 a month or Apple to erase them but they give me such low bandwidth access to it iCloud that it would take almost a year to download it all back to my local drive.

 

[Thomas B]

You know you can use iMovie which is probably already on your MacBook Pro and is a much better place to edit from then Photos and also better for workflow.

iMovie will store your raw footage in a Library which doubles as an archive folder. When you are done editing you can then export the video to Photos.

I learned after accumulating hundreds of gigabytes worth of raw footage that they get unmanageable inside of photos and iCloud is always trying to upload them to the cloud and then erase from my MacBook so I have to download again ?.

So very much wish I had started with a better system in the beginning so I wouldn’t have the cluster I have today.

Not only that but Apple is holding my videos hostage. I have close to a terabyte of video in iCloud photos that I have to pay $20 a month or Apple to erase them but they give me such low bandwidth access to it iCloud that it would take almost a year to download it all back to my local drive.

The cost in the U.S. is $9.99/month for 2 TB of storage.... not $20/ month.

If you have an annual iCloud storage plan - Apple Support

If you have an annual iCloud storage plan, you can switch to our monthly plans and pricing from your iPhone, iPad, iPod touch, Mac, or Windows PC at any time.

support.apple.com

Apple does not restrict a user’s bandwidth in accessing files stored in iCloud. Check your ISP and local connections as well as methods. I use iCloud and only experience the limits of my gigabit bandwidth, which are practically nonexistent.

 

[brett8883]

The cost in the U.S. is $9.99/month for 2 TB of storage.... not $20/ month.

If you have an annual iCloud storage plan - Apple Support

If you have an annual iCloud storage plan, you can switch to our monthly plans and pricing from your iPhone, iPad, iPod touch, Mac, or Windows PC at any time.

support.apple.com

Apple does not restrict a user’s bandwidth in accessing files stored in iCloud. Check your ISP and local connections as well as methods. I use iCloud and only experience the limits of my gigabit bandwidth, which are practically nonexistent.

You’re right it is $10 a month but it’s so bad I had to get a Google Drive subscription to back up my stuff to because iCloud is so horrible. Google drive isn’t as fast as my internet would allow but it’s much faster than iCloud.

I didn’t mean to make this isn’t an iCloud bashing thing that’s my bad. It was more about organizing those raw videos you want to keep but not necessarily have mixed in with all your other videos and photos.

 

[Thomas B]

You’re right it is $10 a month but it’s so bad I had to get a Google Drive subscription to back up my stuff to because iCloud is so horrible. Google drive isn’t as fast as my internet would allow but it’s much faster than iCloud.

I didn’t mean to make this isn’t an iCloud bashing thing that’s my bad. It was more about organizing those raw videos you want to keep but not necessarily have mixed in with all your other videos and photos.

Agree with all you say. I use Google drive for drone vids/pics as well as Dropbox. I use iCoud for text documents.