YouTube Re-Encodes Video Streams After Upload
“There is nothing new about this. It has been observed by many for years that YouTube will go back and re-encode video streams at their whim. This frequently happens in the first hours or days after a video is uploaded or livestreamed. Upvote 6 Downvote Reply u/Steady_Ri0t avatar Steady_Ri0t • 5d ago There's also a post about this roughly once a week lately lol”
Summary
YouTube consistently re‑encodes every uploaded video, even when the source uses recommended formats. Re‑encoding often occurs within the first hours or days, resulting in changes such as reduced bitrate, and this practice has been documented and discussed for many years.
Sources 60 searched
- Three-year Trends in YouTube Video Content and Encoding
ing over 3 hours long, accompanied by corresponding changes in encoding rates and codecs. Our analysis and · the resulting dataset we make public should be beneficial for traffic shaping or CDN deployment strategies.
- Will YouTube re-encode a file when uploading, which has the recommended video format (H.264)? - Stack Overflow
YouTube always re-encodes your video, but if you're trying to decrease how bad YT's compression makes a video look, there is one option.
- vimeo - When does YouTube Reencode Videos? - Video Production Stack Exchange
... The videos you upload are always reencoded to a list of preset sizes. For the videos already uploaded you can see the list of sizes the original has been reencoded to by using some video download browser extension.
- encoding - How to prevent lossy re-encode of low-bitrate videos uploaded to YouTube - Video Production Stack Exchange
A lot of people these days upscale their original 1080p HD content to 4k, since youtube allows higher datarate for 4k. Probably the same applies to 720p vs. 1080p, you should check. In general, you can optimize a video a lot so the same bitrate encoding will result in better quality, mainly by denoising it beforehand - or in you case, deblocking.
- YouTube recommended upload encoding settings - YouTube Help
No Edit Lists (or the video might ... is required, though we offer recommended bit rates below for reference ... Content should be encoded and uploaded in the same frame rate it was recorded....
- Video and audio formatting specifications - YouTube Help
YouTube encourages partners to upload videos that are as close to the original, high quality source format as possible to increase the likelihood that your videos will play in higher quality (HQ). Note that YouTube always re-encodes videos to optimize their playback quality.
- YouTube channel monetization policies - YouTube Help
Reused content is separate from YouTube’s Copyright enforcement, which means it’s not based on copyright, permission, or fair use. This guideline means sometimes, you may not get claims against your content, but your channel may still violate our reused content guidelines.
- Encoding for YouTube: How to Get the Best Results
First, don't try to match YouTube's output so it won't re-encode your video; it always re-encodes. Second, your job is to provide the highest possible quality file to YouTube, since, as we all know, video is a garbage-in/garbage out medium. The higher the input quality, the higher the output quality. Louden also noted that because it's all about quality, you don't have to worry about playability, which frees you to create a file that might not play smoothly on many computers. This relates both to data rate and encoding parameters like IDR frames and adaptive B-frames.
- Youtube re-encoding videos - voussoir.net
Today, I re-downloaded a video that I already had a copy of. I was surprised to find that the video stream lost 33% of its bitrate. The bitrate was down from 600kbps to 400kbps, even though both files were labeled as f136, which is Youtube's 720p AVC stream · This video is Tim Minchin's Storm.
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