YouTube Video Quality Bad after Upload? Here’s the Fix
The short answer is, YouTube degrades video quality all the time. And for some kinds of videos, the quality loss is more severe.
Many people don’t know but, YouTube does its own compression. It will re-encode and re-compress every video uploaded, which will lead to quality drop no matter what you do. The only difference is that some videos get to have a minimal quality loss that is almost indiscernible to the eye, while some others will have to bear more damage to the video quality. For the latter kind of videos, YouTube makes the video quality bad because
1. YouTube does not like the video encoding settings;
YouTube supports a lot of video formats and codecs. But it has its preferred video specs for uploading. And it’s wise for you to comply with the YouTube standards, or you might suffer from low-quality YouTube upload.
The recommended upload encoding settings for your videos:
- Container: MP4
- Audio codec: AAC-LC
- Video codec: H.264
- Frame rate: 24, 25, 30, 48, 50, and 60 frames per second (other frame rates are also acceptable). No interfacing.
- Bitrate: 35 – 85 Mbps for 4K; 16 – 30 Mbps for 2K; 8 – 15 Mbps for 1080p.
- Aspect ratio: 16:9
Source from https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/1722171.
2. YouTube re-encodes the video with the AVC1 codec.
Most high-resolution videos you see on YouTube use the VP9 codec. The other low-resolution videos, however, use AVC1 (aka. H264) instead. Yet, VP9 is a much efficient encoder than AVC1. The video encoded by VP9 has a better and clearer image quality than that by AVC1. However, YouTube only uses the VP9 codec for 4K videos, 2K videos at 30 – 60fps, and 1080p60fps videos (There’s also a theory that YouTube will use the VP9 encoder for videos by big channels). If your video does not meet these demands, it will be encoded with the AVC1 codec and uploaded in bad quality.
Note: YouTube also uses AV1 (or AV01), a codec more advanced than VP9, to encode videos. But this codec is mainly used on popular videos now, and it is still unclear how to force YouTube to use this codec on your video. However, you can enable YouTube AV1 when you stream a video.
How to check the codec: Right-click on the playing video > Stats for nerds.
These two causes are the main reasons why your YouTube video quality bad after upload. Fix to the problem is simple. You only have to make sure your video uses the best YouTube video specs for uploading and force YouTube to always use the VP9 codec for your video. Look at the next part for more details.
