Uploading the Same Video 1000 Times on YouTube Lowers the Quality to Minimum: Check Out This Test!

Have you noticed that a video on your laptop might look more sharp, crisp and stunning as compared to when you upload it on YouTube?

If you have witnessed it too then you have to dig in to find the answer. Do not worry if you have not because this post will show you exactly why this happens.

What does YouTube do to a video when you upload it?

Imagine if you upload a 5 GB massive file on YouTube. Will YouTube be able to process it with the same quality and file size? No! Even if YouTube was able to do it, currently, our internet does not have the ability to support such a large file.

At this point, what YouTube does is that it compresses the file during the processing stage by dividing the images into small blocks that can be easily viewed on our internet speed. At first, you might not be able to witness this reduction in quality as you will get good image and audio quality with 1080p or above resolution.

But what if we upload the video on YouTube, process it, download it again and then repeats the procedure 1000 times? Well, Marques Brownlee recently performed this test and found out that at 1000th time, the video has lost all the details and the audio was compressed so much that the video was first coming first and then the sound.

Somewhere around 800th trial of the video compression, the audio was completely lost and you could barely identify if there is a person in the video or not.

One thing that was noticeable in this process was those images that included a still picture of Marques Brownlee that is where he was not moving his face or hands were appearing exactly the same for seconds.

This shows that when YouTube bots skim through the video, they look for areas that are not moving or are still, which is the reason you can still see them as it is. However, after 1000th-time video compression they were no longer to be seen.


So, what can you tell from this?

It’s not like the first time that this test has been conducted. Back in 2010, a similar test was done by another person (Ontologist) but at that time YouTube was not as advanced as today and HD resolution was not there.

Even though there is major distortion at 1000th upload but still, YouTube is seen to be improving a lot. YouTube bots are improving and the picture quality at 1000th attempt when compared with the one carried out in 2010 was much better.


So, it’s yet to see what YouTube has to offer in the future but it is expected that their processing stage will improvise more in the coming time.

Here's the complete video of test:



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