YouTube says it isn’t messing with 1080p — ‘1080p Premium’ is higher-bitrate
YouTube has confirmed that it’s experimenting with a higher-quality 1080p option for Premium subscribers after some Reddit users noticed a new “1080p Premium” option in the quality settings menu. The option is currently available to “a small group of YouTube Premium subscribers,” according to Paul Pennington, a spokesperson for the company.
“1080p Premium is an enhanced bitrate version of 1080p which provides more information per pixel that results in a higher quality viewing experience,” said Pennington, adding that “there are no changes to the existing quality offerings for 1080p (HD) resolution on YouTube.” There have been concerns that YouTube is nerfing the standard 1080p mode to make the Premium version more appealing, but the statement implies that the company hasn’t made any changes.
While 1080p describes a video’s resolution, or the number of pixels that make up the image, there are more factors that go into overall video quality. Bitrate and color depth are also important factors and can even lend to good 1080p video looking better than bad 4K footage. Bitrate is often used to describe how much data is used to transfer each second of video.
For example, a 1080p Blu-ray can give you a maximum of 40 Mbps, which provides a pretty crisp image. Meanwhile, YouTube’s standard 1080p bitrate hovers between 8 and 10 Mbps and can be noticeably blockier than Blu-rays or the original exports. It also depends on what codec the video is compressed with, as some are more efficient than others and can produce better results with less data, often with costs elsewhere — it can be pretty complicated. (Also, bitrate isn’t entirely separate from resolution; how many pixels are in a video will play some factor in how much data you need to transmit it in an acceptable quality. If you want to go deep into the concept, here’s a pretty good explainer.)
However, it’s generally accurate to say that video encoded with the same codec but at a higher bitrate will look better. That seems to be what YouTube’s doing — one Reddit user with access to the feature posted a screenshot of the company’s “Stats for Nerds” tool, which shows that the Premium 1080p option ran at around 13 Mbps versus 8 Mbps in the standard mode for the same video. However, it’s worth noting that YouTube usually uses variable bitrate encoding, meaning that the amount of data it uses will fluctuate a bit depending on what’s shown on screen.
The premium version could boost bitrate by around 50 percent
The company didn’t immediately respond to The Verge’s request for comment on what the average premium bitrate would be.
The reason YouTube doesn’t just show you the original video file at its maximum bitrate is that doing so would be expensive, both for them and potentially for you, depending on your speed and data cap. The lower a video’s bitrate, and thus the lower its quality, the less bandwidth it takes up in the journey from YouTube’s servers to your screen. The 1080p Premium test indicates that YouTube could be willing to let people access more quality as long as they pay for the service.
This isn’t the first time YouTube has experimented with putting higher-quality video behind the Premium paywall. Last year, the company ran a test that made it so some people weren’t able to access 4K playback unless they were subscribers, a move that garnered a lot of pushback from the community. However, a lot of that came down to the fact that people were losing something they previously had access to for free. If YouTube truly is keeping the quality for the regular 1080p option the same, then the experiment is just adding a perk for paying customers.
YouTube creators can now dub their videos in multiple languages
YouTube rolled out a new feature on Thursday for creators to dub their content in other languages, allowing viewers around the globe to consume more content.
The multi-language audio feature has already been test-piloted by one of the platform's biggest stars: MrBeast.
"Because his content is so wide-reaching, over the past year we’ve asked MrBeast and a small group of creators to help our team test a new feature that lets creators add multi-language audio to their videos," YouTube Product Manager Ritz Campbell wrote in a blog post on Thursday.
MrBeast has already dubbed some of his "most popular videos in 11 languages and is hoping to bring more international viewers to his main channel through the feature," Campbell wrote.
In an interview with YouTube Creator Liaison Rene Ritchie, MrBeast said the ability to dub videos — rather than creating numerous separate channels that exist solely to provide his content in other languages — streamlines his workflow.
"Having a lot of different channels is just honestly a lot more work," MrBeast said. "It's just so much easier to have it all in one central place."
MrBeast said the new feature doesn't just help content creators to streamline their workflow — it also helps viewers and followers around the world to find the content their looking for in one place.
"Whether you're in Mexico, you're in Brazil, you're in India — all the dubs are in one place, on one video. So it's a lot simpler for people to understand," he said.
Initially, the feature was only tested among a handful of creators, like MrBeast. YouTube will now expand the availability of the feature to "thousands more creators," Campbell's blogpost stated.
The post added that YouTube has "already seen over 3,500 multi-language videos uploaded in over 40 languages."
YouTube reported that, in testing the new language features, creators found 15 percent of the watch time on videos that offer multiple language dubs came from views that were not in the video's original language.
In January, viewers watched, on average, over 2 million hours of dubbed video daily, YouTube reported.
Viewers who want to watch videos in a different language can access the feature by clicking the audio settings and selecting the available language of their choice.
"Whether it’s chess tutorials, a historical documentary on Rome, or a series of ghost hunting investigations in Italy, we can’t wait to see our creators continue to adopt this feature into their own content, and for our viewers to discover videos from international channels," Campbell wrote in the blogpost.
YouTube lets creators add multi-language voice tracks to their videos
YouTube viewers from around the world might start finding more videos with audio in their native language. The video-hosting website has launched a new feature that gives creators the capability to add voice tracks to their new and existing content in multiple languages. YouTube has been testing multi-language dubs with a handful of creators over the past year, but it's now expanding the feature's reach and making it accessible to thousands more.
The website presents the new feature as a tool creators can use to grow their audiences around the world. Early testers apparently uploaded 3,500 videos in over 40 languages last month, and viewers watched over 2 million hours of dubbed video everyday in January. The creators who tested feature also found that around 15 percent of their watch time came from viewers playing their videos in another language.
One of the most notable creators who tested YouTube's multi-language tool was MrBeast, who has over 130 million subscribers worldwide. MrBeast runs multiple channels in 11 different languages, but in an interview, he said that it would be much easier to maintain just one. It's also probably a plus that anybody clicking on a link shared by someone speaking another language will be able to understand it simply by changing the dubbed audio.
After switching to their preferred language for the first time, the website will default to it whenever they watch videos with dubs. Viewers will also be able to search for content dubbed in their language, even if the video's primary tongue is different, through translated titles and descriptions. YouTube didn't say how it chose the thousands of creators getting access to the feature today, but we asked the website for an idea how it will roll out multi-language dubs until it's available to everyone.
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