During a video AMA hosted by Instagram head Adam Mosseriil explained why videos with low view counts see their quality degraded. This is not a new phenomenon on the internet, as many YouTube videos that were uploaded several years ago in 720p or 1080p resolution are now downscaled to 240p. The reason is the same, although the encoding hardware and software used by Google and Meta are obviously different. However, Instagram videos may be available in low quality both before they start racking up many views and after they peak, while YouTube videos are downgraded for good once their view counts decline and an increase in views will not bring their versions back to high resolution.
In May 2023, Meta published a blog post about its first ASIC for video transcoding, namely the Meta Scalable Video Processor (MSVP) https://ai.meta.com/blog/meta-scalable-video-processor- MSVP/. Although the post mainly focused on the hardware aspect, it also revealed some interesting things regarding the software element and the changes coming for video streaming across products such as Instagram and Facebook. The essential part reveals that, to reduce computing requirements when encoding video streams, the fastest (and lower quality, obviously) encoding would be used first. However,
“Once the video gets a high enough watch time, a full ABR encoding is triggered, which also produces a fixed ABR scale using high quality H.264 and VP9 presets to further improve video quality. When the video is viewed even more, advanced ABR encoding is triggered, which produces a dynamic ABR scale”
Ultimately, even though Mosseri says people engage with videos primarily based on their content, the bottom line is that popular creators will always have the advantage of the highest quality video encoding. Newbies and less popular creators, who may have been on the platform for years, will need to provide smart content that is also suitable for lower quality video presentation than their competitors.
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