Popular gets higher quality
The quality of published videos will be adjusted according to the popularity of the video.
During a recent “ask me anything” (AMA), Instagram CEO Adam Mosseri explained that some videos on the service appear at a lower quality than others. According to Mosseri, the best image quality is reserved for the most popular videos, while less popular clips are shown at reduced quality to avoid overloading the systems.
According to Mosseri, new uploads will initially receive a standardized coding. If a video turns out to be popular, it will be recoded in two stages depending on the number of views. Each step provides better quality but also requires more resources to store and display. Mosseri emphasized that the difference in image quality is not huge. However, based on the number of videos handled, there will be a relevant difference for the underlying systems and the amount of storage required.
Mosseri says that “In general, we want to show the highest quality video that we can … But if something is not viewed for a long time – because the vast majority of views are at the beginning – we will switch to a lower quality video. And then if it’s watched again a lot, we recreate the video at a higher quality.”
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