Is it possible to cheat YouTube and get higher quality at 1080p?
Can you trick it into thinking that a video is higher than 1080p, get a better bitrate,
but show at 1080p for viewers?
Yes… and no.
Let’s take a look.
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I’m EposVox, here to make tech easier and more fun, and today let’s talk some more
about render settings.
There was a neat feature to YouTube’s player back before 1440p and 4K videos - and even
60 FPS videos - became popular and supported.
It allowed you to upload high-resolution videos, mainly 4K, and the viewer had the option of
watching the normal transcoded 1080p and lower formats, or watch in what it called the “Original”
format.
It was then realized that you could upload upscaled videos at a resolution of 2048 by
1152 - just a tiny bit higher than 1080p so no crazy upscaling would be required - but
it was enough to trigger that “Original” playback option to be enabled and viewers
would have access to a higher quality video.
Many gaming channels took advantage of this for a while - which was fine.
The problem is that most viewers don’t pay attention to quality options in the first
place - and mobile viewers, which make up the vast majority of YouTube views these days,
don’t have access to most quality options either.
So this was a neat trick, but it mostly went unused by viewers - and then once YouTube
implemented proper 1440p, 4K, and 8K quality selections instead of just “Original”,
it didn’t work anymore.
Or does it still work today?
Sort of!
I did some testing, and you can still upload videos in 2048 by 1152 resolution at a higher
bitrate and it actually DOES work.
The YouTube player only shows quality option listings for the closest other quality option.
So things like 1366x768 would just say “720p” and 2048x1152 will say “1080p.”
So someone choosing the 1080p option will be greeted with a much higher quality video
file.
And if you re-download the video with a proper tool like JDownloader 2, it shows the original
2048x1152 resolution and makes a bigger file than just downloading a 1080p upload of the
same video.
And if you inspect the “Stats for Nerds” on the computer, it shows the full resolution
as well.
So you can technically do this, but that doesn’t mean you should.
1080p is compressed to a maximum of 6 megabits per second by YouTube to make it accessible
to as many internet providers and connection speeds as possible, so going higher than that
can prevent people from even being able to watch your video at 1080p at all, whereas
they might have been able to do so before.
In fact, in my testing and re-downloading of the videos, the 1080p copy seems to have
been compressed to 1.5 megabits per second, while the 1152p copy was at about 3.3 megabits
per second - that’s double the data for basically the same looking video!
Which may be what you want.
There’s also the issue on mobile.
Some mobile devices seem to think the file is 1440p.
My phone showed it as 1080p, but I have no way of knowing if it’s the full resolution.
But if it is displaying the higher resolution file, you’re eating up a lot more of someone’s
data compared to other 1080p videos.
And “unlimited data” is still mostly a myth these days.
BUT, there is a HUGE caveat here that prevents this from being all that useful to gaming
content - some of the content most strongly abused by YouTube’s compression.
This does NOT seem to work right if you’re posting videos in 60 FPS.
In my testing, the 1152p file simply transcodes to a 1080p60 copy on YouTube instead of showing
the higher resolution.
And upon trying to download the highest quality copy with JDownloader, it gives me 1152p30
or 1080p60, no 1152p60.
How curious.
The same seems to apply to 768p at 60 FPS, too.
It’s not a VP9 conversion thing, as my 30FPS 1152p tests were all still AVC when the proper
resolution showed up.
So keep this in mind, as well.
The gaming YouTube scene certainly seems to prefer more fluid framerates to higher resolutions
or bitrates, for better or worse.
So can you cheat YouTube’s 1080p option?
Yes, you sort of can.
If you have high quality source footage to work with, you can upscale to 2048 by 1152
and get a higher quality playback file on YouTube for now.
Just keep in mind a couple things.
A - it will take longer to render while upscaling, and if you don’t set up your project and
render settings properly, it could look worse.
And B - YouTube’s player and compression changes often, so when they make a change
they could wind up ditching the higher resolution option, or showing it as a 1440p option or
something down the road, which may make it look worse.
So use it with caution.
You want your project and sequence settings to be set to 2048 by 1152 in the first place,
and if using Premiere Pro, check the “Maximum Render Quality” checkbox when exporting,
or the upscaling could look worse than the original.
I hope this has been helpful for you.
Smash the like button, get subscribed, come check me out on Patreon, and I’ll see you
next time.