What Does Viewport Mean in Stats for Nerds on YouTube

What Does Viewport Mean in Stats for Nerds on YouTube

In this video I'm showing what the Viewport option does in the YouTube Stats for Nerds function in the YouTube video player in the Google Chrome web browser.

As you can see in the video the Viewport indicator is showing the physical part of the screen area that the video stream is playing in.

In the video I'm playing my YouTube video at 1920x1080, Viewport is saying 1280x720 and Current is saying 1920x1080. Current is the indicator for the YouTube video stream resolution that you are currently watching. What this means is that Viewport is indicating that the video is playing in the YouTube player in a 1280x720 part of the screen but the content playing inside the YouTube video player is the 1920x1080 stream as is indicated by Current.

When I change the size of my Chrome web browser this will also re-scale the size of the YouTube video player inside the Chrome web browser. When the YouTube player is re-scaled and is made smaller, showing a physically smaller video in the rescaled smaller YouTube video player. The Viewport setting shows even smaller resolutions as it is reflecting the new smaller physical size of the video in proportion to the resolution of the monitor resolution setting that I'm using, which is 1920x1080.

As I increase the size of my Chrome web browser and therefore the size of the playback area on the screen that the YouTube video player is using. The Viewport setting is increasing as I do so.
At various points during changing and increasing the size of the Chrome web browser and the YouTube video player. The Viewport is indicating video resolutions such as 427x240 640x360 675x380 1046x588 while Current is still indicating the actual stream resolution that has been selected, being 1920x1080. Basically, we're looking at various playback resolutions that all essentially of the 16:9 aspect ratio, while changing the size of the Chrome browser.

So after all of that , what does Viewport do? It simply indicates the effective resolution or proportion of your screen that's being used by the YouTube player to play the video and is independent of the stream resolution you have chosen and is not the same thing as the video resolution.

I suspect that some of this may be approximations and that the accuracy to the info in the Viewport setting and in Stats for Nerds in general, may well change slightly or may even be inaccurate or wrong in certain instances due to the vast differences in all the computer and playback systems, web browsers etc. that YouTube will be played on.

If you've wondered what is Stats for Nerds, I'll cover more about this in the future.

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[mikemotorbike]

But the most important question is not addressed: with Current 3840x3160 and Viewport 1920x1080 *2, are we getting the original 4k? Or downscaled to 1080 then upscaled by resampling 1080 x 2 to to 4k? IF downscaled, the half the pixels are being thrown away and then interpolation added to upscale back to 4k. As usual, the easy answers are easy, the harder questions are hard, and the genius is in the details. People want to know if they are watching the original unresampled 4k video.

[canabisquick]

My LG C1 OLED says
Viewport/ Frames 1920x1080*2.00
Through the YouTube app on the smart tv.

But when I'm on my Xbox series X it says
Viewport/Frames 3840x2160

Doesn't appear to look different. Is it running any different? Is it still true 4k?

[sumitaghosal]

Thank you for this sharing your nice video

[fyrestorme]

0:45 sort-of kind-of but it won't scale to your actual viewport. It will only scale up as far as the quality of the video.
So, for example, you can have a monitor resolution of 4k and if the video is only recorded in 1080p then even if you put the video in full screen it won't match your actual view port (monitor) res. It will still only be 1080p.

[bear_bull]

Hi David! Could you make a video about how to change mystery text in stats for nerds ?

[NikitaBose-dtdy]

This is very informative and useful video..All point clearly mentioned.

[EmilieEmie-vk]

Thank you for this sharing your nice vidéo

[NikolaosSkordilis]

This is not what viewport reports to me. With your video set at 1080p, viewing via a 1080p display, viewport at first reports a 734x413*1.43 resolution at the 'Default view' (roughly 1/4 of full page view).

In 'Cinema mode' that changes to 853x480*1.43. I also tried playing around with the webpage size and got viewport resolutions like 697x392*1.43. So far so good; viewport's resolution is indeed dynamic, not static.

However at full page view viewport always maxes out at 1344x756*1.43. As far as I recall I've never seen a viewport resolution of 1920x1080 no matter what the actual resolution was. I also tested viewing your video at 2560x1440 and 3840x2160(4K) and, again, viewport was capped at 1344x756*1.43.

[mgwaiyankyaw]

that's simple and clear explanation...thanks harry...

[chrisw]

Mine always shows the viewport as being a hundred or more pixels smaller than the screen. Why?

[bear_bull]

Hi David! Please make video about how to change mystery text with emoji inside stats for nerds.

[raissarangel]

excellent tutorial, helped me so much, super recommend

[siskaamelia]

Thank you for the explanation, i gain a lot of information about stats for nerd. But i want to know one thing about frame dropped, people often talking about frame dropped. As you can see at 0:51 your frame dropped was 33516. What makes it so high? While mine usually only at 6500? Can you pls briefly explain how to make it higher than 10000?
I really need smn to explain this to me, thank you so much 🙏

[CarlosCMPinto]

Nice video! What does it mean viewport 1920×1080*2, on a 4K TV, playing a 4K YouTube video?

[Hienathebest]

viewport is just the size of window you look...but has nothing to do with quality of the image, i use chrome and if you zoom out (to zoom in Chrome you use Ctr + or Ctr - min zoom is 25% ) it increased mine to 5120x2880 resolution from 1280*720*3 at 8k video on a 4k screen

[phillipallen]

i get it now but i have a 4k tv and mine at fullscrwwn on 4k doesnt match the resolution of the video its half 4kso about 2k how do you fix this i have amd i set my resolution to 4k and games looo k 4k even at lower rws

[coolquitepowerful]

on 2560x1440 monitor fullscreen viewport is 2048x1152

[sergeidorokhin]

The explanation does not work for higher res monitors.
I play an 8K60 video on my 4K monitor (3840x2160) using RTX3080 and it is not a bottleneck at all (can play a couple of such videos simultaneously without lags) but still have this:
Viewport / Frames 2560x1350*1.50 / 523 dropped of 7773

The Viewport should be at least 3840x2025

[robstephen]

I recommend they 🛑 cyberstalking me or I'll file a civil suit. No bluff.

[JR-lgsq]

My Samsung TV is meant to be 4K but is showing 1080p viewport. Any ideas ?