Why Snow and Confetti Ruin YouTube Video Quality

Your sports team wins. The confetti drops. And suddenly, the video quality falls apart. Why? Let's talk about interframe compression, bitrate, and unnecessary green screen effects.

and on Instagram as @tomscottgo

[yeehaw]

"If you already understand interframe compression, you can pick another video."


_No, I don't think I will._

[theCodyReeder]

Just sitting here drooling over those effects and realizing that I really need to up my game.

[CensoredMercy]

I love how he says if we know how all the compression algorithms work we can skip this video, but the video itself is still insanely interesting and mostly focusing on bitrate which is assumable for many but none the less very nice to see an elegant explanation I could pass on myself

[Zelly_]

So a lot of people might not remember this but this video watching experence was slightly different when it came out.

YouTube has improved its quality over the years as has our internet connections.

When Tom Scott says "over the next couple of seconds the quality of the video will come back" it was literal, it use to take a second or two for the quality to return.

Now though? The quality instantly comes back within a fraction of a second. Maybe a few frames worth of low quality video but that's all that you can see now.

Literally blink-and-you'll-miss-it.

The same effect also would apply to when he increased the bitrate in the video. The quality used to still be rough for a few seconds.

[edwardnygma]

0:36 That jacket throw was purely a flex to show off their editing skills, and I respect that.

[aceichner]

"Don't know why I am yelling, I'll be adding the wind noise in later."
It's those little gems that make your videos so much fun.

[bootools]

The enhanced bitrate that YouTube put out recently has really changed the part towards the end when he manually brings the bitrate back up. Everything is fairly clear for me even before the snap.

[TitansOasis]

Welcome back everyone testing the enhanced bitrate feature

[NitroLemons]

Tom, please no more confetti you have to stop this ple-
*MORE CONFETTI*

[stuck.]

That editing... How lucky we are to have such talented people posting this kind of stuff on YouTube

[kutsen]

Trees are really bad for doing this too. Any time there's a shaded path surrounded by trees, I have to bump the quality all the way up.

[KingTootsieTut]

The best thing about Tom Scott videos is you never know if its from 7 years ago or 7 days ago

[Hexagonaldonut]

That jacket throw gag was completely unnecessary and I love it.

Serious props to you for this, Tom; this is really well-put-together.

[nhivu]

legends say that he’s still demanding more confetti...

[akreanimated]

the editing is beyond amazing, very interesting way to present information like this while making it easy to understand for people that are completely new to that concept, while keeping it entertaining!

[spooklass]

If you turn it to 144p you can literally see what he's talking about.

[TomScottGo]

One thing I didn't expect: the quality actually returns half a second before the confetti stops! YouTube's encoding is a little smarter than I thought it was - I'd guess it worked out there'd be some spare bits coming up and used them to fill in the gaps.

[yizzie]

"I don't know why i'm yelling, i'll add the wind noise later" made me burst out my coffee :D

[dmxp]

At 1080p enhanced the video quality is not reduced which is magical

[endaman]

It’s interesting rewatching this video with 1080p “enhanced bitrate”