Why is there a huge difference from 240p to 360p in the YouTube video quality but then not really much of a difference from 360p to 720p?
In: Technology
It’s a matter of hitting “diminishing returns” in terms of your brains ability to do object recognition. At 240p, a lot of things are a lot more difficult to recognize than at higher resolutions. At 360p and 480p, you can pretty well recognize all of the important parts of a picture, and your brain will make it seem like there is a massive jump in quality.
Higher resolutions add additional clarity to the image, but generally not to the extent that it’s bringing into focus key elements of the picture. The higher the resolution, the better you can see the minor details.
Your eye notices more difference between a 5 pixel image and a 10 pixel image than between a 900 000 pixel image and a 1 million pixel image.
Here are the real values for a 16:9 monitor (most common aspect ratio nowadays):
2160p: 3840×2160.
1440p: 2560×1440.
1080p: 1920×1080.
720p: 1280×720 = 921 600 pixels.
480p: 854×480 = 409 920 pixels.
360p: 640×360 = 236 160 pixels.
240p: 426×240 = 102 240 pixels.
It really depends on what you’re looking at and how much definition it needs.
If an object cannot be distinguished with the little resolution available at 240p, but can at 360p, it looks so much better. If it gets sharper going from 360 to 720, it still looks better, but it’s not as drastic as making it visible.
Part of it that no one has touched on is that bitrate is just as important as the pixel count. A high bitrate 720p video without a doubt looks crisper than a 1080p video of that same bitrate.
And a lot of videos you see at 720p have actually been “upscaled,” meaning they weren’t actually recorded at 720p.
The other thing to consider is the heavy compression that YouTube adds. This lowers quality on most videos. If you were to have the original 720p video file, it would look much better.
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