Unleashing the Power of YouTube Enhanced Bitrate: Elevating Your Video Streaming Experience

Key Takeaways

YouTube Enhanced Bitrate is a premium feature that offers better image quality in 1080p videos, addressing the criticism of poor visuals and compression.

Enabling Enhanced Bitrate is a valuable option for videos that prioritize image quality, particularly for content involving fast-action or visual arts. However, it is important to take into account both data consumption and subscription expenses.

YouTube is the largest source of streaming video on the internet, however, it has been frequently criticized for its subpar image quality and detrimental compression effects. To address these concerns, YouTube Enhanced Bitrate offers a solution that significantly improves the visual experience.

What Is Enhanced Bitrate?

YouTube Enhanced Bitrate is a premium paid feature that offers a special quality tier for 1080p videos. The bitrate of a video refers to the number of bits available per second to store the frames of a moving image. All digital footage, whether streamed or from an optical disc, is compressed in some way. This compression is similar to how a JPEG image is compressed compared to a Bitmap image, resulting in a smaller file size while maintaining most of the original details.

When comparing two copies of a video with the same resolution and compression algorithm, the one with a lower bitrate will have inferior image quality. This is because it requires a more aggressive level of compression, leading to the loss of more image details. Some common artifacts of lower bitrate videos include:

Macro blocking: The image displays noticeable solid "blocks," particularly in darker regions or areas with numerous intricate details.

Color banding: Visible bands of color may appear in scenes featuring the sky, oceans, or other gradients. The video lacks sufficient bitrate to depict the subtle color transition, resulting in a reproduction that shows rough color bands.

Smudged motion: In a fast-paced and action-packed video, where each frame varies significantly from the next, insufficient bitrate can distort any movement, resulting in a blurred appearance.

Poor color rendition: In addition to color banding, the overall color quality in the image can appear faded and far from the original vision of the creators.

How to Get Enhanced Bitrate

Here are not the only consequences of having a low bitrate. However, once you have personally observed the disparity between a video with a high bitrate and one with a low bitrate, you will develop a strong intuitive understanding of its overall impact. It is the elevated bitrates that enable 1080p Blu-ray movies to surpass the visual quality of their 4K streaming counterparts.

Unfortunately, currently the only means of accessing Enhanced Bitrate is by being a YouTube Premium member. However, it is important to note that not all videos offer this feature and YouTube does not automatically select this quality option even if it is available. Fortunately, you can easily activate Enhanced Bitrate in the same location where you manually set your YouTube quality level.

To do this in the mobile app, navigate to the settings cog and go to Quality > Advanced. If you are using a web browser, simply click on the cog icon and select your desired quality level.

When to Enable Enhanced Bitrate

In reality, the majority of YouTube videos do not noticeably benefit from an improved bitrate. It is only relevant when the video's quality is crucial, such as in fast-action films or visual arts content. Enabling the Enhanced Bitrate option ensures the best colors and intricate details in both moving and still images.

Nevertheless, opting for a higher bitrate results in consuming a larger amount of data. Therefore, if you have a slow internet connection or limited data plan, it may be wise to reconsider enabling this advanced, premium version of YouTube's video stream.

Is Enhanced Bitrate Worth It?

As mentioned earlier, the advantages of an improved bitrate vary depending on the type of content being viewed. However, if the option is available and suitable for you, activating it offers a noticeable enhancement in quality. Particularly on larger screens, with YouTube now showcasing content created with greater resources and superior production quality, enabling this feature is often a worthwhile choice.

However, this is only applicable if you are already subscribed to YouTube Premium. The worthiness of paying for YouTube Premium solely to access Enhanced Bitrate is a subject of debate. Nevertheless, if you are already satisfied with the ad-free YouTube experience, then Enhanced Bitrate serves as a valuable extra benefit.