So recently I discovered that all videos on YouTube are stored under 5mbps bitrate. This is a huge heartbreak and disappointment to me. I always wanted to have a YouTube career and I have made about 200 videos. I firmly believe in providing crisp clear source quality content. I want people to see every pixel, not this gray, blocky garbage.
Anyway so 720p is 3500 bitrate. 1080p is 8000 bitrate. Google itself recommends you to upload 8mbps, but they limit it to 5. That bitrate recommendation article must be outdated. So basically all 1080p videos on YouTube are pixelated because they are basically upscale 833p.
This is very disappointing because i wasted hundreds of hours on rendering and uploading giant 15mbps videos. In fact, I don't even want to do YouTube if the only option I have is to upload blocky pixelated garbage.
So the question is, is there anything I can do, at all? to upload 1080p that will play with 8mbps, or upload 1080p 60fps that will play with 16000kbps?
Best Answer
At a given resolution, you can not override YouTube's chosen bitrate. YouTube caps it to provide a consistent experience across all videos. This is a good thing.
If your videos are too complex to look good at the 1080p bitrate, you can upscale your videos to 1440p as a workaround (assuming you can't get 1440p source footage. If you can, just upload that). 1440p video gets higher bitrates that will preserve complex scenes more accurately.