Why Does My Video Turn Into Bad Quality Once I Upload It On My Page On Facebook
These days, cameras are really fantastic. The quality is excellent, they are reasonably priced, and most of us carry an Ultra High Definition video camera in our pockets. It’s not difficult to make a visually appealing, high-quality film that our friends and family or Facebook followers would like watching.
However, posting your movie to Facebook is not always as simple as you had hoped. On Facebook, the video may seem grainy, pixellated, or fuzzy at times. It’s really irritating since you worked so hard to make this video seem great.
Video Compression Makes It Look “Bad”
The first thing you need know is that when you submit a video to any platform, such as Facebook or YouTube, the company has to compress the video to conserve space on their own servers. That is just how the Internet works.
We’ll go into compression in more detail later, but there are three key points I want you to consider right now. For a more detailed explanation, please see my YouTube video (above).
#1 It takes Facebook time to process your high-definition videos.
I often hear individuals claim they submitted a 1080 video, but Facebook only allows them to watch it in 720. Give Facebook a few minutes to process the 1080 version of the video. Make a cup of coffee, then return to check if you can see the 1080 version. It shouldn’t take long, but the longer your video, the longer this will take.
#2 In the Facebook app, change your mobile upload settings to HD.
If you’re going to submit videos from your mobile device, there are certain options inside the applications themselves that you may alter to upload movies and pictures in HD. On my iPhone, we go to the bottom right menu, go all the way down to settings, then account settings, then movies and pictures, and switch on the Upload HD option under video and photo.
I can’t locate any real upload options for uploading from your desktop. Of course, you already know that Facebook will alter how and where you may access these options. Click here for Facebook’s instructions (current as of the time of this writing).
#3 Modify your video watching preferences
Don’t forget to double-check your video watching preferences. I have mine configured to always watch movies in HD when they are available. That should cover my whole Facebook account, even while I’m on the go. But, for sure, make sure you’re watching movies in HD by adjusting your settings or clicking the tiny gear icon and selecting the highest resolution and HD.
Can you enhance the quality of your Facebook videos when you upload them?
I know you’re wondering whether there’s anything we can do to enhance the video quality of our Facebook videos. Unfortunately, no suggested upload settings seem to be available in Facebook’s support section. I scoured the Facebook help area!
I only discovered Facebook video quality suggestions for videos that will be used as advertisements. They do suggest the following parameters when submitting a Facebook ad:
9:16 to 16:9 video ratio
Maximum video file size is 4GB.
Minimum video length: 1 second
Maximum video length: 240 minutes
Optional but recommended video captions
Optional but preferred video sound
Text length: 125 characters
Bitrate: There is no bitrate restriction if your content is less than 1GB and utilizes 2-pass encoding. Otherwise, the 1080p limit is 8 megabits per second and the 720p restriction is 4 megabits per second.
Video thumbnail pictures with more than 20% text may suffer decreased delivery. Find out more about text in pictures.
Vertical movies (with aspect ratios greater than2:3) may be masked to a 2:3 aspect ratio.
Is this, however, applicable to non-ad videos? I’m not sure since Facebook doesn’t mention.
Facebook Video Resolution and Bitrate
I’m not the greatest person to explain this very technical side of things, but just to make sure we’re all on the same page, the resolution of your video is 1920px wide by 1080px high. You may also have a resolution of 720 or 4K.
However, the resolution alone does not determine the quality of your video; there is also a factor known as bitrate. Bitrate is a compression parameter. It performs a lot of the hard work when it comes to determining the quality of the videos we watch online.
In general, a 1080 quality movie with a high bitrate will generally look fantastic, but the file size will be very large, making it difficult to broadcast over the internet.
As a result, Facebook will gladly compress it for you by reducing the bitrate so that your video is more available to its users… your friends and family. They’re doing you a favor… Not everyone has access to lightning-fast fiber networks!
Lowering the bitrate is equivalent to lowering the bar for people on mobile networks or shared wifi networks when the speed isn’t excellent, for example. Facebook wants all users to be able to touch a video and have it play immediately, with no loading, buffering, or other delays.
Is Facebook Video Quality Important?
So the resultant video from Facebook is, well, not as good as it seemed on your computer or phone. But are the evil people really so terrible? You have to consider, ya know, what your goal was in producing the film in the first place.
Do you want your friends and family to exclaim, “Wow, great pixels!” I’m loving what you accomplished with the high definition, buddy!” or did you want them to say something like, “Hey, that was great to see, thanks for sharing!”
Chances are, your friends, family, and other humans who really want to watch a film you make will not notice or care. They want to watch what you made, relive the experience, then give it a thumbs up and go on to the next dumb cat meme that appears in their feed following your video. Guys, it’s Facebook!
YouTube Video Quality
Because YouTube does not compress your videos as much as Facebook, you may post to YouTube and then share a link to the video on Facebook if you are more concerned with how the video appears. In general, it will not result in as many views or interaction on Facebook as if you uploaded a video directly to Facebook, so you must determine what is essential to you there.
Now, if you’re seeking to post native videos to a Facebook page, such as for a company or a blog, don’t include a link to YouTube if you want to optimize interaction and reach. Facebook does not like this, and you will be ignored by the algorithm.
Final Thoughts
Personally, I am unconcerned with the quality of Facebook videos. If you’ve figured out the secret of video export settings that result in crystal clear quality on Facebook, please share your knowledge .
