Twitter's poor video quality has been a problem for long time. But, Twitter shared some promising news on Friday: Videos uploaded to the platform will appear less pixelated, for a better viewing experience. This was stated in a tweet by its support account.
According to Twitter, a pre-processing step was removed from its video pipeline in order to allow users upload videos. The company clarified after we published the article that the removed step separated videos into smaller chunks for consumption. This could have reduced quality due to the additional processing.
Jane Manchun Wong, an app researcher, uploaded a video to demonstrate the improvements. (This video has a loud sound, so it is worth turning down the volume before you start to watch.
Although it may seem better, it was not. Twitter informed us, after we published the first version, that Twitter didn't support the Friday changes in Twitter Media Studio. This is where Wong uploaded the video.
You can see a Twitter video with the enhanced video quality in this response to Wong. It is loud, however.
The second video appears to be slightly better, although it is hard to see how much due the predominantly-black background. The videos are not as crisp as high-quality videos you might see on YouTube or Twitch. This upgrade is only for newly uploaded videos. Older videos will not see the improvements.
It is encouraging to see that Twitter is working hard on improving its video experience. The upgrades could go beyond video quality. Wongs research earlier this week suggested that Twitter was also working to improve video playback speed options.
Twitter is working on video playback speed options pic.twitter.com/5PH9lQPSfj Jane Manchun Wong (@wongmjane) September 20, 2021
Updated September 24, 2008, 08:33 ET: Additional detail added from Twitter. Also added a second video which the company claims takes advantage of the video enhancements.
