Instagram ties video quality to view count

In a video AMA held by Instagram's head, Adam Mosseri, he explained why videos with low view counts get quality downgrades. This isn't something new on the internet, as many YouTube videos that were uploaded years ago in 720p or 1080p resolution are now down to 240p. The reason is the same, although the encoding hardware and software used by Google and Meta are obviously different. However, Instagram videos might be available in low quality both before starting to rack up many views and after peaking, while YouTube videos get downgraded for good once their view count drops and an increase in views won't bring back their high-resolution versions.

Back in May 2023, Meta published a blog post on the company's first ASIC for video transcoding, namely the Meta Scalable Video Processor (MSVP). Although the post was mostly focused on the hardware side of things, it also revealed a few interesting elements concerning the software element and the changes in store for video streaming across products such as Instagram and Facebook. The essential part reveals that, to reduce the computing requirements when encoding video streams, the fastest (and lowest in quality, obviously) encoding would be used first. However, 

"Once the video gets sufficiently high watch time, a full ABR encoding is triggered, which also produces a fixed ABR ladder using H.264 and VP9 high-quality presets to further improve video quality. Once the video gets even more watch time, an advanced ABR encoding is triggered, which produces a dynamic ABR ladder."

In the end, despite the fact that Mosseri says people interact with videos primarily based on their content, the result is that popular creators will always have the advantage of best-quality video encoding as well. Beginners and less popular creators who might have been on the platform for years will have to deliver smart content that is also tailored to suit a lower-quality video presentation than its competitors. 

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