YouTube "AI" Shorts "Scaling" - Page 1
Forum section: electronics / general

author: steve30
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: August 25, 2025, 08:09:56 pm
content: Just noticed this link from the other day on Dave's Xitter page:He noticed that the videos he uploaded to YouTube don't look like the originals (surprise surprise), and they look a bit AI generated.In short, what seems to have happened is there has been some noise reduction and/or other smoothing of flat-ish things, and unsharp-mask used to enhance edges, and  the contrast has increased.I'm just wondering what people's views are on this.I don't think its AI as such. I suspect its just to do with the codecs they are using. The above techniques can get rid of a lot of data, and lets not forget that 'Shorts' are usually poor quality videos which will probably never benefit from 4K, and are intended to be viewed on a cell phone screen, so will barely even benefit from HD. And when viewed on a computer screen/TV, it is pillarboxed so only fills a small area of the screen. I can see why they would want to get the data rate down as much as possible.I've noticed some of my own shorts are now using the AV1 codec on Youtube.I have started using AV1 myself for my own video production (SVT-AV1 specifically) as it seems to be far more efficient than h264 (x264) and, whilst very slow on my machine, it is still tolerable. I have noticed that it is quite good at smudging out noisy sections, but I've not noticed if it does any sharpening. In my use case, SVT-AV1 gives a very acceptable compromise between quality and bitrate, though if I want to preserve the absolute best quality, I'll stick with my x264 setup.

author: AndyC_772
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 25, 2025, 08:32:48 pm
content: Random noise doesn't compress, so if a video is noisy it will have poor image quality at a given bit rate. Obviously YT has a vested interest in keeping the bit rate for its videos as low as possible since their storage and bandwidth costs linearly scale with the amount of data they need to store and transmit.With that in mind, I can see it makes good sense to apply a noise reducing filter if it means the minimum bit rate for "acceptable" image quality is reduced.

author: golden_labels
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 25, 2025, 09:00:13 pm
content: Earlier todayI sharedan article fromBBC: YouTube secretly used AI to edit people's videos. The results could bend reality.Forgive me not watching a 13 minute video before commenting, but it seems it just repeats the same thing over and over again to fill that time with 20 seconds (or 5 text lines) of actual content. I shared my reaction in the thread linked above.The linked BBC article also includes a response from Alphabet. While of course typical PR talk, it happens to also contain the explanation. It’s image enhancement and they’re now running experiments on viewers, which seem to not be working well for some videos. I suspect it’s also coupled with making content more easily compressible or improving bits allocation, as Alphabet was working on that for years now.

author: steve30
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: August 25, 2025, 09:10:13 pm
content: OK, I've just confirmed this phenomenon with one of my own shorts.One file is a framegrab from the file I uploaded to YouTube (1080x1920 @ 50fps, recorded in AV1 @ 5Mbps average, cropped from a 4K original). The other is a screengrab from YouTube running in full screen.The frame grabs may not be taken in the EXACT same place, and the camera was handheld on a moving e-bike. But you can see a big difference in the picture quality.On the original, the car license plate looks like an ordinary picture, on the YT version it seems to have had the edges enhanced and is possibly more contrasty.The shutters on the shops have clear edge enhancement.The shadow on the word "Today?" seems to interfere with the writing on the shop sign.The word "BARBERS" on the barber shop sign has been altered.The word "TRAVEL" is very defined on the YT version.While these may not be the exact same frame, you can clearly see the difference in post processing.

author: Analog Kid
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 25, 2025, 09:16:01 pm
content: Um, if you want us to compare image quality, shouldn't you at least post both of those picsat the same size?

author: steve30
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: August 25, 2025, 09:56:30 pm
content: Quote from: Analog Kid on August 25, 2025, 09:16:01 pmThe post processing applied is quite obvious if you look for it. Although in this case it doesn't make much difference in casual viewing. But fair enough, here's a comparison of the original with a couple I downloaded from YouTube.The AV1 and h264 versions both seem to have the same post processing, so its not AV1 specific. The AV1 version is half the size of the h264 version though, and doesn't have the compression artefacts. Whether this 'post-processing' is beneficial to AV1 encoding, I don't know.For reference the bitrates for 1080x1920 are:AV1 - 2.8MbpsVP9 - 4.1Mbpsh264 - 5.8MbpsQuote from: golden_labels on August 25, 2025, 09:00:13 pmThanks, I hadn't noticed that. Its an interesting read. I will go with the basis that it is probably a typical neural-network based post processing rather than "generative AI" which is what the whingers are whinging about. I use neural network scalers myself for deinterlacing and scaling standard definition video.Vaguely on topic, the BBC do an excellent job of scaling their old 576i programmes to 1080i for HDTV transmission. No idea what they use.

author: thm_w
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 26, 2025, 01:19:29 am
content: I don't see the data saving aspect if its being upscaled again before being delivered. Why would they care how much storage space shorts use? Unless it can be done on the users end.Sorta sounded like it could be an upscaling method for low quality/blurry/shaky smartphone camera footage?

author: Bud
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 26, 2025, 04:52:48 am
content: What a nothing burger. You should thank youtube for enhancing shitty videos. And that guy in the OP video is a total nut job.

author: sleemanj
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 26, 2025, 05:21:29 am
content: Quote from: steve30 on August 25, 2025, 09:10:13 pmYou sure can, it made the potato cam original look way better.

author: golden_labels
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 26, 2025, 07:41:08 am
content: Quote from: Analog Kid on August 25, 2025, 09:16:01 pmIf asking for that, it should be lossless too. But it would be pointless: steve30 posted worse image at higher resolution and size than the better one. It only strenghtens his point, not weakens it.Quote from: thm_w on August 26, 2025, 01:19:29 amGenerally, the effect of changing resolution on video file size is much less dramatic than one might expect. Down to reducing resolution actually having a negative impact in some cases. It’s not resolution that matters here. It’s enhancement. Reducing noise, which mostly lives in high-frequency components, greatly improves allocation of bits to the intended signal. Which means we can fit the same amount of meaningful information in less bits. It’s also possible to adjust video so movement prediction also produces a less noisy output, which buy even more space. Finally, we can heuristically find a better encoding in exchange for image distortion being non-deterministic.Quote from: Bud on August 26, 2025, 04:52:48 amIf you didread my comment about the BBC article, you may see what my opinion of all this drama is.But the same comment has an important footnote. The enhancement itself, be it basic filters, old statistics, or modern statistics, is a debatable thing. And the evaluation of outcomes is purely subjective. On many levels.

author: magic
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 26, 2025, 07:56:20 am
content: It's aggressive sharpening, similar to what smartphone cameras have been doing for years. I guess that's what the smartphone generation expects to see these days.Complete nothingburged, another consumer gimmick in a consumer product. I too doubt that any "AI" was involved.

author: thm_w
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 26, 2025, 11:19:50 pm
content: Quote from: golden_labels on August 26, 2025, 07:41:08 amEither way its a short, 10s long is irrelevant to them in terms of storage space. They let people upload 10h long videos.If you are saying this can end up in reducing streaming bitrate, that would be interesting. I'm sure future AI codecs are out there being worked on.

author: golden_labels
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 26, 2025, 11:43:24 pm
content: To be pedantic: do you think 10 s videos don’t outnumber the 10 h ones by 3600:1? If they do, they win in storage too.But it’s both. Why do you assume storage takes different amount of space than streaming? The same thing is being stored.