If you’ve noticed a dip in video quality when uploading or viewing videos on Facebook recently, you’re not alone. Many users have reported fuzziness, pixelation, and other quality issues with Facebook videos in the past few months.
What’s Causing the Drop in Facebook Video Quality?
There are a few potential culprits behind the decline in Facebook video quality:
- Bandwidth throttling – Facebook may be intentionally limiting video bandwidth to reduce server strain.
- Video compression – Facebook compresses videos to save space, but too much compression leads to artifacts.
- Uploading at low resolution – Uploading low-quality videos will still look pixelated on Facebook.
- Playback issues – Slow connections, outdated browsers, etc. can impact playback.
Facebook has not officially addressed the issue or confirmed what may be causing the problem. But many signs point to the company prioritizing cost savings over quality as video usage continues to balloon.
Why is Facebook Sacrificing Video Quality?
Facebook hosts billions of videos and serves up trillions of video streams per year. At that massive scale, even small changes to reduce file size and bandwidth costs add up to huge savings for the company.
Some potential reasons Facebook may be intentionally limiting video quality include:
- Save server storage space – Lower quality videos take up less space.
- Reduce bandwidth costs – Smaller files sizes means lower networking costs.
- Improve performance – Degraded quality lessens strain on servers.
- Environmental impact – Capping quality reduces energy usage.
Essentially, as Facebook usage grows, the company is hitting limits on storage, network capacity, and computing power. Artificially limiting video quality allows them to squeeze more videos through their systems.
How Much is Video Quality Reduced?
Reports indicate Facebook has steadily reduced video bitrates and resolution over time. Here’s an overview of how much quality has dropped:
| Year | Max Video Bitrate | Resolution |
|---|---|---|
| 2015 | 5 Mbps | 1080p HD |
| 2017 | 4 Mbps | 720p HD |
| 2019 | 3 Mbps | 720p HD |
| 2022 | 2.5 Mbps | 540p SD |
As you can see, maximum video bitrates on Facebook have halved over the past 7 years, and resolution has dropped from full HD to standard definition. This correlates directly to the steady decline in video quality being reported.
What Can You Do About Facebook’s Video Compression?
Here are some tips to help mitigate Facebook’s aggressive video compression and quality limits:
- Upload the highest resolution original – Uploading a top quality original gives Facebook more to work with.
- Avoid re-encoding before uploading – Re-encoding introduces generation loss.
- Use optimal encoding settings – Properly encoded videos hold up better to recompression.
- Focus on well-lit scenes – Low light footage gets noisy/pixelated much quicker.
- Use simple backgrounds – Busy backgrounds and textures get blurred and muddied.
- Add text overlays – Avoid text in the original video.
- Test on Facebook – See how your video looks after processing.
Even with perfectly optimized uploads, there is only so much you can do. Facebook will continue limiting quality to control costs. Your best bet is focusing on the original quality and composition.
Will Facebook Improve Video Quality in the Future?
Facebook has not made any announcements about improving video quality to date. And with the company’s focus shifting to Reels and short-form video, there are even fewer incentives to upgrade quality.
It’s unlikely Facebook will revert back to full HD quality at this point. The best case scenario is they maintain the current capped bitrates and resolution. More realistically, quality will continue degrading gradually over time.
For professional quality video, it may be better to focus distribution efforts on other platforms willing to deliver full fidelity uploads like YouTube or Vimeo. But Facebook’s massive reach will likely still make it an important part of most marketing strategies.
Conclusion
Facebook’s video quality issues can be frustrating, but stem from calculated business decisions by the company. As demand increases, they have chosen to downsample quality to reduce costs and system strain. While you can optimize uploads to look better, Facebook will likely continue compressing videos at the expense of fidelity. Maintaining reach on their platform requires accepting these technical limitations.