Twitter says your new video uploads will appear less pixelated and have better quality. The official Twitter support account has revealed that the website made updates to fix its platform's poor video quality, which has been a problem for its users since the beginning. Twitter told The Verge that it removed a pre-processing step when you upload videos that's responsible for the issue. That step apparently splits the clip you're trying to upload into smaller chunks for easier processing, and that could reduce video quality.
Some good news: we’ve made updates to improve video quality.
Starting today, videos you upload to Twitter will appear less pixelated for a better watching experience. pic.twitter.com/lJPI14PVRV
— Twitter Support (@TwitterSupport) September 24, 2021
The company told the publication that the changes aren't live on Twitter Media Studio, a tool that gives you access to all the media you've ever uploaded, yet. Also, while the improved video quality is expected to be available to everyone, it will only apply to new video uploads and won't be retroactively applied to old ones. Here's a sample of a new upload that's supposed to have better quality:
Same clip in 720p. Supposedly this is the recommended format… pic.twitter.com/aJQglwNgqA
— JackFrags (@jackfrags) September 24, 2021
While some people said they barely notice any difference from before, others noticed less compression in full screen and quicker adjustment when you switch screen sizes. The quality still isn't comparable to HD videos posted on YouTube, but it does look decent enough. Back in 2019, Twitter also made changes to the way it uploads JPEGs to prevent lowering their quality upon being posted.