1440p Recordings and Blurriness

[PetrosEfthymiou]

Hello,

I am about to publish my first coding course, which I recorded on 1440p.

I tried to preview the coding videos and they are looking really blurry. I learned about the adaptive streaming but it goes up to 1080p. 

Will my 1440p videos look good on auto 1080p? Do you have any experience / recommendations for the case ?

Thank you in advance,

Petros.

[PetrosEfthymiou]

I would love to have the input of anyone who recorded on 1440p

[ba0708]

I have limited knowledge of these things, so don't blindly trust me on this... 😉  Which resolution did you record in? I found that recording in 1920x1080 gives me the best results, because that matches the aspect ratio that the videos will be viewed in (16:9). When I first started out, I recorded videos on my MacBook in some weird resolution and found that the videos would get all blurry due to changing the aspect ratio. Of course you can record in a higher resolution as long as the aspect ratio is correct. So if you are not recording in 16:9, then that is probably your biggest issue. Since you have to contact Udemy to even enable 1080p, I'd say that uploading anything above 1080p is not worth the effort. I'd say record in a resolution with an aspect ratio of 16:9 and then upload your videos in 1080p. If you recorded in 2560x1440, then you should be fine.

[PetrosEfthymiou]

That's correct! 

I recorded all the videos in 2560x1440 which is 16:9, but I am afraid that by downscaling to 1080p it is going to look blurry. 

A just tried a 720p video streamed on 720p and it looks more clear than 1440p streamed on 720p, and I am afraid the problem will persist on 1080p (in a smaller scale ofc).

Just don't want to see the 9 hours of content I created, streamed in bad quality 😕 . I thought 1440p is going to provide better results.

Cheers,

Petros.

[ba0708]

What does a 1440p recording look like downscaled to 1080p when playing it from the local file? I.e. the exported video file, outside of Udemy. Just to factor Udemy out of it. My 720p videos on Udemy look really blurry compared to the files I export. I imagine Udemy is pretty aggressive when it comes to saving bandwidth.

[DamianMcKinnon]

Generally down-scaling video - taking a large aspect ratio and shrinking it - tends to sharpen image quality rather than reduce it as long as the aspect ratio is the same. What I'd suggest though is download a good free program called "handbrake" and use that to output your final video. You can optimize your files for web and it has excellent compression algorithms so the finished product will be much smaller in file size and that means it will load faster and smoother regardless of where in the world a person is watching your video. And this matters - countries with slower internet will struggle to play video that's high quality and big in file size. You'll get negative reviews on that pretty much out the gate.

Many people view content on mobile and tablet now so 4k or extreme quality video is overkill. And they'll remember if your video pauses every 5 seconds to buffer.

Hope this helps.

[PetrosEfthymiou]

Thanks for your feedback, I will try that in the future.

FYI After enabling adaptive streaming, at 1080p the videos look clear.