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YouTube Plans Automatic Upscaling for Low-Res Videos (blog.youtube) 20

YouTube says it will automatically upscale videos uploaded below 1080p (full-HD to higher resolution using AI. The Google-owned platform, however, assured that it will give creators and viewers the option to opt out of the enhancement. The feature will apply only to videos uploaded in resolutions from 240p to 720p and will not affect videos that creators have already remastered to 1080p. Creators will retain control over their original files, and viewers will be able to watch videos in their uploaded resolution through a settings option.

YouTube said it plans to support upscaling to 4K in the near future. The company also said it is expanding the video thumbnail size limit from 2MB to 50MB to support 4K images. On videos with tagged products, viewers will soon be able to scan a QR code on TV screens to purchase items directly.
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YouTube Plans Automatic Upscaling for Low-Res Videos

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  • by mick232 ( 1610795 ) on Wednesday October 29, 2025 @02:13PM (#65759238)
    (duration 90 minutes) of a random white dot on a green area and the AI upscaled it to a soccer World Championships finals match. Best game I ever saw!
    • by dgatwood ( 11270 )

      Wesley: I see you have six fingers on your left hand. Someone was looking for you.

      Count: It's an upscaler hallucination! I swear!

  • I've been watching the Polygon 98 channel lately, and in order to understand it, I depend on automatic closed captioning and translation. Google botches this spectacularly at every turn. Some of it is understandable, like when there's a lot of loud engine noise. But it's also just generally inexplicable. Engine noise is captioned [music] or [applause]. Actual music is not noted. If they could improve their captioning that would produce a lot more benefit than upscaling some videos and creating shit that doe

    • by nightflameauto ( 6607976 ) on Wednesday October 29, 2025 @02:49PM (#65759324)

      I've been watching the Polygon 98 channel lately, and in order to understand it, I depend on automatic closed captioning and translation. Google botches this spectacularly at every turn. Some of it is understandable, like when there's a lot of loud engine noise. But it's also just generally inexplicable. Engine noise is captioned [music] or [applause]. Actual music is not noted. If they could improve their captioning that would produce a lot more benefit than upscaling some videos and creating shit that doesn't exist in them, which will inevitably happen.

      Turn on captioning on some death metal for a good giggle. It doesn't just try to caption the lyrics. It tries to caption the guitars, and some of the words it comes up with are absolutely hysterical.

  • by jjaa ( 2041170 ) on Wednesday October 29, 2025 @03:14PM (#65759390)
    no time to implement proper configuration for when to enable automated dubbing, which languages, etc... but plenty of time to train people to accept AI-looking videos like it's the new normal
    • But I enjoy turning off captions on foreign cooking videos only after the first commercials in English, captioned in English. It needs two settings, one to enable or disable auto-captioning in the applications native language and the second to disable auto-captioning in all other languages.

  • The irony (Score:5, Interesting)

    by almitydave ( 2452422 ) on Wednesday October 29, 2025 @03:57PM (#65759524)

    It's ironic given that videos I uploaded at 640x480 and were originally accessible at that resolution now only exist in 240p versions. :/

  • What happens to dormant accounts on up-scaling on the opt-out? Reason be is some creators are no longer active as site like youtube has been around for decades now some of the creators are dead due to age among other reason(s) may apply.

    On the last part of "On videos with tagged products, viewers will soon be able to scan a QR code on TV screens to purchase items directly." Sound like a Darth Vader MBA is in charge as they let go and laid off the good fella tech workers.
  • Ancient Youtube (Score:4, Insightful)

    by TwistedGreen ( 80055 ) on Wednesday October 29, 2025 @04:05PM (#65759546)

    Those 18-year-old videos on YouTube are rare treasures. It's like finding a 300-year-old tree in the woods that somehow managed to survive the industrial revolution. They stand out, with a rare beauty and innocence that is difficult to find today. I hope this doesn't end up with these treasures being destroyed and replaced with a hallucinated mess.

    • Those 18-year-old videos on YouTube are rare treasures. It's like finding a 300-year-old tree in the woods that somehow managed to survive the industrial revolution. They stand out, with a rare beauty and innocence that is difficult to find today. I hope this doesn't end up with these treasures being destroyed and replaced with a hallucinated mess.

      Yes, because most of them were flagged as private a few years ago, and like you said, the accounts have been dormant for a decade.

    • "Those 18-year-old videos on YouTube are rare treasures."

      Indeed and for some strange reason, YouTube recommends a dozen of them to me every fucking day.

      It must believe I'm a treasure hunter.

  • Seems that youtube now defaults to 720p, unless you switch it to 1080p, and won't let you get 4K and also high quality bit rate on 1080 unless you pay.

  • by williamyf ( 227051 ) on Wednesday October 29, 2025 @04:54PM (#65759654)

    tons of old anime and other low res media is on youtube. up until now "something" was doing the scaling to 720p, 900p or 1440p(my current monitor). And this will be easier to use than the ringlamore I had to do until now with LossLessScaling (which I love).

    So, great, thanks

    • up until now "something" was doing the scaling to 720p, 900p or 1440p(my current monitor).

      Is it your monitor, though? Isn't it your graphics card these days? The GPUs have had scalers which made it basically free for a bunch of years. I would notice a resolution change on the TV I use for a monitor, in fact I do notice them when they occur, and no matter what I watch or play that never happens automatically.

  • On my 4k tv those old videos look bad.
    Just make sure I can turn it OFF when it doesn't work right on a particular video.

  • by Shane A Leslie ( 923938 ) on Wednesday October 29, 2025 @05:45PM (#65759784) Homepage Journal

    So why waste the time, energy, and bandwidth?

  • by NotEmmanuelGoldstein ( 6423622 ) on Thursday October 30, 2025 @02:11AM (#65760560)
    They're going to "up-scale": In case people have forgotten, 3 years ago, they down-scaled their free service to 720p. As others have commented, it was more than the 1080p videos: Everything was down-scaled. Now, they're going to algorithmically put the pixels back: Enshittification has become a benefit.
  • ...is there a way to opt out of this?

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