New +YouTube Android app is nice and all with all the cool UI features but its video scaling is a joke

The update doesn't use a video surface anymore which leads to several issues:

– Poor bilinear scaling on most devices or no scaling at all (nearest neighbor) instead of the hardware scaling which is usually extremely high quality (lanczos or better) even on low end hardware that comes automatically with video surfaces.

– colorspace conversion issues leading to banding, black & highlight crushing or clipping as reported by a kind follower on twitter.

I get that multitasking is nice, but compromising with video quality is never a good idea.

Note: When you take a screenshot of your tablet displaying a video surface, you get a software conversion that is not what's actually shown on display by hardware decoding and scaling.

#supercurioBlog #video #YouTube #scaling

 

Source post on Google+

Published by

François Simond

Mobile engineer & analyst specialized in, display, camera color calibration, audio tuning

25 thoughts on “New +YouTube Android app is nice and all with all the cool UI features but its video scaling is a joke”

  1. Yes, it's nearest neighbor on SGS (latest cm/semaphore)
    It's awful. Also multitasking is badly implemented, it should take the whole bottom part of screen. It almost seems like its halfbaked because the real one is… system wiiiiiiide.
    Speaking of wide, idiotic how all apps now look the same (cohesion vs cloning), which in youtube case means losing a ton of MARGIN space for anything text due to "card metaphor" …
    Thanks Obama.

  2. I'm so happy it wasn't just me. Terrible on the Nexus 10 and new Nexus 7, not too apparent on the SGS 4. And yes, I notice tearing too but only occasionally.

  3. +Adam Outler that was the first bad thing I found when using the updated YouTube. Been using it for two and a half days ow and this is the only real complaint I have about it to be honest. The copy link option is very nice to have.

  4. Yeah, you can't refresh comments without killing YouTube then going back and searching for your video. The copy link let's you take it right to a browser where you get the refresh button.

  5. +Amon RA yep same thing. As a result I'm experimenting with unofficial YouTube apps, some seem to play 1080p with correct 1:1 pixel mapping.
    Problem is that they don't display content creator apps. Not that I'm a huge fan of ads but I know for a fact that they're critical to many YouTubers income.

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