Instagram reveals why some videos are lower quality than others

Are some of your Instagram videos lower quality than others? There’s a reason for that.

Instagram head Adam Mosseri recently spoke about video quality in an AMA, confirming that Instagram video quality is dependant, in part, on views.

“If something isn’t watched for a long time because the vast majority of views are in the beginning, we will move to a lower quality video,” said Mosseri. “And if it’s watched again a lot we will re-render at a higher quality video.”

Mosseri went on to say that if someone is watching on a slower internet connection, that will also result in videos being rendered in lower quality. “The goal is to show people the highest quality content that we can.”

Instagram’s video quality works at an aggregate, rather than an individual, level, Mosseri confirmed in a later post on Threads.

“We bias to higher quality (more CPU intensive encoding and more expensive storage for bigger files) for creators who drive more views. It’s not a binary threshold, but rather a sliding scale.”