Videos, shorts & streaming quality
How the video pages work – adaptive HD streaming, shorts, the sidebar, view counts and what the lock on a video means.
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Streaming
Videos are streamed with adaptive bitrate (HLS): the player picks the best quality for your connection and switches on the fly, up to the original resolution of the upload (1080p and above where the source allows it). Nothing is re-encoded into a lower "web" quality for free users.
Playback URLs are short-lived and tied to your session. That is what keeps paid and private videos private – see Download protection.
Video pages
Each video has its own page (/videos/<id>) with the player, title, tags, the
creator's profile, comments and a sidebar of related videos. The sidebar and
the recommendations respect your tag filter and
never show the video you are already watching.
- Free videos play immediately – logged in or not.
- For sale videos show a price and a Buy this video button; after the purchase the page reloads with the full video. See Buying videos.
- Login to watch appears on videos that require an account (for sale or private ones) when you are not logged in.
- Creators can enable a download button on videos you have bought.
Shorts
Vertical clips are shown in the Shorts feed – swipe or scroll through them, every clip counts as a regular video and can be opened on its own page.
Views
A view is counted once per viewer and day, and only after a few seconds of real playback (seeking back and forth does not count). The count is shown on video cards and on the video page, and Most viewed is one of the sort options on the videos page.
Favorites & playlists
Click the heart on a video to add it to your Favorites (visible on your profile). Creators can arrange their videos in playlists.