We're making changes to the Community, so you may have received some notifications - thanks for your patience and welcome back. Learn more here.
Forum Discussion
Video upload quality is bad
Every time I upload a video from my iphone to Dropbox the quality is awful. Although the videos look perfect on my iphone12, once uploaded to my Dropbox, the image is glitchy. The file is glitchy on all my devices when I view in Dropbox, but plays fine from my photos app on my Mac, iPad, and phone. My WiFi is good, so that’s not the issue. I use Dropbox to share photos and videos from my phone with the person who handles my social media, so it’s important for her to have full rez hi quality images to work with. I have no problem working with still images, but the video quality is awful.
- Me too. The video of the uploaded file is terrible.
Hey everyone,
I had the same issue with my Iphone XI and Dropbox support could not help. It took me a couple of months to understand a few things that helped me out :
- clear connection issues by downloading the videos on your computer
- If you are on Windows and already bought the HEVC codecs, but experiencing glitching while visualizing your videos, it might simply be because you don't have a 4k monitor. Try and download the files back from your computer to your phone and the glitching should be gone. Meaning it is not a file issue, but a screen issue.
-As for the data lost while transferring your videos to Dropbox, it probably is because it was transferred in H.264 instead of H265(HEVC). It took me a while to understand that there is a difference of process if you "share" your video to Dropbox app from Iphone photo app, and if you "upload" your videos from the Dropbox App. The first one will be unbearably slow and will turn your videos in h264 format no matter what your Iphone settings are, tricking us into thinking that only Icloud is functional. The second options, will be much quicker and keep the HEVC format, there will be a very little difference of weight between your Iphone file and the Dropbox file. You can check data info and codec while visualizing the file online with Dropbox. file/file info, scroll down file info and click for more, you will see the codecs format.
- Jay
Dropbox Staff
Hi Verdad, thanks for bringing this to our attention.
Previewing videos from the mobile app and site can vary depending on the speed of the internet. Downloading the file directly would ensure the same quality as it was when uploaded to the site.
If you're previewing from the mobile device directly, could you try offlining the file first to see if this improves the video?
Keep me updated with any progress!
- My WiFi speed is 2 gig up and down. The video is always terrible.
- Megan
Hi Larry8369, thanks for posting here!
Is the quality of the video bad, when you preview it directly through Dropbox, or when you download it locally?
How large is the file itself? Have you tried previewing it, using cellular data, instead of WiFi?
And if so, do you get the same results?
Keep me posted!
- I try to upload various videos into a new empty folder(From MacBook), and they take awhile to upload as usual. But after they upload, I watch them back and they are all super bad quality. They upload in 480p. I upload them from an SD card and they are all perfect quality on the SD Card. Does anyone know why this is happening?
