Assassin’s Creed Black Flag Resynced’s PS5 Pro trailer looks like YouTube fed it through a wood chipper

Ubisoft published a new Assassin’s Creed Black Flag Resynced trailer showcasing how the game looks on PS5 Pro, and it reminded me how these 4K game trailers just don’t work on YouTube. And it just makes me wonder why this unappealing method has become the preferred way of showcasing what should be cutting-edge visual capabilities.

If you keep your eye on protagonist Edward Kenway, and only him, it’s fine. (Well, except at 0:44 and 0:45, where his hair gets a bit blurry.) It’s fine! It looks pretty decent, the colors are vivid, the framerate looks smooth. And everything else around him is markedly less so. Just look at the blurred tree leaves five seconds in, the sand in the fight scene after that, the artifacts at 0:12 and 0:30 — it’s not a pretty trailer.

It’s not Ubisoft’s fault, though. YouTube compresses every upload (as do Twitch and other platforms). In plain terms, compression squashes data together to lower the file size and bitrate (data) demand, which reduces the video and audio quality. If you’re watching a YouTube video with tinny-sounding audio, for example, you can thank compression for that.

The idea is that compression helps ensure people with less speedy or reliable internet connections can still stream something at a moderately decent quality. And YouTube’s compression has become less egregious, at least with 1440p and 4K videos, for which the platform uses a different transcoding method (VP9) than it does for 1080p videos (assuming the uploader uses a browser or device that supports VP9). In theory, it helps retain more data during compression, so the quality is higher, even if it’s not fully 4K. The generally accepted wisdom is to avoid compressing your files before uploading, if you can help it, and to upload only the highest quality footage so it stays nicer even after compression. Upscaling also helps.

But that’s assuming you need to show off 4K, which you don’t, since YouTube compresses regardless. There are better options.

YouTube allocates higher bitrates for 4K: 53-68 mbps for anything between 48 and 60 frames per second and 45 mbps for 30 fps. 1080p gets 12. Bitrate here is how much data each second of video uses. Assassin’s Creed Black Flag on PS5 Pro only runs at 4K via upscaling, the same as standard PS5, and Ubisoft hasn’t said what the game’s target resolution is. But whether it’s 1080p or 1440p, the studio could, in theory, get away with upscaling 1080p footage to 4K and uploading it that way.

That method tricks YouTube into allocating the file the same bitrate as native 4K, which gives the 1080p file more room to properly handle things like fast movement. In that scenario, it’s far less likely you’d have blurry sand and indistinct objects in the distance the way the current trailer does. Another alternative is downscaling higher-resolution footage to 1080p. You still get 1080p as your max resolution, but with better image quality than you’d get just uploading standard 1080p.

Upscaled or downscaled, it just seems like a more elegant way to show off footage for a souped-up console. Showcasing a poorer version that doesn’t represent what consumers are buying — or the work your team put into making a game look its best — just doesn’t help anyone.