Fix video2commons so it imports videos at max resolution & fix videos imported with low quality (Community Wishlist/W447)
Video2Commons is widely used to import free-licensed videos from sites like YouTube to Commons.
It used to often import videos at a resolution lower than at the source.
This means the video isn't well-preserved on Commons and can be blurry. The (default) playback quality would be what could be tweaked down but the video on Commons I think should be at the max resolution (if it's useful).
An example video is here. If I create the webm using ffmpeg or download the video as described here, it's 4 times larger. These low-quality videos all have 640 × 360 pixels.
That problem got fixed in Oct. 2024 but I don't know if it truly got fully fixed and now it seems like there is a new or additional problem of videos being imported at lower quality (can't test the example there because the tool seems currently dysfunctional again). Fixing this is probably a community opportunity; please:
- Fix the remaining and/or new issues in V2C that result in videos being imported at lower quality than available at the source
- Identify somehow the videos that were imported at lower resolution than what's available at source – this link shows files imported via v2c which have the 640×360 resolution – however, some videos truly have that as max resolution and there may be additional problems where the resolution is different
- Upload the best-quality video as new revision for all of these low-quality files (files that are in use on Wikipedia or Wikidata would be good to prioritize; it's probably quite a few hundred files; the prior revision could subsequently be deleted)
Additionally, it seems like many NASA videos were also only imported at low quality (example) but it's unrelated to v2c. It would be great if that was also fixed and the method of #3 here could maybe also be used for that. I've asked about it here. It's better not really part of this wish but when either gets done it may be most productive to address both in one go.
Unassigned
People watching videos on Commons or Wikipedia now and in the future
- Created: 22:10, 17 October 2025
- Last updated: 11:08, 27 February 2026
- Author: Prototyperspective (talk)
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