How YouTube Stores 500 Hours of Video per MINUTE

YouTube receives 500 hours of video uploads every minute. Each uploaded video is encoded into multiple versions across different resolutions (240p to 4K) and codecs. All videos get encoded to H.264 by default, but high-traffic videos are also encoded in AV1, which offers smaller file sizes for easier web transmission. Adaptive bitrate streaming dynamically switches between quality levels based on the viewer's internet speed, which explains why videos sometimes appear blurry. A single uploaded video results in dozens of stored variants that are seamlessly swapped depending on conditions.