Vine upgrades video quality to 720p

Vine 3.3 for iOS iPhone screenshot 001

Vine, a service for sharing short 15-second looping clips, announced on Friday that it is finally upgrading video quality from a rather paltry 480p resolution to a more acceptable 720p.

“We’ve been working on technical upgrades that support Vines in higher quality,” the Twitter-owned company said. The 720p format offers a resolution of 1,280-by-720 pixels whereas the 480p standard tops out at 640-by-480 pixels.

“If you have an iPhone, the posts you create and upload will support our new high quality format,” said Vine. Android users will have to wait a little longer until Vine implements the ability to create and upload posts with the same quality.

With three times more pixels, 720p Vines deliver much sharper, crisper and less fuzzier video than before. The iPhone’s front-facing FaceTime camera is HD-ready so you can now share your 720p selfie videos on Vine.

However, 720p video also produces bigger video files, something you must take into account if sharing your Vines on the go, using the cellular connection. Here’s a side-by-side comparison of Vine’s old 480p video resolution at left and the upgraded video quality at 720p at right.

Vine 480p vs 720p

You’ll be able to watch 720p Vines on the official iOS and Android apps soon as the video quality improvements are rolling out “over the coming days”. You’ll also see higher quality Vines embedded in sites across the web, like the ones included below.

Vine’s previous update has added video pre-caching and background fetching so you can watch your Vines even without an Internet connection.

Parents may want to take a look at Vine Kids, a recently released Vine app that offers kids a safe place to browse a human curated selection of clips on the service.

Vine is available at no cost in the App Store.

Source: Vine