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Kevin Fu and Fuhao Shi remember one of the first videos that made them realize the power of Pixel 8 Pro\u2019s Video Boost technology. \u201cI filmed a demo video early on when we were working on Video Boost,\u201d Fuhao says. \u201cIt was super dark; you couldn\u2019t make out any detail.\u201d Then, they applied Video Boost, a camera feature on Pixel 8 Pro that makes videos higher quality with better lighting, finer details and richer colors. Suddenly they could see a red car parked on the street, homes in the background and details of the road \u2014 all previously obscured in the dark. \u201cIt was one of those \u2018wow!\u2019 moments,\u201d Kevin says.<\/p>\n
Kevin and Fuhao are part of the team that has brought Video Boost to life; Kevin is a product manager and Fuhao is a senior software engineer, both for Pixel Camera. \u201cWe want to give people the best video quality possible,\u201d Kevin says.<\/p>\n
To do this, the team developed a feature that relies on multiple technologies to improve video quality. For better lighting, Video Boost uses HDR+ with Night Sight (a process that pulls in a large range of dark to bright lighting data). Video Boost also uses machine learning techniques that stabilize each frame and reduce motion blur so the end result is ultra sharp.<\/p>\n
To use Video Boost, you simply select the option from your camera settings and record your video. Right after you record the video, you will have an initial video that is immediately available on your Pixel. Your phone will also send a second temporary video to the cloud for processing (boosting). You’ll get a message once your boosted video is ready.<\/p>\n
All of this is possible thanks to what Kevin and Fuhao describe as the powerful duo of cloud computing and on-device processing, powered by the Pixel 8 Pro\u2019s Tensor G3 chip. \u201cThat\u2019s the beauty of what we can do here,\u201d Kevin says. \u201cThe process starts on the device, and then transfers to the cloud \u2014 and that\u2019s where we can do a lot of optimizations that we couldn\u2019t do on the device alone.\u201d<\/p>\n
Below, Kevin and Fuhao share more about how Video Boost works as well as these four tips for using it.<\/p>\n
Shooting videos at night or in other dark settings on your phone can be tough because of hardware and software limitations. \u201cSmartphone camera sensors are generally smaller compared to traditional DSLRs and mirrorless cameras, so it\u2019s hard for them to capture enough light. And from a computational perspective, it becomes difficult to run the best algorithms to upgrade the video quality,\u201d Kevin says. \u201cIt\u2019s easier with photos because that\u2019s just one image to produce, but videos are typically shooting in 30 frames per second, so there are a lot of images for the algorithms to process.\u201d This is why, oftentimes, videos shot by phones in dim settings are grainy, dark, blurry or all of the above.<\/p>\n
Video Boost, however, delivers incredibly well-lit, bright, crisp videos \u2014 thanks to the aforementioned tech as well as its new sensor. \u201cIn low light, the visual noise levels are much better,\u201d Fuhao says. It can even result in a big reveal: \u201cA lot of people will record something in a dark area and they won\u2019t really be able to even see anything they shot,\u201d Kevin says. \u201cThen they use Video Boost on it and when they get the results, they\u2019re so excited when suddenly so much more is visible.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n