Google unveiled its updated Pixel 8 and Pixel 8 Pro smartphones back in early October at its Made By Google event, and one of the highlight features that 8 Pro owners were informed they’d have to wait for – Video Boost – finally arrives this month.
A teardown of the latest Google Photos APK (Android Package Kit – the collection of files that make up an Android app) spotted by Android Authority suggests Video Boost is on the way; it’s set to arrive later this month as part of Google’s Pixel phones’ next Feature Drop.
During the launch, Shenaz Zack Mistry, Google’s Director of Product Management, described Video Boost as a “new form of video processing” that relies not only on the Pixel 8 Pro’s native machine learning and image processing – powered by its Tensor G3 chipset – but also on Google’s cloud computing power.
The idea behind Video Boost is that you turn it on before taking video, and then after your video is shot (at up to 4K quality), you’ll have instant access to a local version that’s processed on-device. Simultaneously, the same film is transferred to Google’s servers, where the HDR Plus image pipeline, which the phone normally only applies to photos, is applied to every frame of video, before the newly-processed clip is returned to your phone with a Video Boost label affixed.
Users will welcome the enhancement to low-light video recording that arrives with the update perhaps more than the greater dynamic range and enhanced colors and contrast that Video Boost promises. The Pixel brand’s exceptional low-light photography option is known as Night Sight, and the off-device processing means that the Pixel 8 Pro is the first in the series to support Night Sight Video capture. Mistry claims that the results will be “the best low-light video on any smartphone,” so we can’t wait to try it out for ourselves.
During the unveiling, Mistry said that “for a one-minute video at 30 frames per second, that’s the same as processing 1,800 photos.” It’s because of the scale of processing that Video Boost footage must be handled off-device; even with the enhanced power of the Pixel 8 series’ Tensor G3 chip, asking it to handle so much media while also powering everything you expect from your smartphone would likely bring it to a halt.
According to the APK inspection, videos will need to be backed up before Video Boost can be used, but users may also be able to send films off for processing after recording. Supported file formats are AVC (greater device compatibility) and HEVC (better file size versus quality at the expense of compatibility), but customers may have more options by the time the feature is ready.
Why is Video Boost only available for Pro Pixels?
While we wait for Video Boost to arrive (inside its respective December Feature Drop), there is some confusion as to why this is still a Pixel 8 Pro-only feature and whether it will be extended to the standard Pixel 8 and prior entrants in Google’s Pixel smartphone family.
The Pixel 8 Pro certainly boasts some of the most sophisticated camera technology and capabilities seen in the series to date. However, it remains unclear why some features, such as Pro mode (in-depth manual controls), are limited to the Pixel 8, while others, such as Magic Editor (which also relies on off-device processing, like Video Boost), operate on both the Pixel 8 and 8 Pro.
It’s not a hardware limitation that prevents the standard Pixel 8 from shooting Video Boost-worthy footage, with an almost identical main 50MP camera and the same Tensor G3 chipset, so it’s presumably just an arbitrary distinction made by Google to help differentiate the Pixel 8 Pro and justify its higher price tag.
