Explainer
Dailymotion video quality, explained
What 240p, 380p, 480p, 720p and 1080p mean on Dailymotion, why some videos stop at 720p, how big each tier is, and which one to download.
Checked · By DailymotionDownloader
Paste a Dailymotion link into a downloader and you get a list: 240p, 380p, 480p, 720p, maybe 1080p. This explains what each of those means, why one video offers 1080p and the next stops at 720p, roughly how big each one is, and which one to pick.
Why there are several qualities at all
Dailymotion does not stream the file the uploader sent. It encodes each upload into a ladder of quality tiers and its player switches between them as your connection speeds up or slows down — that is why a video sometimes starts blurry and sharpens a few seconds in. Each rung of that ladder is a separate copy of the video, and a downloader lists the rungs a video actually has.
The tiers
| Tier | Frame (16:9 video) | Good for |
|---|---|---|
| 240p | about 426 × 240 | Previews, very slow connections |
| 380p | Dailymotion's standard definition | Small phone screens, saving space |
| 480p | about 848 × 480 | Phones, mobile data |
| 720p | 1280 × 720 — HD | Phones, tablets, laptops |
| 1080p | 1920 × 1080 — Full HD | Monitors, TVs, keeping |
| 1440p / 2160p | Up to 3840 × 2160 — 4K | Large screens, where the upload has it |
Not every video has every tier. Most have the lower rungs; which of the upper ones appear depends on the upload.
Why it says 380p, not 360p
Most platforms call their standard-definition tier 360p. Dailymotion labels it 380 in a video's own metadata, and that is the label this site shows, so it matches the quality menu in Dailymotion's player. In practice it fills the same role: watchable on a phone, soft on a laptop.
Why a video stops at 720p
A tier can only exist if the upload was at least that sharp. Dailymotion accepts uploads up to 4K (3840 × 2160), but a video recorded or exported at 720p only gets tiers up to 720p. Older uploads, screen recordings and clips re-exported by social apps are often lower than they look.
That is also the ceiling for every downloader. Nothing can produce a genuine 1080p file from a video Dailymotion only streams at 720p. A tool that offers one is either relabelling the 720p copy or upscaling it, which makes the file bigger without adding any detail.
How big each tier is
File size is bitrate multiplied by length, and bitrate varies from video to video — a static talking head compresses far better than a football match. So there is no exact figure per tier, but there is a useful ballpark.
Dailymotion's own help centre recommends streaming live at about 1.5 Mbps for 480p, 2.5 Mbps for 720p, and 8 Mbps for 1080p. On-demand tiers are encoded differently, but those numbers give a sense of scale: an hour at 2.5 Mbps is about 1.1 GB, and each step down the ladder is substantially smaller than the one above it. Where the size of a file is known before you download, the downloader shows it next to the option.
Which one to pick
- Keeping it, or watching on a TV or monitor: the top row.
- Watching on a phone: 480p or 720p. On a six-inch screen the difference from 1080p is hard to see, and the file is much smaller.
- On mobile data, or short of storage: 380p or 480p.
- Editing: the highest tier available. Every edit and export loses a little, so start from the best copy.