I used Video Boost to record my kid's Christmas party; here's what I felt

When you announce something big and hold the rollout for later, it naturally increases the excitement – just like movie teasers do for the first trailer and the movie itself. Google did it with Video Boost in October. They teased the feature but said it’s coming later. The feature did arrive in time for holidays though, and as was expected, put to test and used by many people owning a Google Pixel 8 Pro (sadly, Video Boost is not available on the non-pro version).

As a Pixel 8 Pro owner myself, I used it for testing purposes a couple of times immediately after it arrived on my device (to be honest, it didn’t arrive organically – I kind of snatched it from Google using this trick, even before my device got the December update). However, I actually used it very recently on my kid’s Christmas party which we organized at home by inviting some of his local friends.

Frankly speaking, let alone Video Boost, I wasn’t even using my 8 Pro for recording at the party. It has always been my wife’s or someone else’s iPhone that we use to click pics and videos at parties and outings – and the Christmas party was no exception either. However, the iPhone suddenly got occupied for playing music over Bluetooth, and that’s when everyone reminded me of my shiny new Pixel 8 Pro.

I quickly popped it out, launched the camera, turned the video mode on, and lo-and-behold, my 8 Pro camera already gave me a notification to turn the Video Boost on, as if it magically knew I need it at this moment.

This got me impressed. I wanted to show this intuitiveness of my phone’s camera to everyone else, but alas, no one seemed to be in a mood to pay attention to some tech wizardy – the party was in full flow after all. So I swallowed my excitement, and tapped on the notification, and it took me to the video settings wherein it highlighted the Video Boost option row for a couple of times, as if telling me “here it is”.

I immediately turned it on, and started recording the first video. I made a 30-40-second clip, and then I made several other video recordings.

As I am already in the process of listing out all the Video Boost-related stuff that impressed me, I’ll come to the shortcomings later. So, moving on in the same vein, the final output of the Video Boost feature did impress me a lot. Following is a side-by-side comparison video of kids dancing in low-light. The left video is with Video Boost turned off, while the right one is the output with Video Boost turned on.

If you ask a tech enthusiast, the difference is fair enough. But if you ask the parents of that kid who is donning an all-black attire, they would be mightily impressed and happy with the Video Boost feature, as it made their kid prominently visible. I felt happy for the same reason, as, after all, I had to send these video clips to the parents of these kids – Video Boost saved the day for me (if you understand what I am talking about 🙂 ).

So, to recap, from that small notification to turn it on to actually enhancing the low-light videos, Video Boost seems to be practically useful. However, as I indicated earlier, my experience wasn’t free from hiccups, so now let’s quickly discuss the letdowns.

I’ll start from the point where I had swallowed my excitement of the Camera app giving me that notification to turn Video Boost on. After that first video clip that I recorded, I was enagaged with some other things in the party, and then when another moment arrived, I quickly got hold of my Pixel 8 Pro again, launched the camera, switched to video mode, and started recording the video.

Once done, I quickly cross-checked that the video is being uploaded to Google’s server for processing (in case you didn’t know that about Video Boost, well yes, the processing is not on-device). And I was in for a rude shock, as the video wasn’t being uploaded. And it’s at that point, it dawned on me that Video Boost requires to be turned on everytime you launch the Camera app.

The media above loads from our Imgur account

For a moment, I was kind of outzoned, as if the party and music around me slowly started fading away. And no, I am not being overdramatic here, as it was a moment that would not come back, and I failed to capture it with Video Boost on. I couldn’t muster the courage to ask these bunch of 8-year-old wild balls of energy to redo what they just did, and was already imagining my family giving me death stares during the post-party session when we check all the pics and videos.

The Video Boost implementation failed me at that point. The damage was done, and I – as a father, as a husband, and a friend – was already feeling bad about it. Looking back at it now, I feel that when you are absorbed in a moment, like I was, things happen so fast that it’s very difficult to keep in mind that Video Boost needs to be turned on every time you launch the camera app. If anything, instead of turning the feature off automatically, the Camera app could just notify the user next time around that this feature is on, and they can turn it off if it’s not required.

So that was one major hiccup I faced with Video Boost. Another one came when after the party everyone was excited to see the pics and videos. When it came to low-light videos, the videos were – yes you guessed it – “processing” on Google’s server. I got to see some cold, werid facial expressions when I told everyone that the vidoes are being refined somewhere far away from where we were.

As time passed, the question shifted to “why so much time?”. People asked me thrice in our 45 mins session – “Is the processing over? Can we see the videos now?” And I just couldn’t say yes. Everytime I took my phone out to check the status, it just said something like this:

And it didn’t stop there. When going to sleep (at least 3 hours after the party), my wife showed interest in checking the processed videos again. I could only show her one. Rest 4 were STILL being processed. She then told me that all the parents were so excited to see these videos and by tomorrow, that excitement would be gone. And then came the final nail in the coffin from her: “It’d have been better if we’d have used our iPhone instead.”

I agree with her at this point. Waiting for hours and hours reduces the whole excitement around the moment you captured. While I did share the processed videos with her in the morning, I couldn’t help but notice that she gave me a fake “hmmm” when I asked if she felt the quality of processed videos was better.

This wait reminded me of the times when, after clicking photos, you had to send them to the photo lab for development.

Anyway, I also wanted to share that I did test Video Boost during the day, and it doesn’t produce that much refinement. With the limited testing that I did, I didn’t find it worth the processing wait when used in a place where there is sufficient light. Here’s an example:

This makes me wonder if it’s the Night Sight that does the magic in Video Boost? After all, the Camera app notification – shared earlier – says “Video Boost with Night Sight”. Speaking to The Verge recently, a Google employee Isaac Reynolds, did confirm the same. He said referring to Video Boost:

Think about it as Night Sight Video, because all of the tweaks to the other algorithms are all in pursuit of Night Sight.

It’s worth mentioning here that Night Sight was definitely a game-changer when it arrived, and it’s a feature that Google still advertises.

Anyway, even if you make peace with all other limitations of Video Boost, I personally feel the waiting time for the final output is a real bummer. One would think that Google will eventually make this on-device, but Reynolds’ answer to a similar question seemed less encouraging. He, in fact, said, for him, the cloud is just another component of the Tensor chipset that power Pixels.

The Verge’s article on this topic is a very informative read, do read it btw.

Anyway, that was my real-world experience with Video Boost on Pixel 8 Pro. It has the potential, but some limitations need to be ironed out on priority. I intend to use it again during the New Year trip I am heading to. I will definitely share if I find something worthy of being shared. Meanwhile, don’t hesitate to put your thoughts out in the comments section below.

Oh, and yes, that kid with the red check shirt is my son, Navish. 🙂