Perceived quality
Also known as: experienced quality, subjective quality
What a viewer actually thinks of a video, which diverges from measured quality often enough to be worth naming separately.
Updated
What it means
Measured quality and experienced quality are different things. A technically excellent file that stalls twice is remembered as bad, and a modest file that starts instantly is remembered as perfectly fine. The ranking is not about the encode.
Starting fast matters more than almost anything else. The first moments decide the impression, and nothing anywhere in the encode recovers an opinion that was formed while a loading spinner turned.
It is the practical complement to Video quality. One decomposes the technical properties; this one is about what survives contact with a real viewer watching on a real device.
How it works in practice
Reliability beats fidelity in delivery. A 1080p file that plays everywhere is a better product than a 4K file that works for some people, which is why Device compatibility is a quality decision.
Sound carries more than people expect. A clean music bed and a sensible level raise the impression of a clip more than an extra stop of shadow detail ever will, and both are cheap to get right.
Pacing is read as production value. A tight edit on ordinary footage is received better than a slow edit on excellent footage, because Audience retention follows attention rather than fidelity.
What to watch out for
Optimising the measurable part is tempting and partial. Bitrate, resolution and codec are all easy to improve, and none of them is what most complaints are actually about.
The screen decides more than the file. A clip judged on a phone in sunlight is judged on contrast rather than detail, so a dark grade loses on hardware nobody actually tested it on.
A Playback error is attributed to the content. Somebody whose video will not start concludes the file is bad, and no amount of quality in the encode argues anybody out of that.
How RawClip handles it
Delivery choices favour a file that plays immediately and everywhere over one that maximises a specification, because the second is only better in the places where it works at all. A lower-resolution version exists alongside it for exactly the same reason.