I did not know Shaggy was a hacker

Sure it’s old but the stats I posted in a lower comment show that at YouTube’s scale, it makes sense to store.

Sorry didn’t mean to be rude was just being silly

Post here anyway rule

Are you suggesting they don’t store different versions? This (speculative ik) suggests they do.

I believe they store and that’s why it processes lowest res first and works up

Are you wondering if one instance can be spread across multiple machines? I don’t think that’s possible and seems unnecessary. I say that because spreading users onto more instances creates less load on the larger instances, not more. Edit: I guess you can scale instances across machines!