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parts 1: 1the same field parts 2: 2four transcodes parts 3: 3the top rung parts 4: 4progress here

1. 1

   Video is a genuinely rare deviation type

   DeviantArt is an image site that also accepts film and animation, and the proportions show it. Sampling the site's own tag feeds while writing this, a page of 23 deviations tagged animation contained exactly one that was actually video — the rest were stills of animated work, process shots, and illustrations about animation.

   That is worth saying plainly because it sets expectations: almost every link you paste will be an image. When a link does resolve to video, nothing about the process changes. The same field takes the same kind of address, and the format callout is what tells you which kind of deviation you are holding.

2. 2

   Why four files appear instead of one

   When a film deviation is uploaded, DeviantArt transcodes it into a ladder of MP4 renditions rather than storing one file. Every rung of that ladder is published, and every rung is a legitimate answer to "download this video" — so the honest thing is to show you all of them with their real sizes and let you choose.

   A concrete example, measured: a short animation published on the site returns four files — 360p at 230 KB, 480p at 340 KB, 720p at 589 KB, and 1080p at 1.16 MB. The jump from 720p to 1080p roughly doubles the bytes, which is a very ordinary shape for a transcode ladder.

   Sizes on longer pieces scale accordingly. A full-length 1080p animation can reach tens of megabytes where a short loop like the one above stays around one.

3. 3

   Which rung to take

   For anything you intend to watch, take the highest rung offered. The size difference on typical DeviantArt animations is small in absolute terms, and the quality difference between 480p and 1080p on line art or cel animation is severe — flat colour and hard edges are exactly what low-bitrate video handles worst.

   The lower rungs earn their place in two situations: a phone on a metered connection, and a file you only need as reference rather than as a viewing copy.

   What is not on offer is a rung above the ceiling DeviantArt itself published. Every ladder we have measured stops at 1080p. If the artist uploaded a 4K master, the published renditions still top out at 1080p, and no tool reading the public deviation can produce the master from them.

4. 4

   The percentage matters more here

   Video is where the progress counter stops being cosmetic. The transfer runs from DeviantArt's CDN into your browser's memory, and only when the whole file has arrived does it get written to disk. For a 230 KB clip that is instantaneous. For a large 1080p piece it is a real wait, and on a phone with little free memory it is a real constraint.

   Nothing is proxied through this server on the way, so the rate you see is your own line rate. If the counter is moving slowly, that is the distance between you and DeviantArt's CDN, and picking a lower rung is the fix.