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I had this too, on Chrome on my MacbookAir 2012. Then I found this: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/h264ify/aleakchihdccplidncghkekgioiakgal https://c

by xgbi 11y ago

I had this too, on Chrome on my MacbookAir 2012. Then I found this: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/h264ify/aleakchihdccplidncghkekgioiakgal https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/h264ify/aleakchihd... Google pushes his VP9 format so hard, it serves it to its chrome users on Mac, where it cannot be hardware-accelerated... This is ridiculous, especially when it serves H264 when browsing on Safari! I installed this app and switched to H264 for all videos, bringing in HW decoding, and since then my autonomy tripled when I go on Youtube binge.

vetinari 11y ago
Theoretically, VP9 decoding could be accelerated on Macs, if Apple wanted. The Intel GPUs in Macs support it, the functionality just isn't exposed like the H.264 is. Safari is served H.264, because it does not support VP9 at all. On the other hand, VP9 streams on youtube are significantly smaller compared to similar quality H.264 streams.
Klathmon 11y ago
It's a bit of a chicken and egg problem. Hardware vendors won't support VP9 until it has some usage, and it won't get usage until it has hardware support. VP9 has some serious space savings, so it's extremely beneficial for Google to use it when possible, and many users will appreciate faster loading video at a higher quality. Unfortunately they can't know when you'd prefer to have a more efficient decoding experience, so they rank their codecs and use the "highest" one available.