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The exact correspondence between the VPx-es and the MPEG codecs is not that relevant, because old codecs don't go away when new ones come out. In fact, hardware
by niftich 9y ago
The exact correspondence between the VPx-es and the MPEG codecs is not that relevant, because old codecs don't go away when new ones come out. In fact, hardware decoders are irrevocably baked into devices where consumption happens, so anything H.264 or newer becomes difficult to displace -- like Google's ham-fisted push [1] for VP8 and VP9 on YouTube for their own benefit, burning through people's batteries in software instead of serving H.264.
But I'd argue that the MPEG codecs roughly slot in between each tier of VP8, VP9, and AV1, because the MPEG codecs are tremendously flexible (as can be seen in Netflix's tests [2]), have dozens of competing encoders of different qualities, and dozens of profiles that constrain or unlock advanced features. So in a way, it can be simultaneously true that AV1's competition is both H.265 and whatever comes after H.265.
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13230676 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13230676 [2] https://medium.com/netflix-techblog/more-efficient-mobile-encodes-for-netflix-downloads-625d7b082909 https://medium.com/netflix-techblog/more-efficient-mobile-en...
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- lern_too_spel 9y agoVP9 had more browser support than H.265, the codec it competed against. It was Apple's hamfisted attempt to hinder royalty free codecs for the web (among other web standards) that gave some users a bad battery experience. https://ngcodec.com/news/2017/10/21/why-we-are-supporting-vp9-and-av1 https://ngcodec.com/news/2017/10/21/why-we-are-supporting-vp... That Google didn't force VP8 over H.264 is what led to the unfortunate situation with Firefox needing to ship a binary blob. I'm happy that Google stuck to its guns in the next round.
- TheForumTroll 9y agoHow is serving better quality with less bandwidth "ham fisted"? Both Netflix and Google says the codec is better. If anyone was ham fisted it was Apple who fought to stop free codecs'.
- acdha 9y agoHe explained that in the same sentence. An imperceptible quality improvement is not worth an order of magnitude increase in CPU usage, and the network savings aren’t enough to make up for dropped frames on hardware which is more than a year old.
- abritinthebay 9y agoNetflix says VP9 is 20% worse than 265... so what are you referring to?