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Youtube has been turning on AV1 for 1080p content for me. My phone is the only device with an AV1 hardware decoder. The impact on battery life and CPU usage has

Youtube has been turning on AV1 for 1080p content for me. My phone is the only device with an AV1 hardware decoder. The impact on battery life and CPU usage has been extreme. You can tell Youtube to prefer AV1 only for low-quality videos (https://www.youtube.com/account_playback https://www.youtube.com/account_playback) or you can install an extension that will force h264 playback where supported. Other playback features such as ambient mode and volume equalisation can also impact performance, though that kind of depends on how fast your web browser is at executing Javascript, and to a much smaller extent. The substantial bandwidth savings are here to stay, though, so in time I think Youtube will move to AV1 more often.

tantalor 1y ago
> impact on battery life and CPU Well, is it higher or lower?
- zamadatix 1y ago
  For devices with the hardware decoder it'll be in the same ballpark as before. For devices without the hardware decoder the CPU will use significantly more power to decode the video than a hardware decoder would.
jccc 1y ago
> You can tell Youtube to prefer AV1 only for low-quality videos (https://www.youtube.com/account_playback https://www.youtube.com/account_playback) What option are you referring to here? I don’t see anything that seems related to that.
- squigz 1y ago
  There is an "AV1 settings" below "Subtitles and Closed Captions" for me. If you don't see it perhaps it's not available for you yet.
- zamadatix 1y ago
  What it looks like if it's available (AV1 settings section): https://i.imgur.com/rp6Cvkd.png https://i.imgur.com/rp6Cvkd.png
  - bombela 1y ago
    The wording is gold dark pattern.
  - NooneAtAll3 1y ago
    "auto" "prefer AV1" "always prefer AV1" so... which one turns av1 off?
    - zamadatix 1y ago
      None, but "prefer AV1 for SD" will prevent the stuttering due to the changes mentioned above. If you don't ever want AV1 then it probably makes more sense to not have the browser advertise it as an option to sites. One can configure Firefox as such, I'm not sure about Chrome.
jshier 1y ago
How much power does hardware accelerated AV1 consume vs. hardware accelerated H.264? I would think they'd be relatively similar.

tantalor 1y ago

> impact on battery life and CPU Well, is it higher or lower?

zamadatix 1y ago
For devices with the hardware decoder it'll be in the same ballpark as before. For devices without the hardware decoder the CPU will use significantly more power to decode the video than a hardware decoder would.

jccc 1y ago

> You can tell Youtube to prefer AV1 only for low-quality videos (https://www.youtube.com/account_playback https://www.youtube.com/account_playback) What option are you referring to here? I don’t see anything that seems related to that.

squigz 1y ago
There is an "AV1 settings" below "Subtitles and Closed Captions" for me. If you don't see it perhaps it's not available for you yet.
zamadatix 1y ago
What it looks like if it's available (AV1 settings section): https://i.imgur.com/rp6Cvkd.png https://i.imgur.com/rp6Cvkd.png
- bombela 1y ago
  The wording is gold dark pattern.
- NooneAtAll3 1y ago
  "auto" "prefer AV1" "always prefer AV1" so... which one turns av1 off?
  - zamadatix 1y ago
    None, but "prefer AV1 for SD" will prevent the stuttering due to the changes mentioned above. If you don't ever want AV1 then it probably makes more sense to not have the browser advertise it as an option to sites. One can configure Firefox as such, I'm not sure about Chrome.

jshier 1y ago

How much power does hardware accelerated AV1 consume vs. hardware accelerated H.264? I would think they'd be relatively similar.