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Lack of VP9 support is bad for Youtube (and Google). I wonder if it would be too hard to support both codecs.

by afsina 11y ago

threeseed 11y ago
VP9 was always going to be dead in the water. There are just too many influential companies part of the MPEG-LA to compete with. With Netflix, Amazon and Apple moving to HVEC and the PS/XBox refresh rumored to have HVEC support there is simply too much content: legal and illegal to bother with adding VP9 support. Plus is anyone expecting a lot of YouTube 4K content ?
- ivank 11y ago
  YouTube is using VP9 for 720p and 1080p, too. The file sizes are significantly smaller.
  - ac29 11y ago
    VP9 isnt limited to 720p+ resolutions: https://i.imgur.com/rM8WVcm.png https://i.imgur.com/rM8WVcm.png (Right click a youtube video and select "Stats for nerds" to get this info)
- kayoone 11y ago
  > Plus is anyone expecting a lot of YouTube 4K content ? Every enthusiast cameral high end smartphone or the latest GoPro shoots 4K, more and more people have 4K displays and prices come down. So yeah, i think there will be a lot of 4K on youtube in the near future.
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
- ac29 11y ago
  >VP9 was always going to be dead in the water. What? Youtube has >70% of the online video market, and primarily uses VP9 [0]. To be fair, VP9 isnt commonly used outside of google, but to discount the market leader in online video as "dead" is disingenuous at best. [0] http://www.statista.com/statistics/266201/us-market-share-of-leading-internet-video-portals/ http://www.statista.com/statistics/266201/us-market-share-of...
  - threeseed 11y ago
    YouTube doesn't primarly use VP9. It uses H.264 on iOS, Safari, IE, Flash, Consoles, TVs and a lot of Android devices. Those combined are a sizeable amount of traffic. And I would argue that the driver of higher end content e.g. 1080p, 4K is not going to come from YouTube but from Netflix, Amazon, Apple and illegal content which a lot of people watch on consoles. Nothing has fundamentally changed to see this being anything other than a repeat of what happened with H.264/VP9.
    - ac29 11y ago
      You're right, it is more complicated than I assumed. I use Chrome/Linux where nearly 100% of videos are served VP9. According to this [0] 61-69% of browsers support VP9, but I cant find a good source as to what percentage of youtube is actually served with VP9. However, in the last year 25,000,000,000 hours of VP9 video have been served on youtube [1]. Maybe this is a minority of web video, but its hardly dead. [0] http://caniuse.com/#search=vp9 http://caniuse.com/#search=vp9 [1] http://youtube-eng.blogspot.com/2015/04/vp9-faster-better-buffer-free-youtube.html http://youtube-eng.blogspot.com/2015/04/vp9-faster-better-bu...
    - deleted 11y ago
      [deleted]

Lack of VP9 support is bad for Youtube (and Google). I wonder if it would be too hard to support both codecs.

by afsina 11y ago

Lack of VP9 support is bad for Youtube (and Google). I wonder if it would be too hard to support both codecs.

VP9 was always going to be dead in the water. There are just too many influential companies part of the MPEG-LA to compete with. With Netflix, Amazon and Apple moving to HVEC and the PS/XBox refresh rumored to have HVEC support there is simply too much content: legal and illegal to bother with adding VP9 support. Plus is anyone expecting a lot of YouTube 4K content ?

ivank 11y ago
YouTube is using VP9 for 720p and 1080p, too. The file sizes are significantly smaller.
- ac29 11y ago
  VP9 isnt limited to 720p+ resolutions: https://i.imgur.com/rM8WVcm.png https://i.imgur.com/rM8WVcm.png (Right click a youtube video and select "Stats for nerds" to get this info)
kayoone 11y ago
> Plus is anyone expecting a lot of YouTube 4K content ? Every enthusiast cameral high end smartphone or the latest GoPro shoots 4K, more and more people have 4K displays and prices come down. So yeah, i think there will be a lot of 4K on youtube in the near future.
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
ac29 11y ago
>VP9 was always going to be dead in the water. What? Youtube has >70% of the online video market, and primarily uses VP9 [0]. To be fair, VP9 isnt commonly used outside of google, but to discount the market leader in online video as "dead" is disingenuous at best. [0] http://www.statista.com/statistics/266201/us-market-share-of-leading-internet-video-portals/ http://www.statista.com/statistics/266201/us-market-share-of...
- threeseed 11y ago
  YouTube doesn't primarly use VP9. It uses H.264 on iOS, Safari, IE, Flash, Consoles, TVs and a lot of Android devices. Those combined are a sizeable amount of traffic. And I would argue that the driver of higher end content e.g. 1080p, 4K is not going to come from YouTube but from Netflix, Amazon, Apple and illegal content which a lot of people watch on consoles. Nothing has fundamentally changed to see this being anything other than a repeat of what happened with H.264/VP9.
  - ac29 11y ago
    You're right, it is more complicated than I assumed. I use Chrome/Linux where nearly 100% of videos are served VP9. According to this [0] 61-69% of browsers support VP9, but I cant find a good source as to what percentage of youtube is actually served with VP9. However, in the last year 25,000,000,000 hours of VP9 video have been served on youtube [1]. Maybe this is a minority of web video, but its hardly dead. [0] http://caniuse.com/#search=vp9 http://caniuse.com/#search=vp9 [1] http://youtube-eng.blogspot.com/2015/04/vp9-faster-better-buffer-free-youtube.html http://youtube-eng.blogspot.com/2015/04/vp9-faster-better-bu...
  - deleted 11y ago
    [deleted]