youtube to switch to vp9

[deadrats]

not entirely surprisingly, youtube has announced that it will be dropping h264 (namely that suck ass x264) codec that it currently uses for allit's videos and instead of hevc it will be using google's vp9.

as the article points out, since google owns youtube and vp9 is a google developed codec and it's royalty free, it would be kind of stupid if they went any other way.

in related news, it seems there will be a major push on youtube to bring 4k content to the masses.

now if only the open source community would embrace vp9 and start optimizing it for speed and including it in some apps...

http://www.hdtvtest.co.uk/news/youtube-4k-201311203451.htm

http://www.hdtvtest.co.uk/news/youtube-2160p-201312253535.htm

[racer-x]

This is old news, I remember watching the documentary video showing examples and why the switch a few months back. Basically they are switching to vp9 because it holds up better at lower bitrates. Their main concern is to reduce bandwidth while maintaining bearable viewing quality.

There is currently no practical application for vp9 other than the web. Maybe if more hardware support existed, you'd see encoding options down the road.

[jagabo]

Avoiding paying licensing fees to MPEG LA was the whole point of Google purchasing On2 in the first place.

[racer-x]

If I remember correctly, they were considering using ogg audio codec in mkv vs aac/mp4. Presumably because it's open source. It always come down to money, doesn't it..........

Here is the video I saw awhile back: