![best video codec for youtube best video codec for youtube](https://sp-ao.shortpixel.ai/client/to_webp,q_glossy,ret_img,w_780,h_391/https://blog.snappa.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/Screen-Shot-2019-06-16-at-1.54.42-AM.png)
Whatever the cause, given that YouTube’s bandwidth costs are probably a lot lower than yours (per GB), it should take you fewer viewing hours to achieve breakeven, meaning that it might be time to rethink VP9. It may be that YouTube is using a different VP9 codec than I tested, or that YouTube is simply better at encoding VP9. When I analyzed VP9, the results were meh (see here). The big surprise for me wasn’t the AV1 findings, but that YouTube uses VP9 so extensively. Don’t consider AV1 until view counts exceed multiple millions.Again, since Google’s use of VP9 may be triggered by the Argos VCU, you should do your own testing with your encoding setup to confirm this result. View counts reaching into the mid-five figures, say over 3,000 or so – consider VP9.View counts below a few thousand – use H.264.Codec usage for the Streaming Learning Center. I checked Streaming Media’s YouTube videos which enjoyed counts into the low several hundred and they were all H.264 as well. H.264 For the Great Unwashedįinally, I looked at the videos that I produced, all with pathetic view counts (note to self: fire marketing director). View counts and codec usage for the Dan Patrick show.
![best video codec for youtube best video codec for youtube](https://wpimg.pixelied.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2021/06/12173019/youtube-video-sizes-best-video-format-for-youtube-e1623500471842.png)
![best video codec for youtube best video codec for youtube](https://www.muvi.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/Comparision-of-Video-codecs.jpg)
My favorite website for sports clips while working out is the Dan Patrick show Numbers here were modest but VP9 was again used for all videos. A line of videos entitled A Closer Look enjoyed very solid view counts in the low millions, yet YouTube encoded them all in VP9. Meyers who I’m sure we all remember from Saturday Night Live. Next, I hunted around for an entertainment site with moderate to high views and settled on Late Night with Seth Meyers, apparently the new home for Mr. The choice of codec sometimes made sense (see the bottom three) though using VP9 for Call of Duty and LEGO had me shaking my head. Here we saw an even split between AV1 and VP9. Next, I checked gaming videos, which enjoy greater view counts than news and presumably longer tails. Though the view count ranged from 4,582 to 673,454, YouTube encoded all videos using the VP9 codec. Next, I checked the top 1 0 news videos, all with much lower view count, and with much shorter legs than other categories that I checked (news being topical and all that). Interestingly, YouTube whiffed on the fabulous Olivia Rodrigo video (it is brutal out there), which was top of the list and had over 9.6 million views and counting. Eight of the ten videos were encoded using the AV1 codec the rest were VP9. Most of these videos were newly released, yet many had over 5 million views. Clicking Explore then Music, I checked the top ten “ hottest videos of the week ” in the music section. So, even if YouTube uses VP9 for comparatively low view counts, it might not make sense for others without hardware-accelerated VP9 encoding. AFAIK, there’s only one other VP9 hardware accelerator (from Xilinx by way of NGCodec) and it’s for live video and isn’t commercially available. Of course, perhaps Google’s Argos Video Coding Unit, which Google developed specifically to process video, is responsible for what appears to be a dramatic change of behavior relating to VP9 usage. Starting in the 3-5,000 range, YouTube starts to use VP9, with AV1 reserved only for videos that will likely exceed more than five million views or so. How do these quality/bandwidth savings numbers translate to codec usage for YouTube, which ingests a mind-boggling 500 hours of video per minute? The TL/DR is that YouTube uses H.264 for the vast majority of videos that might get watched a few hundred times, or even lower. At best, I found that VP9 saved about 15% over x264 while AV1 shaved 45% at the same quality level. In contrast, VP9 (libvpx-VP9) took only twice as long as H.264. In terms of cost/quality tradeoffs, the last time I looked, AV1 (libaom-AV1) took about 18 times longer to encode than H.264 (x264), which translates directly into 18 times the encoding cost if you’re running your own encoding farm, which YouTube does.