How to get VP9 codec on YouTube

[Arcapse]

I've uploaded a 1080p60 video to YouTube and it is clear that whatever codec YouTube added is quite lossy and causes pixelation. When I enable "stats for nerds", I see this codec: video/mp4; codecs="avc1.64002a"

So then I went to see why other youtube videos look fine at 1080p60 and I see their codecs are: video/webm; codecs="vp9"

I hear that YouTube chooses (according to some algorithm?) which videos get the nice vp9 codec (supposedly videos from popular channels) and which get the crappy lossy avc codec.

Question: Is there any way to ensure that my video will get the vp9 codec other than by having a popular channel? If not, which free video hosting site do you recommend that doesn't impose such lossy codecs?

[Railgun]

Wow this explains a lot... I was trying to figure out why my videos looked crappy compared to the file on my computer.

[BrightCandle]

That is extremely interesting and explains an awful lot. I suspect there isn't a way to get to VP9 although presumably you could try encoding to it and see if that becomes the default but I suspect they will reject it just like they do h265.

[ShadowCaptain]

12 hours ago, Arcapse said:

SNIP

http://youtube-eng.blogspot.co.uk/2015/04/vp9-faster-better-buffer-free-youtube.html

 

https://sites.google.com/a/webmproject.org/wiki/ffmpeg/vp9-encoding-guide

 

 

how to encode for VP9 -i Assume youtube will do the rest

[.spider.]

It can take some time until your video is encoded in vp9.

h264 is still first priority because older devices are having problems with decoding vp9. If vp9 were first priority you couldn't watch some videos on older devices.   

 

 

 

[wanonymous]

This is an old thread but whatever.

There are more ways to get VP9 than to upload in 1440p.

So, here are the known ones;
Rendering in 1440p
Lots of views
(?) Lots of subscribers

Some people just randomly get VP9 on their videos.

Here are the "secret" / "unknown" ways to get VP9.;
(KIM) You don't need to render in 1440p or have a lot of views.
1. Go to "Video Manager," find your video, click "Edit", click on the "Enhancements" tab, and drag the little preview slider all the way to the left. You don't touch anything else, just drag the slider to the left and click save changes. Your video should get VP9 soon.
2. Enable Google Drive for your channel if it's not already. Go to Google Drive, click "Upload" and select the rendered video or just drag and drop into the general area, when it's done uploading, go to your YouTube, click "Upload", in the top right there should be something that says "Import Videos", click "Import", find your video and select it, when the video is done processing it will have VP9 in a little bit.

[masterj360]

I agree with wanonymous on this 100% as a youtuber myself this blurry pixelated issue usually happens to videos with 60fps regardless of HD resolution

What I also noticed is that 30fps videos tend to be re encoded with VP9 faster more so about 2hours after upload with or without doing the video Enhancement trick.

Hell depending on the capture source the video will look great without VP9, but again it has to be 30fps or have little motion

However 60fps looks messy simply b/c of the fast movement at which the AVC encoding has low bitrate to keep up with, but will look fine when the video is in a steady motion or on still image. So essentially all of this is just a waiting game on when Youtube finalizes its processing with VP9 

 

 

[THE DECODER]

On 4/22/2016 at 3:04 AM, Arcapse said:

I've uploaded a 1080p60 video to YouTube and it is clear that whatever codec YouTube added is quite lossy and causes pixelation. When I enable "stats for nerds", I see this codec: video/mp4; codecs="avc1.64002a"

So then I went to see why other youtube videos look fine at 1080p60 and I see their codecs are: video/webm; codecs="vp9"

I hear that YouTube chooses (according to some algorithm?) which videos get the nice vp9 codec (supposedly videos from popular channels) and which get the crappy lossy avc codec.

Question: Is there any way to ensure that my video will get the vp9 codec other than by having a popular channel? If not, which free video hosting site do you recommend that doesn't impose such lossy codecs?

YOU CAN AUTOMATICALY GET THE VP9 CODEC IF U UPLOAD UR VIDEO ON 4K OR 2K, IF UR CAMERA DOEST NOT CAPABLE ON TAKING 4K, UPSCALE UR 1080P video to 4k res and u simply get the VP9 codec.