YouTube decides to use AV1 as default on Android, and the community is not happy

Video codecs have evolved since the popular H.264, which was replaced by the much more efficient H.265. With this change, we saw an improvement in video quality while reducing video footprint. Despite this, years passed and a codec was developed that would replace VP9 and become a standard, called AV1. It was launched in 2018, and although its launch was difficult due to high hardware requirements, it is already being used to watch streaming content. Now YouTube finally took a step and AB1 will become
standard codec on Android, what will cause
problems with applications and their compatibility

.

Just as hardware evolves, software and technology must keep up with the times to ensure that everything improves over time. If we look back, we will see that even the process of watching videos has changed a lot. This YouTube, created almost two decades ago I could barely handle 360p video, they took a long time to load, and playing them sometimes consumed almost all of our resources. The times were different, computers were not as powerful, and the quality of online video left much to be desired.

YouTube decides to implement AV1 codec by default on Android to watch videos in higher quality

The VP9 video format has long been a favorite of YouTube, but now AV1 has taken its place. Many programs and devices have supported this format for some time, for example, in 2022, OBS Studio added the NVENC AV1 encoder to be able to record video directly using GPUs. Only about a year ago YouTube decided to add AV1 codec for better quality streaming video.

The use of AV1 places quite high demands on
PC do Streaming video in 4K resolution and 60 FPSwell, he asked us for one thing Intel Xe GPUA RTX 30/40 or AMD RX 6000/7000. It is curious that the equipment for
Cell phones, demanding Samsung Exinos 2100 or 2200

A MediaTek Dimension or
Snapdragon relatively modern. Now that YouTube has decided to make AV1 a standard on Android, we’ve run into a few issues. On the one hand, older cell phones may have problems playing these videos. On the other hand, apps will have to adapt their compatible apps and devices to this codec.

YouTube wants all mobile phones to use AV1, but older mid-range and low-end phones will suffer.

YouTube didn’t make this decision to keep just a few high end android phones the ability to use this codec for at least Hardware. The company’s goal is to make the AV1 codec
Compatible with many Android devices. To do this, instead of directly activating AV1 by default, you decided to use AV1 decoder the existing one is called
libgav1. Having said that, most mobile phones should be able to view video, but this solution in turn created problems.

And this is what Applications those who must give the order to use this decoder or choose others as Dav1d. All this causes controversy between the Android community, applications and AV1 requirements. As you can imagine, the increase in resources used to watch AV1 videos results in higher battery consumption

, so many people don’t like it. If you have mobile mid or low range a few years ago, you would have to watch videos with software decoding because hardware decoding was only available on high-end mobile phones.