6 codec usage support scenarios of VP9 videos codec

VP9 is an open and royalty-free video coding format developed by Google. It comes as a successor to VP8 and competes mainly with MPEG’s High Efficiency Video Coding. Beginning, VP9 was mainly used on Google’s video platform YouTube.

The emergence of the Alliance for Open Media, and its support for the ongoing development of the successor AV1, of which Google is a part, led to growing interest in the format.

In contrast to HEVC, VP9 support is common among modern web browsers with the exception of Apple’s Safari browser. Android has supported VP9 since version 4.4 KitKat.

Parts of the format are covered by patents held by Google. Google LLC grants free usage of its own related patents based on reciprocity, i.e. as long as the user does not engage in patent litigation.

Codec Usage

Microsoft Edge

Microsoft announced in April 2016 that the Edge browser will support VP9 (and Opus).

WebRTC

VP9 in WebRTC became available in Google Chrome 48 (stable) in January 2016, for both desktop and Android.

Google Chrome

VP9 decode support was first enabled by default in Google Chrome 29 Dev channel (r206883) on 2013-06-26.

Mozilla Firefox

VP9 decode support was first added to Firefox Aurora (“pre-beta”) nightly builds on 2013-12-06.

VLC

Experimental VP9 decode support was added to VLC in version 2.1.2.

FFMpeg / Libav

• Search the FFMpeg codebase for recent libvpx-related commits
• Search the Libav codebase for recent libvpx-related commits

VP9 was initially used on Google’s video platform YouTube, but the emergence of the Alliance for Open Media, and its support for the ongoing development of the successor AV1, of which Google is a part, led to growing interest in the format. VP9 is often used in corresponding web applications only with the gradual shift from Flash to HTML5 technolog.

More Information ℹ

• The WebM Project
• VP9 Bitstream Specification V0.6-20160331-draft

Last updated on July 25th, 2023