Unlock the Best Video Quality on YouTube: How to get VP9 in 2020

Update: You will need to upload in 1440p or 4K to guarantee VP9 on all of your videos! Sadly, YouTube again removed the ability for 720p and 1080p videos to be always encoded in VP9 if uploaded in 50 or 60FPS..

Also, check out the quality difference of VP9 and AVC

#ForceVP9 #VP9 #TechGuides

[TechGuides]

*I'm afraid uploading at 50 or 60FPS does no longer trigger VP9! You have to upload in either 2K or 4K resolution (regardless of refresh rate) to get VP9 on your videos*

[xisumavoid]

Do i have to do something different on my end with how i render videos? Or does whatever i upload get converted to VP9 if i have 1080p60?

[FrozyFPS]

Thanks for this. Couldn't figure out why my vids were so blurry even though it looked great on my desktop. Now it makes sense. Huge upgrade in quality.

[Larry_P]

Hey Tech Guides it has been a while since I had left a comment but I saw good improvements when it came to the quality of my Youtube videos when I forced the VP9 codec on my videos I just wanted to say thanks for the useful information that you provided I couldn't of really done it without you man!

[bloodyduckGaming]

I've also found that well streaming YouTube restricts the possible bitrate of the streams to 6K if streaming at 1080P or lower, I find I have to stream in 1440p in order to unlock the bitrate and stream at 9 k, now I'm also wondering if the codac it's different as well when livestreaming in 1080p vs 1440p?

[MoreSettledWindow]

I just found out that 2048x1152 resolution is still 1080p, but. also triggers VP9! I have tested 120 FPS and lower resolutions like 1366x768 and 1920x1080, but these don't trigger VP9. So the minimum resolution seems to be 2048x1152, not 2560x1440. It also saves a little more storage than what 2560x1440 takes up.

[drinkinslim]

For real life footage, upscaling my 1080p video to 4K - and WATCHING it in 4K - is the only way I found that gives decent looking video on YouTube. Even though it says it's VP9, the 1080p version looks like a draft copy (softer, less detail) than a 1080p render on my computer. Unfortunately most people won't switch to 4K to watch videos. I wish YouTube would give us an OPTION to use VP9.

[BlizzStars]

Everything makes sense now, Thanks man.

[jlx_music]

Two things:
1. When I upload 4K (upscaled 1080p), I have no option to choose 4K, it's still max. 1080p with avc1-codec and the video looks bad. On my PC they look good and clean without any pixel-fixel.
2. When I check out other channels with 1080p using the same avc1-codec, the videos look amazing.

Any explanation guys? :)

[KaledYT]

I want to ask, i recorded a game in 1080p then i made it 1440p so i can get the vp9 it worked but for someone that will only watch 1080p he will pretty much see the pixelation anyways (using phone), unless he chooses 1440p quality to watch? What to do about that? so only the people who can watch 1440p will get to see the video at highest quality?

[AloneRacecar]

So I recently uploaded a video that was supposed to be a 4K file on iMovie When I got it uploaded it made it down to 1080p with the avc1 code. What am I doing wrong if you can help?

[nonsense.v]

Wow, this is great news! Thank you for the heads up! :)

[kabeegaming]

Thanks a lot! I'm going to try this out on my next video. I was noticing very bad texture quality on my recent videos. Especially when there was a lot of movement in the gaming video. I compared a single frame from the original 60fps 1080p video to the YT one, and it was very worse.. Hope that 4k rendering will indeed fix this.

Hi there. I found something strange. All my videos that I streamed live have VP9 codec. Even though I broadcast them in 1080p30fps.

[GlenReed]

Thanks for the very valuable info! This explains why many of my videos don't look the same after I upload them. I will now upload my videos in at least 1440p.

[mikaelllll]

One thing really sad is how youtube doesn’t give a fuck about it’s small creators, seriously let’s say i have an average phone and i have no pc, i am stuck with 1080p maximum. For me, who let’s say does gaming it is impossible to get quality higher than 360p on my video, and this is the case for a lot of small gaming creators, youtube is making it harder and harder for people to like their site, i at least wish they kept the 1080p 50fps requirement, if you now want to succeed in youtube and make money, you have to have both a good pc for editing, a good phone if you do mobile gaming, you need to not swear, only make shorts, not have twitter to not get cancelled and also on top of that you have to deal with whatever the new ceo has in store for us, man, i hate this site

[MaximusPanin]

It seems to me that for YouTube the main thing is less user costs + maximum benefit.

[VanillaPWNZ]

In this moment i uploaded video on youtube, and why i have AVC1 codec? Not VP09, on older videos i have VP09 with 1080p. How i can fix it?

[WheeliePete]

Does the trimming trick still work (Enhancements, trim a sliver off the end, then save and youtube re-encodes to VP9)?

[gilscharf]

all your test videos in the description are avc...