Last Updated on May 3, 2021 by Mathew Diekhake
If you thought MPEG was just a file format, you would be wrong. As it turns out, MPEG is short for Moving Picture Experts Group, and it means that there is big business behind the use of these MPEG files.
There are now some nonprofit groups coming along to offer an alternative to the big name video codec giants of the industry. Alliance for Open Media (AOMedia) is one that creates the open, royalty-free video coding format called AOMedia Video 1 (AV1).
AOMedia has grown large enough now not just because of its brilliance but also because it was founded by some of the biggest names in the industry, including Amazon and Google itself.
How to Enable AV1 Video Support on YouTube
1. Enable the AV1 codec support from your preferred web browser, whether it be Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox, or Microsoft Edge.
2. Visit the YouTube TestTube webpage and choose between having Av1 set on Auto, Prefer AV1 for SD, and Always prefer Av1 for your settings. (click to enlarge screenshot below)
3. Visit the YouTube AV1 Beta Launch Playlist page, and play a AV1 video you like for testing.
Should you still be using a version of Windows that shows stats for nerds, or you’re using a website such as YouTube, you can look for the av01 for Codecs. If you see it there, then the video is using the AV1 codec. (click to enlarge screenshot below)
That’s all.
April 24, 2019 @ 09:49
It is not necessarily because of companies wanting to get people to use less data online. You also have to remember that YouTube is becoming increasingly popular and this is going to cause higher loads on YouTube’s servers. Most of the ad revenue is coming from the beginning of watching videos and not so much if you’re watching something that keeps going for a long time. They can probably also see stats that suggest people are no longer watching or interacting with the ads while they continue to use server load. I would say it has to do with YouTube trying to limit the data on their own servers more than anything else.
April 24, 2019 @ 09:48
YouTube pausing and asking if I’m still watching has been driving a lot of people nuts lately. It has been a settings that’s been around for about six months now. Maybe it is only rolling out to some computers now.
There is no setting available from the website itself that allows us to change this as far as I’m aware. However, you can install a Chrome plugin (if you use Google Chrome) that disabled it.
Download it here: YouTube NonStop
It’s nice but not a permanent solution. With all my time with web browsers, I now try to use as few plugins as possible. While this plugin may seem great for YouTube, it will probably, over time, stop being adequately looked after by its developers and it may cause you problems in other areas when using the browser. I say this based on the knowledge that whenever something goes wrong, it usually it because of one of my extensions/plugins almost always (if not always). The solution always seems to be disable the plugins and then find the culprit. Also, the extensions will slow down your browsing experience.
Hopefully YouTube makes this an optional feature. Although if they have been put under pressure from the same companies that are now offering the unlimited data plans, then that probably won’t happen. And that might be what is happening since this feature has found its way to YouTube after companies have started offering supposed unlimited data.
April 24, 2019 @ 09:48
Over the past few weeks, I’ve started listening to music while on the computer and YouTube has this new thing where apparently I can only listen to music for a while before it automatically pauses what I’m watching and then asks me if I’m still watching. It’ll do this even though I am active on my computer and have YouTube open in the background.
I would assume that many people have YouTube open in the background while they listen to music or the news et cetra.
Does anyone know how to turn off this setting that YouTube has recently created? It seems a strange time for YouTube to come up with such as setting since we are only now just starting to get unlimited data plans. Why would they become so data conscious all of a sudden?