When do you need to use the extension h264ify to force H264 Encoding, over YouTube's default VP9 Encoding?

Question

There's an extension for Google Chrome and Mozilla Firefox called h264ify, the extension forces YouTube to use h264 encoding over VP9 and similar encodings. In 2019 is this still necessary? Most GPUs can decode h264 without an issue, what about VP9 Encoding? In which cases should you use the extension h264ify over YouTube's default VP9 encoding?

Answer 1

It appears as though most modern browsers support hardware decoding of VP9 assuming your hardware also supports it. If your hardware does not support it, then you may wish to keep forcing h.264 which has broader hardware support.

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