The world of technology changes in an almost abysmal way. The way we communicate, watch videos and even the way we are sold different objects and tools has changed. Google is one of the largest companies in the world. Its users grow enormously day by day thanks to the services it offers, which is why they have had to make multiple changes to their platform.
One of the most recent is about running your videos in 4k quality. Since they have not been able to be reproduced from the Safari browser of OS X devices. However, the browser at the optimization level looks very good, which is why many users prefer it despite having certain limitations such as those that are discussed above.
One of the main reasons why YouTube videos that are in 4k format are no longer playable in the Safari browser is because Google changed the video codec that it has been using to be able to play them.
This codec moved from H264, which was originally supported by the Safari browser. Now the code is VP9, which is an open source format structure which apparently doesn’t appear on Apple.
In the same vein, one of the only ways in which any type of YouTube content that is in 4k format can be played is by using other browsers such as Chrome, Firefox and Opera if they have support for this codec .
How to know the trick inside the codecs?
One of the things you should know is that for YouTube to efficiently play your videos, it pre-exports and stores multiple versions of the video within its servers. In this way, the service will be reproduced in the format that is most compatible for your system, therefore, this will depend on your browser and the platform you are using.
If you want to start watching your youtube videos in your Safari browser, both on macOS and iOS, the H264 codecs should be used. All this in order to play these videos.
However, the platform has begun to prioritize the standard VP9 codec, which was announced during CES 2014, since VP9 is more efficient than H264 when it comes to high definition videos. It is for this reason that when Safari shows us YouTube videos, it usually does so in 1080p or 1440p format.
How to know what codec YouTube is using in my browser?
This is a very simple and quick way to know if it is your browser that has the problem or if, failing that, you have a different problem within the functionality of your PC:
Start by opening any YouTube video. After that you must right click on the video you have chosen and select the option “Statistics for nerds”. You can see this in the menu that will appear when you select the right mouse button. There you will see a pop-up window, in which you can see a large amount of information which corresponds to the video player. Here you should start looking at the section called “Mime Type” and verify the following:
- If you see that the video value is “video/webm; codecs=”vp9″”, then you are using VP9. You should be able to watch any type of 4K video without any issues.
- If, on the other hand, the value you find is “video/mp4; codecs=”avc1.640028″”, it means that you are using the H264 value. Therefore, you will not be able to see 4K videos, but in a lower quality.
However, all is not lost, as 4K videos are going to become more and more popular, which is why Safari will be forced to update its support for this VP9 codec.
