New YouTube Format Has Helped Indians Buffer Videos 20% Faster

WASHINGTON — After Google replaced H.264 with VP9 video codec, Indian users have spent about 20 per cent less time watching videos last year than before, the company said.

Google argued that VP9, which is the default codec for YouTube's HTML5 video player now, allowed users on limited bandwidth to watch higher quality video than before without suffering from frequent rebuffering, reported Tech Crunch.

The company also claimed that the VP9 video codec was a more efficient alternative to the previous H.264 as it could reduce the bandwidth needed to play a video by up to 35 percent.

The VP9 powered 25 billion hours of cat video streaming on YouTube in the last 12 months, Google said.

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