Which Streaming Codecs Do Netflix and Facebook Use?
Which streaming codecs do Netflix and Facebook use? Jan Ozer, Principal, Streaming Learning Center, Contributing Editor, Streaming Media, asks Andrey Norkin, Senior Research Scientist, Netflix, and David Ronca, Director, Video Encoding, Facebook, to discuss in-depth the specific codecs they use for their organizations.
“First of all, I should say that as a company that has a lot of members, over 200 million, we have to support a variety of products,” Norkin says. “Some legacy products that we started to use at a certain point until…a sufficient number of our members are using them for streaming. So from that perspective, I guess one of the products that we still support is H.264 [for] baseline. We also support the main profile for those devices that actually support this product. And that's more or less our fallback option if nothing else works for our customers since H.264 is probably the most widespread product nowadays.”
“In addition to that,” Norkin says, “We support some other products such VP9. For example, if you want some better codec efficiency on mobile devices -- on Android, then you can use VP9 if the device supports that. [We] do support HEVC for some TVs, or for example, if you want to stream HDR then often that would be HEVC. And we are currently working on rolling out AV1. So we do stream AV1 already on certain TVs on Android. We stream it also on certain game consoles and even on browsers. So the support is currently growing and that's basically our most efficient our most advanced codec nowadays.”
David Ronca of Facebook says, “No surprise, probably amongst everybody here, the dominant codec is still H.264. And I would say that…if you would've asked me 10 years ago, what the codec landscape would look like in 2022, H.264 would not have been my answer, but nevertheless, it's a faithful, reliable codec. It's got reasonable performance. From a computational perspective, it's phenomenal…from an efficiency perspective, it's not terrible. And obviously, device compatibility is a big issue. On the global population of mobile devices, web browsers, and connected TVs. So H.264 is still sitting in a very dominant space for us.”
Regarding VP9, Ronca says, “We’ve been streaming VP9 for several years. It's a significant efficiency win with a relatively modest computational cost. And so we've been using VP9, both for our standard definition and for our high-definition video. And then more recently we've deployed AV1. We have partnered with Netflix and other companies to bring mobile optimizations and web optimizations…x86 optimizations into the dav1d decoder. And now that's allowed us to deploy AV1 playback to a significantly large population of Android devices, as well as iOS…I'm really speaking about the live and video and demand use cases within, you know, the family of Meta applications…there are other use cases. We have…Oculus, we have…the teleconferencing devices, we have other areas where codecs are being used, like immersive, where it's slightly different, and I'm not speaking to those use cases, as far as codecs, we don't use the most obvious one.”
He further elaborates, “When I say 'don't use', I'm talking about producing and deploying encodes to users, I'm not talking about what we bring into our systems. It would be HEVC. And I've spoken to this before…the cloud of uncertainty, [of] royalty confusion still exists, particularly on the transcoding side, the playback side, the decoders were there, right? In the ecosystem. But the lack of clarity around the…IP expectations for encoding [has] always been a concern. So for HEVC, our use would be relatively small…low distribution use cases, perhaps some premium videos and such, but it doesn't really have a place. We have no plans to use VVC in the future. I won't say never, I'm not saying never for HEVC either. A VVC is just not really clear what the use case would be. And, you know, 3, 4, 5 years out, if anything changes. EVC -- I don't personally believe EVC is a codec. The world just doesn't need [it], we have too many already, it's too confusing. And so it's not clear to me what the market would be for EVC. With AV1…the implementations that are available, both closed source and open source, are showing AV1 to be an incredibly robust and efficient encoder with really solid computational efficiency as well. And so we're really bullish on AV1 over the next few years.”
Watch full-session videos from Streaming Media Connect 2022.
Related Articles
Via Licensing shook the MPEG licensing world in May 2023 when it acquired MPEG LA to form the Via LA juggernaut. And how is that deal shaking out now, six months on, as licensors and patent holders alike survey the landscape? Sisvel Group's Mattia Fogliacco and patent attorney Robert J.L. Moore of Moore IP Solutions discuss the implications in this clip from November 2023's Streaming Media Connect.
12 Jan 2024
John C. Simmons, Principal Engineer at John Simmons Consulting, LLC, discusses patent licensing for streaming, which is especially relevant now in light of the recent German court decision in the Broadcom v. Netflix case and Avanci's announced launch of a video streaming patent pool.
23 Oct 2023
What are the key factors that drive and impede new and emerging codec deployment on premium OTT streaming platforms like Netflix, Disney, and Apple TV+? Streaming Learning Center's Jan Ozer provides a much-needed codec deployment reality check in this clip from his presentation at Streaming Media East 2023.
25 Aug 2023
Adrian Roe of id3as sits down with Tim Siglin to introduce Norsk low code live video SDK in this interview from Streaming Media East 2023.
14 Jun 2023
Chrome's announcement of HEVC support last October was a long time coming. But how impactful will it prove to be, given persisting DRM issues and device support? Experts from Warner Bros., Amazon, Bitmovin, and NETINT weigh in from Streaming Media Connect 2023.
01 May 2023
Amazon considers six key factors when choosing and adopting streaming codecs. AWS solutions architect Kevin Yao breaks them down in this clip from Streaming Media Connect 2023.
03 Apr 2023
deadmau5 reveals the two biggest problems holding back the streaming industry in general and live concert streaming in particular in this clip from his exclusive interview at Streaming Media Connect 2023.
06 Mar 2023
What are the current innovations in reducing the carbon emissions and the carbon footprint of streaming? Jan Ozer of the Streaming Learning Center asks Kevin Yao of Amazon Web Services and David Ronca of Facebook about the innovations and new technologies their organizations are using to lessen the environmental impact of streaming.
30 Sep 2022
What are the key advantages of proprietary versus open-source codecs? Many factors come into play based on finding the right balance of customer needs in various use cases
14 Sep 2022
Streaming Learning Center Owner & Chief Blogger Jan Ozer discusses the role the Alliance of Open Media's influence plays in the current codec landscape, and how it impacts the adoption of AV1 and VVC in particular as the streaming world increasingly moves beyond H.264.
09 May 2022
NETINT's David Zhou discusses what is driving HEVC adoption in this clip from his presentation at Streaming Media Connect 2021.
29 Sep 2021