Force AV1

[neoOpus]

Hi Armin,

As you're the most skilled extension developer I know, I'd like to propose a feature or hack that could enable YT to play videos using the AV1 codec. I understand this is a premium YT feature, but there might be a way to override it by identifying the stream URLs and making them accessible to all!

Why? Because the quality is typically superior and it conserves Bandwidth! Plus, why not?!

[dessant]

Hi @neoOpus, thanks for the compliment, you're very sweet! 😋 Though I don't know how to access YouTube streams that require authentication without an account, and last time I checked, YouTube seemed to only serve AV1 videos for 360p and below by default, those were the only available AV1 quality levels checked by their service through the MediaSource.isTypeSupported API.

I've seen some recent news articles about YouTube serving AV1 for all Android users, so it's possible that they will start serving AV1 everywhere, because it could save them money. When they start serving higher quality AV1 streams, we could filter out other codecs to force AV1, the same way 60 fps streams can be disabled with the extension.

[neoOpus]

I appreciate your interest and willingness to explore solutions for accessing such stream. I will definitely keep an eye out for any methods that could allow for accessing YouTube streams without an account. If I come across any useful information or techniques, I will be sure to share them with you. Thank you for your input and technical analysis!

[neoOpus]

I found that by blocking VP9 using improve YouTube extension, it tends to fallback to AV1