The world of tech changes almost abysmal. The way we communicate, watch videos, and even the way we are sold different items and tools has changed. Google it is one of the largest companies in the world. Its users are growing tremendously day by day thanks to the services it offers , which is why they have had to make more changes to their platform.
How to view and play YouTube videos in 4K format from a Mac OS | Safari
One of the more recent ones involves running your videos in 4K quality . Since they have not been played by the Safari browser OS X devices However, the optimization level browser looks very good which is why many users prefer it despite having some limitations like the ones discussed above.
One of the main reasons why 4k YouTube videos are no longer playable in the Safari browser is because Google has changed the video codec that he used to reproduce them.
This codec has been moved from H264 which was originally supported by the browser Safari . Now the code is VP9 , which is an open source framework format that apparently doesn't appear on Apple .
Similarly, one of the only ways you can play any type of YouTube content in 4k format is to use other browsers such as Chrome, Firefox e Opera if they support this codec.
How to know the trick inside the codecs?
One of the things you should know is that YouTube to efficiently play your videos, pre-export and stores multiple versions of the video within its servers. This way the service will be played in the most compatible format for your system, so 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, be on MacOS than on iOS, you should use H264 codecs. All this to reproduce these video .
However, the platform began to prioritize the standard VP9 codec, which was announced during the CES 2014 . Since VP9 is more efficient than H264 when it comes to high definition video. It is for this reason that when Safari shows us YouTube videos, it usually does so in formato 1080p o 1440p.
How to know which codec YouTube is using in my browser?
This is a great way simple and fast to find out 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 have to right click on the video of your choice and select the option " Stats for nerds ". You can see this in the menu that will appear when you right-click. There you will see a pop-up window, where you can see a large amount of information that corresponds to the video player. Here you should start looking at the section called " Mime type " and verify the following:
- If you see 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 problems.
- If instead the value you find is " video/mp4; codecs="avc1.640028 ″", means you are using H264 value. Therefore, you will not be able to see 4K video, but in lower quality.
All is not lost though, as 4K video will become more and more popular which is why Safari will be forced to update support for it VP9 codec.
