| Feature | Pre-Season 4 (Early VP9) | Season 4 (Optimized VP9) | | :--- | :--- | :--- | | | Smooth, "plastic" look; loss of fine texture. | Sharp, natural grain retention; high fidelity. | | Metric Performance | Good PSNR, lower VMAF. | High VMAF (closer to human perception). | | Bitrate Efficiency | ~40% better than H.264. | ~50% better than H.264; competitive with x265. | | Encoding Speed | Very slow in "best" quality modes. | Optimized multithreading (row-mt) allowed faster turnaround. |
Encoding Entertainment: The Voice Season 4 and the Video Tech (libvpx) Behind Online Clips the voice season 04 libvpx
While originally internal to Netflix, the parameter sets and tuning philosophies from Season 4 were eventually upstreamed or replicated into standard libvpx builds, becoming the gold standard for high-efficiency VP9 encoding. | Feature | Pre-Season 4 (Early VP9) |
Netflix, being one of the largest deployers of VP9 and later AV1, structured their codec optimization work into "seasons." | High VMAF (closer to human perception)
As the competition progressed, Emma found herself in the midst of a fierce battle. Her voice was unlike anything the coaches had ever heard before - it was as if her vocal cords were encoded with the finest audio codecs, producing a libvpx (a video codec) like quality that was crystal clear and stunning.