AV1 is far more computationally expensive to encode than VP9.

The landscape of digital video is constantly evolving, driven by the need for higher resolutions, faster streaming, and lower file sizes. For years, Google’s —the open-source software library responsible for encoding and decoding the VP8 and VP9 video formats—reigned supreme as the royalty-free alternative to proprietary codecs like H.264 and HEVC.

In the fast-moving world of open-source video engineering, the community is currently rallying around a poignant, meme-driven plea:

A brief personal developer log titled "Bring Her Back Libvpx" shares an initial, overwhelming impression of skimming the technical documentation for the VP9 video coding format. The post captures the author's early experience diving into this technical specification. Read the full post at http://18.222.105.243:8080/bring-her-back-libvpx-best . AI can make mistakes, so double-check responses Copy Creating a public link... You can now share this thread with others Good response Bad response 1 site Bring Her Back Libvpx |best| It's raining and Boba was delicious. I'm just starting to skim the table of contents on the VP9 spec, and it's a little overwhelmi... 18.222.105.243 1 site Bring Her Back Libvpx |best| It's raining and Boba was delicious. I'm just starting to skim the table of contents on the VP9 spec, and it's a little overwhelmi... 18.222.105.243 Show all

They are wrong. And it’s time we talk about why we need to bring her back.

While SVT-AV1 might win on paper regarding PSNR and BD-rate, libvpx won in the data center. Its predictability meant engineers could sleep at night. In a production environment, a codec that behaves exactly as expected is worth more than a 5% efficiency gain that introduces random crashes.

Developers and creators can keep libvpx relevant by continuing to use it in ffmpeg workflows and ensuring browser compatibility.