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Huh.. made an interesting discovery. Old YouTube streams (1-2 years old) that previously had a vp9 encoding (something I KNOW for certain, since I have downloads of those streams) now only have h264 encodings (verified with yt-dlp but also in browser). I guess they're trying to save disk space. Very interesting though.
My guess (how I'd do things), they probably have some cleaup utility, where if a video wasn't played for long enough, it will delete all encodings except what is needed for maximum compatibility.
Not the first time I tried to (re)download an old stream, but this is the first time I noticed codecs missing from YouTube's repertoire. Must be a cost cutting measure.
@alyx I've noticed something similar with my lecture livestreams. I always waited for a day or two and then downloaded them, but at some point during the last two years or so they stopped getting vp9 reencodes for higher resolutions. It seems youtube figured that it's cheaper to serve the large files to the few dozen viewers than it is to spend extra compute reencoding and storing extra versions
@matrix I don't even blame tbh. I've ranted a few times about how stupidly wasteful they are with their reencodes, keeping around old options that barely anyone (if not outright no one) uses anymore. They should be cleaning house. But they probably still went for the wrong option.
Can't imagine them having any significant amount of users whose devices can't play vp9. I really think they should ax h264 instead. Keep it only for livestreaming, since it works better for fast encoding/low latency, but switch to vp9 for long term offering.