Editing & Post-Production
VP9
Also called: VP9, WebM codec
Every upload gets re-encoded on YouTube's side into several codecs and resolutions. VP9 carries a lot of the higher-quality playback to browsers and devices that support it, sitting alongside the older H.264 and the newer AV1, and it compresses better than H.264 at matching quality. Creators rarely need to touch it, since YouTube's upload guidance points at H.264 for the file you send. Exporting in VP9 will not skip the transcode or improve what viewers get.