That is strange but true. I just checked the 1080P60 version I uploaded. Youtube creates the VP9, but when I watch the video in browser or phone I"m served the AVC version. How rude

@Former user Doesn't YouTube automatically only give you what it considers your download speed and browser can smoothly handle?

@Former user Doesn't YouTube automatically only give you what it considers your download speed and browser can smoothly handle?

It's a transcoding task to do.

Anyway VP9 has lesser size and bitrate, but better quality than AVC

@Former user Doesn't YouTube automatically only give you what it considers your download speed and browser can smoothly handle?

I think that's true, If my computer had hardware decoding only for AVC, it most likely would serve AVC where there is a choice, and with AV1, on chrome, you have to go into settings to enable it, as almost nobody currently has AV1 hardware decoding.

The strange thing is that I upload 1440P60 version, I get 1080P VP9 transcode served , but I upload at 1080P60, and it serves me the AVC version, even though it generated a vp9 at 1080p60. This has changed in the last couple of months, it was serving 1080P60 vp9 for a 1080p60 upload.

@Former user Doesn't YouTube automatically only give you what it considers your download speed and browser can smoothly handle?

I think that's true, If my computer had hardware decoding only for AVC, it most likely would serve AVC where there is a choice, and with AV1, on chrome, you have to go into settings to enable it, as almost nobody currently has AV1 hardware decoding.

The strange thing is that I upload 1440P60 version, I get 1080P VP9 transcode served , but I upload at 1080P60, and it serves me the AVC version, even though it generated a vp9 at 1080p60. This has changed in the last couple of months, it was serving 1080P60 vp9 for a 1080p60 upload.

Nah, I was uploading a video 1080p 60 fps 6 months ago and at the end it was the AVC codec

Just rightclick on the video on YouTube and check stats for nerds.

The most oldest video uploaded on my page was on Jan 16 2020, 1080p 60fps and still AVC

Yes I get AVC for that video. The thing is when I investigated this a couple of months ago, I was looking though 1080P30 and 1080P60 videos uploaded in the previous week, and I did find all the 1080P60's were VP9, and all 1080P30 were AVC, and it was this video that started me investigating

Every video prior to that video was 1080P30 and AVC, but when this video was uploaded at 1080p60 I immediately noticed there was an improvement in quality, discovered it was VP9 then noticed all the new 1080P60 VP9's that had been uploaded recently some with very few views. Since then, Youtube has made all of this ASMR girl's video's VP9 even ones uploaded at 1080P30, which confuses things even more when looking for mechanisms of action, because as you suggest popular channels or videos can get VP9, unrelated to upload specifications