CPU usage with youtube

newswitch

newswitch

Hi, I'm experiencing unusually high CPU usage while watching YouTube videos.

The video is running at 2160p and Opera Helper is taking up in the 200-300% range of my CPU according to Opera's Task Manager and Activity Monitor. I'm using YouTube's HTML 5 player.

The same exact video is taxing my CPU at 30% in Safari. It is also running at 2160p and using YouTube's HTML 5 player.
No plug-ins with Opera.

I really want to make the switch, but if this is how it performs with with streaming videos on YouTube, compared with Safari, it's a deal breaker.

Any suggestions or fixes?

avl

avl Opera

This is because YouTube mainly serves VP9/webm videos to Opera (Google's own format, preferred by them). Safari doesn't support this format, so it gets H264 videos (which generally can be decoded with hardware acceleration, unlike VP9).

There's a Chrome extension called h264ify that changes YouTube to serve H264. You need to install this first in Opera:

https://addons.opera.com/en/extensions/details/download-chrome-extension-9/?display=en

(read the instructions)

Then you can install h264ify from here: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/h264ify/aleakchihdccplidncghkekgioiakgal