Whether you’re streaming your favorite game to all of your Discord friends, or you’re watching your friend play their favorite game, you are using Video Codec. What is Video Codec and how do you actually use it? All excellent questions, let’s go over those and more!

What this article covers:

What Is a Video Codec?
- What is H.264?
- What is AV1?
Where Can I Find These Video Codec Options?
Troubleshooting

What Is a Video Codec?

Video codec is a software or hardware that compresses and decompresses digital video so that it can be transmitted over the Internet. Video codec is a key component when it comes to high quality streams. This means that the better the codec, the better the video quality. Discord supports several video codecs, and selects the best one supported by all the call participants.

What is H.264?

H.264 is a very widely adopted technical standard of video codec. Almost every device nowadays (this includes both desktop and mobile devices) uses a software and hardware codec that is compatible with the H.264 standard. Since H.264 was developed in the early 2000’s, the encoding algorithms were targeted mainly for standard definition (480p) video compression.

What is AV1?

AV1 is one of the latest technical standards of video codec. It is developed by AOM (Alliance for open media), which is sponsored by most key players in video communications like Google, Apple, Netflix, and Meta. It uses the most sophisticated algorithms to improve video compression efficiency.

In contrast to H.264, AV1 is developed to better support HD/UHD video communications, especially 4k, or even 8k, video applications. The AV1 codec employed by Discord presents up to 100% higher compression efficiency than its H.264 counterpart for 4K 60fps videos.

NOTE: Currently, sending AV1 video is only supported via Windows desktop with more recent NVidia GPUs. See Nvidia’s support matrix to see if your GPU supports AV1 encoding. However, all desktop viewers can still watch AV1 streams regardless of their hardware.

Where Can I Find These Video Codec Options?

1. Select the cogwheel icon [] in the lower-left corner of the app to access your User Settings.

Cogwheel icon on Discord Desktop/Browser

2. Navigate to the Voice & Video tab and then tap on the Video section.

3. Scroll down until you see Advanced and then you can enable or disable these settings.

Example of where to find the Video Codec setting under the Voice & Video tab

OpenH264 Video Codec provided by Cisco Systems, Inc: Disabling OpenH264 may limit your available codecs and degrade call quality.

Hardware acceleration uses your GPU for efficient video encoding and decoding, if available.

Troubleshooting

If you are having issues with your video on Discord, you can check out this section on Voice and Video Troubleshooting article for some initial steps!

If you need further assistance, please reach out to our Support team!