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[RD James]

Though 21.0.58 updated LAV Video to 0.68.0, VP9 hardware acceleration is not being used.
Support has been in the NVIDIA drivers for 3 months now.

[Hendrik]

This is intentional. You can setup a custom config if you want it used.
Its not enabled by default in LAV, hence not in MC.

[RD James]

Oh, I thought it was new in 0.68 and this may have been overlooked.
Why is it intentionally disabled? I can't play 4K VP9 at all without hardware acceleration.

[Hendrik]

MC favors stability over the latest features.

[RD James]

Oh, I was not aware that there were stability issues with VP9 decoding.
It freezes the video if you're running an old driver, but I've been using it for months now without a problem.

[glynor]

Oh, I was not aware that there were stability issues with VP9 decoding.
It freezes the video if you're running an old driver, but I've been using it for months now without a problem.

I'm not sure what Hendrik meant by "stability" in this instance, but... This comes up now and again, so I'll throw this out there.

sta·ble
adjective
adjective: stable; comparative adjective: stabler; superlative adjective: stablest

    not likely to change or fail; firmly established.

Stable can mean that something is less likely to fail, certainly, but it generally means unchanging (and when it comes to computer software specifically, also "well understood").

That's certainly what they intend by the "stable" setting in the Auto Updater in MC. That build isn't necessarily less likely to have problems (in fact, there are tons of known problems in every stable build - everything that has happened to fix MC since then), but it is less likely to change often.

By definition, something that was brand new (and troublesome) just three months ago in the GPU drivers, and which only just appeared in LAV very recently, cannot be "stable".

[Hendrik]

Indeed, I usually never enable a new HWAccel by default right after its availability. The same was true for HEVC (which has been enabled by default now since it matured both in drivers and in LAV), and is the same for VP9, which is relatively new, some slightly older drivers have caused issues with it (failing entirely, mostly), and on top of all that its butt-slow on Intel iGPUs because they only use hybrid acceleration.

[RD James]

By definition, something that was brand new (and troublesome) just three months ago in the GPU drivers, and which only just appeared in LAV very recently, cannot be "stable".

It wouldn't crash or hang the player, just freeze the video at 00:00:00 with a black screen, and only if you were trying to enable VP9 decoding while running drivers that did not support it.
I've had zero issues with it since it was actually supported.
 
I'm not saying that it should be enabled now on that basis, but it was never troublesome.
I also have no issues with setting up LAV manually, since I've been doing that for the past three months anyway.
I just wondered why it wasn't the default now that the option is in a stable build of LAV video.

[glynor]

Whether it works well for you is entirely irrelevant to the point I was making. It was about the timing, not whether it works well or not.

Again, when you hear the word "stable" in relation to MC, do not think "it misbehaves less often." Instead think "change is baaaaaad."