2007
In the early 2010s, the digital distribution landscape was fragmented. Adult Swim’s official streaming apps and website used adaptive bitrate streaming. For high-efficiency playback, they often encoded their library in VP9 via libvpx. This was a smart, forward-thinking choice: smaller file sizes, no licensing fees, decent quality at low bandwidth.
Wubba lubba dub dub.
The joke, of course, is meta-textual. An episode about the horror of imperfect replication, of living with a copy that is almost but not quite the original, was itself being distributed in a codec that forced users to confront the fragility of digital preservation. Consider the philosophical parallel.
Rick would approve. He doesn’t care about authenticity. He cares about functionality. The replacement Summer pours cereal just as well as the original Summer. The replacement Jerry is just as useless. The replacement MP4 plays on your iPhone just as well as the original MKV. rick and morty s01e06 libvpx
libvpx/VP9 was different. In 2014, hardware decoding for VP9 was rare. Software decoding was CPU-intensive. Playing a libvpx-encoded file on a laptop from 2012 meant fans spinning up like jet engines and dropped frames galore. Scene rules often rejected libvpx encodes for TV releases because they weren’t "scene-compliant"—they broke playback on too many devices.
Credits
Writer and Director Lola Arias
With Inés Efron, Gonzalo Martínez
Sound Design Ulises Conti
Set Design Leandro Tartaglia
Lighting Matías Sendón
Assistant Directors Eugenia Schor, Alfredo Staffolani
In the early 2010s, the digital distribution landscape was fragmented. Adult Swim’s official streaming apps and website used adaptive bitrate streaming. For high-efficiency playback, they often encoded their library in VP9 via libvpx. This was a smart, forward-thinking choice: smaller file sizes, no licensing fees, decent quality at low bandwidth.
Wubba lubba dub dub.
The joke, of course, is meta-textual. An episode about the horror of imperfect replication, of living with a copy that is almost but not quite the original, was itself being distributed in a codec that forced users to confront the fragility of digital preservation. Consider the philosophical parallel.
Rick would approve. He doesn’t care about authenticity. He cares about functionality. The replacement Summer pours cereal just as well as the original Summer. The replacement Jerry is just as useless. The replacement MP4 plays on your iPhone just as well as the original MKV.
libvpx/VP9 was different. In 2014, hardware decoding for VP9 was rare. Software decoding was CPU-intensive. Playing a libvpx-encoded file on a laptop from 2012 meant fans spinning up like jet engines and dropped frames galore. Scene rules often rejected libvpx encodes for TV releases because they weren’t "scene-compliant"—they broke playback on too many devices.
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