Alliance for Open Media codecs

[VincAlastor]

dav1d 0.3.0 decodes AV1 video’s 24% faster on SSSE3, 26% on SSE4.1 and 4% on AVX2 (all PC), and 12% faster on Arm64 (mobile).

https://medium.com/@ewoutterhoeven/d...h-af5bbf845a16

[singhkays]

https://www.singhkays.com/blog/its-t...ith-av1-video/

I did a quick comparison of AV1 vs x264 vs VP9 at ultra low bitrates and how it can be used to replace GIFs in the browser

[TomV]

Originally Posted by singhkays

https://www.singhkays.com/blog/its-t...ith-av1-video/

I did a quick comparison of AV1 vs x264 vs VP9 at ultra low bitrates and how it can be used to replace GIFs in the browser

"80% better than H.264".

The claimed 50% bit rate reduction of VP9 vs. AVC is not substantiated by independent studies, or in practice by anyone. Also, you can't add bit rate reductions, you have to multiply bit rate ratios. If B encodes to the same quality as A at 0.5x the bit rate, and C encodes to the same quality as B with 0.7x the bit rate, C theoretically is 0.7 x 0.5 = 0.35x the bit rate of A... a 65% reduction, not 80%. But in practice studies have shown that AV1 is roughly on par with HEVC when measured with objective metrics (PSNR, SSIM, VMAF, etc.), delivering roughly a 50% bit rate reduction over AVC. However, measured subjectively it's behind HEVC. Although all of the above measures video, and not still still image compression, I expect the results for image (I frame only) compression to be quite close. Mozilla published a study in 2013 which confirmed the superiority of HEVC still image compression over other existing formats. Strangely, the link to the study no longer works, but I saved a copy. Maybe one of the Mozilla guys can reshare it.

I agree that content publishers and web sites should be leveraging more powerful video codecs for still image compression. They can start with AVC, as device support is ubiquitous, and it is an improvement over JPEG and GIF. If/when they add support for an advanced codec, they will want the largest range of devices to support that codec, and they will want hardware decoding (for speed and vastly reduced power consumption). They can leverage HEVC (in HEIC container files... based on the ISO Base Media File Format, the evolution of .mov and .mp4) for the majority of devices which already have hardware HEVC support.
See https://nokiatech.github.io/heif/comparison.html

Google developed the WebP standard for still image compression, based on VP8 technology. It's only 10% more efficient than JPEG. What you're proposing would seem to be a new version of WebP.

[sneaker_ger]

Originally Posted by TomV

Mozilla published a study in 2013 which confirmed the superiority of HEVC still image compression over other existing formats. Strangely, the link to the study no longer works, but I saved a copy. Maybe one of the Mozilla guys can reshare it.

http://web.archive.org/web/201603121..._october_2013/

[soresu]

Possible partial GPU acceleration coming in Dav1d during this years GSoC.

I wonder how much latency is incurred for only partial GPU decode, some guy going by atomnuker discussed possible GPU AV1 at FOSSDEM last year I think.

[NikosD]

Support for offloading some of the dav1d AV1 video decoder's work to GPUs using compute shaders in OpenGL/Vulkan/Metal/Direct3D.

https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?pa...-2019-Projects

[nevcairiel]

Don't get too excited quite yet, such efforts have in the past been problematic to get truely faster. We'll have to see.

[soresu]

I'd be less interested in faster playback using GPU in favor of lower power for phones prior to decoder ASIC rollouts, which probably wont be until at least next year.

I think Rockchip's recently announced RK3588 SoC for 2020 has an AV1 decoder, but details were sparse in the announcement.

The thing which concerns me most is the lack of any announcement from Qualcomm in support of AV1, considering their huge market share in Android devices

[sneaker_ger]

Yes, hardware support is disappointing.

IIRC for HEVC the Samsung and LG TVs were the first to have hardware decoding in late 2013/early 2014 after HEVC approval by ITU in April 2013. Now AV1 finalization was in June 2018 and still no hardware in sight, really. Intel probably Tiger Lake Q2 2020 at the earliest. Nvidia with Ampere also 2020? Nothing from Qualcomm.
Looks like they all started working on it pretty late.

[alex1399]

However, the feature of VP8 hardware decoding was barely seen in commercial products. When does the VP9 finalization happen?

[nevcairiel]

Originally Posted by alex1399

When does the VP9 finalization happen?

What do you mean?
Majority of new devices has VP9 support now.

[benwaggoner]

Originally Posted by soresu

I'd be less interested in faster playback using GPU in favor of lower power for phones prior to decoder ASIC rollouts, which probably wont be until at least next year.

I think Rockchip's recently announced RK3588 SoC for 2020 has an AV1 decoder, but details were sparse in the announcement.

The thing which concerns me most is the lack of any announcement from Qualcomm in support of AV1, considering their huge market share in Android devices

I've heard indications that the extra transistors required for AV1 decoding are a lot higher than anticipated, and higher than the delta for HEVC. The cost in increased die size is a lot more than the savings from not paying MPEG-LA fees.

That would indicate a trend towards AV1 decode launching in high end chipsets first, and taking longer to get into lower-cost handsets.

[benwaggoner]

Originally Posted by sneaker_ger

Yes, hardware support is disappointing.

IIRC for HEVC the Samsung and LG TVs were the first to have hardware decoding in late 2013/early 2014 after HEVC approval by ITU in April 2013. Now AV1 finalization was in June 2018 and still no hardware in sight, really. Intel probably Tiger Lake Q2 2020 at the earliest. Nvidia with Ampere also 2020? Nothing from Qualcomm.
Looks like they all started working on it pretty late.

The incremental cost to add AV1 into a CPU would be a lot lower than in a SoC, because a GPU already has so many transistors.

The make or break is how many extra mm^2 the decoder takes.

[marcomsousa]

Originally Posted by sneaker_ger

Yes, hardware support is disappointing.

Now AV1 finalization was in June 2018 and still no hardware in sight, really. Intel probably Tiger Lake Q2 2020 at the earliest. Nvidia with Ampere also 2020? Nothing from Qualcomm.
Looks like they all started working on it pretty late.

What? HW support in less that one year? no way...

Originally Posted by marcomsousa

1st August 2018, 11:02
(...)

About the AV1 roadmap
We just complete phase 1.
In 1 year we complete phase 2.
In 2 to 3 years we complete phase 3.
In 4 to 5 years we complete phase 4.

So, now we are in phase 2. We need to wait 1 or 2 more years to have HW support. So we are in schedule.

* Next year we will starting see some high end CPU/GPU with AV1 HW decode support.
* In 2021 HW decode for low end CPU/GPU and encode for high end CPU/GPU. (some TVs, consoles)
* And in 2022 for all cpu/gpu. (All modern TVs, consoles)

Note: The first HW with encoding support will have bad quality comparing with software. They have to mature over the years.

And if you are asking, all the nextgen consoles that will release next year will not have AV1 HW decode support (because they release with a cpu of this year).

[EwoutH]

Originally Posted by benwaggoner

I've heard indications that the extra transistors required for AV1 decoding are a lot higher than anticipated, and higher than the delta for HEVC.

Hmm, this is quite strange. From what I've heard hardware vendors had a large say at the table with AV1 design, with the purpose of minimizing the complexity of encoding and decoding hardware. Do you know which functions or aspects of the fixed function hardware takes more die size than expected?

Also some two detail from Google Stadia: At launch they will use VP9 hardware encoding and somewhere in the future they will switch to AV1, but only when hardware encoding is available.

• Stadia Streaming Tech: A Deep Dive (Google I/O'19)

15:19 for VP9, 22:53 for AV1, 31:45 for hardware video encoders.

[Mr_Khyron]

https://www.reddit.com/r/AV1/comment...r_ip_with_av1/

Allegro DVT released the first AV1 hardware encoder IP publicly known. The AL-E210 succeeds the AL-E200 with the main addition being support for the AV1 codec. It supports Profile 0, meaning 4:2:0 chroma subsampling with 8 and 10 bit color depth.

It claims support real-time encoding up to 4K, but with multiple cores up to 8K or (/ and?) 120fps. With the AL-E200 one core could encode 4K at 30fps, so with multiple cores this could be higher

• Press release:Allegro DVT Introduces the Industry First Real-Time AV1 Video Encoder Hardware IP for 4K/UHD Video Encoding Applications
• Product page:AL-E210 Encoder IP

[Djfe]

Originally Posted by benwaggoner

I've heard indications that the extra transistors required for AV1 decoding are a lot higher than anticipated, and higher than the delta for HEVC. The cost in increased die size is a lot more than the savings from not paying MPEG-LA fees.

now I'm wondering, whether PVQ from the daala folks would've made it smaller ^^
IIRC PVQ was less complex so easier to realize by hw, but was decided against, because of needed additional development time, even though it would've increased efficiency, too.

We'll know when gen2 will be realized (in 5 or 10 years) hehe

[Djfe]

Originally Posted by TomV

They can start with AVC, as device support is ubiquitous, and it is an improvement over JPEG and GIF.

That was like 5 years ago hehe (for animated pictures on major sites)
https://blog.embed.ly/what-twitter-i...s-e1b74068cebd
https://rigor.com/blog/optimizing-an...th-html5-video

they do it for reduced memory footprint, pause/play, reduced size, better caching, hw decoding, partial decoding, fast first playthrough, higher possible bit depth for animations etc.

EDIT:
for regular pictures it needs to be an image format people can download and share
https://www.cnet.com/news/facebook-t...-users-squawk/

hevc in ISOBMFF (heic/heif) might turn out a good solution if windows users don't need to add support manually through the microsoft store and android switches to it.
then whatsapp could switch to it as well (with transcoding back to jpeg for older devices)

EDIT2:
at least Firefox finally added WEBp support (including animations) so it counts as an alternative (especially when they update their internal codec again)
https://hacks.mozilla.org/2019/01/fi...r-new-tooling/

[foxyshadis]

Originally Posted by Djfe

now I'm wondering, whether PVQ from the daala folks would've made it smaller ^^
IIRC PVQ was less complex so easier to realize by hw, but was decided against, because of needed additional development time, even though it would've increased efficiency, too.

We'll know when gen2 will be realized (in 5 or 10 years) hehe

PVQ is smaller purely in the frequency domain, where Daala tried to keep everything. But it couldn't stay in the frequency domain with the current state of the art, so it ended up being both less efficient after everything was combined and optimised. Of course, Monty is constantly throwing new things at the wall to see what sticks, so maybe AV2 will change that.

[EwoutH]

AV1 is now quickly becoming mainstream, is it time for an separate Sub-Forum for AV1 (or AOM codecs in general)? I would love separate threads for aom, dav1d, rav1e, svt-av1, hardware acceleration and applications that support AV1.