Alliance for Open Media codecs

[Atak_Snajpera]

In less developed countries the problem is even worse still, so even a few dozen kilobits still count.

Seriously? Do you really think that saved 16kbps will change anything? IT is 2020 . Mobile network 3g is already fast enough for 64kbps audio streaming. Audio streaming is no longer a problem. Video on other hand is a different story...

[IgorC]

Originally Posted by soresu

Sadly even in developed countries there are plenty of rural areas with terrible data connections using ancient ADSL tech on lines miles from the nearest telephone exchange.

Nowdays You get at least ~ 1-1.5 Mbit in worst case or you get nothing. And that's with an old ADSL2+. 10% of that bitrate budget will go for audio. That's 128 kbps.

xHE-AAC is very low bitrate format and it doesn't present any advantage at 96 kbps and higher comparing to an old LC-AAC. (go check official MPEG tests).

Originally Posted by soresu

In less developed countries the problem is even worse still, so even a few dozen kilobits still count.

No.
https://ispspeedindex.netflix.com/country/india/


Somebody saying that xHE-AAC is gaining market fast and letting another audio formats in dust, it isn't just not true. It's a bald-face lie.

Companies don't want to pay for low bitrate xHE-AAC license simply because LC-AAC patents have expired and they don't need to stream 32-48 kbps where xHE-AAC would make sense.

Spotify (web app), Tidal , Apple Music, Netflix, they all don't need to pay anymore for LC-AAC licensing.

xHE-AAC was developed 7 years ago. Since then it has faced stiff competition from Opus and patent expiration of MP3, LC-AAC, Dolby Digital AC3 formats. Today it belongs same place as another failed audio format, MPEG Surround, which hasn't seen any meaningful adoption.

[Atak_Snajpera]

xhe-aac is just another variant optimized for speech
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yArrLvMYng8

[benwaggoner]

Originally Posted by Atak_Snajpera

Seriously? Do you really think that saved 16kbps will change anything? IT is 2020 . Mobile network 3g is already fast enough for 64kbps audio streaming. Audio streaming is no longer a problem. Video on other hand is a different story...

There are hundreds of millions of people in developing countries who often connect with 2G. And streaming video is streaming video + audio, so every bit saved from audio means the minimum bitrate for AV is that much lower.

If you're talking rural mobile delivery, saving 16 Kbps from audio really does make a material difference.

This is why lower speed mobile in developing countries might be one of the most viable markets for AV1, since it truly is a lot better than H.264 for very low bitrates. Of course, that is dependent on getting performant SW decoders or HW decoders on low-cost devices. Which often run an ASOP derivative versus actual Google-endorsed Android with all those requirements. If we see low-cost chipsets with HW AV1 become ubiquitous, that would be a big market that has rapid turnover for new models.

[benwaggoner]

Originally Posted by IgorC

Nowdays You get at least ~ 1-1.5 Mbit in worst case or you get nothing. And that's with an old ADSL2+. 10% of that bitrate budget will go for audio. That's 128 kbps.

For a household, maybe. For those who have that connection. But that gets shared across multiple users, and probably neighbors too.

xHE-AAC is very low bitrate format and it doesn't present any advantage at 96 kbps and higher comparing to an old LC-AAC. (go check official MPEG tests).

"Not better, but lower bitrate" is a pretty big advantage. Plus xHE allows for seamless audio bitrate switching, which wasn't possible between LC/HEv1/HEv2.

https://ispspeedindex.netflix.com/country/india/

Obviously Netflix customers are pre-selected as people who have enough bandwidth to stream Netflix.

The Netflix ISP Speed Index is a measure of prime time Netflix performance on particular ISPs (internet service providers) around the globe, and not a measure of overall performance for other services/data that may travel across the specific ISP network.

Somebody saying that xHE-AAC is gaining market fast and letting another audio formats in dust, it isn't just not true. It's a bald-face lie.

It's getting built into the major OSes and mobile platforms already. There is no extra cost to add it for anyone who is already a Fraunhofer AAC SDK licensee. Whenever someone updates to the recent version, they'd have to comment out xHE in order to not support it. And it's pretty trivial for anyone doing adaptive streaming to offer multiple audio codecs to support backwards compatibility.

Companies don't want to pay for low bitrate xHE-AAC license simply because LC-AAC patents have expired and they don't need to stream 32-48 kbps where xHE-AAC would make sense.

Spotify (web app), Tidal , Apple Music, Netflix, they all don't need to pay anymore for LC-AAC licensing.

Citation that they don't pay for it? There's no royalty for any of that per hour streamed or something like that. The cost of AAC licensing is really immaterial.

xHE-AAC was developed 7 years ago. Since then it has faced stiff competition from Opus and patent expiration of MP3, LC-AAC, Dolby Digital AC3 formats. Today it belongs same place as another failed audio format, MPEG Surround, which hasn't seen any meaningful adoption.

MPEG Surround has been supplanted by MPEG-H, which is the default ATSC 3.0 codec in many markets, including South Korea. It's increasingly built into mass market devices. And Android has had it built in for a while now.

MPEG-H is really an Atmos/AC-4 competitor, though; not for low bitrate stereo. I see it growing a lot in living room devices, less in North America than in Asia.

[benwaggoner]

Originally Posted by Atak_Snajpera

xhe-aac is just another variant optimized for speech
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yArrLvMYng8

I don't know about "just." It's a codec that supports both speech-focused and general-purpose encoding tools, and can mix and match those as is most appropriate for bitrate and content. It's really the same concept as Opus, with the same strengths.

The big difference is that it fits into the existing audio codec and MPEG ecosystems better. Not that Opus had any fundamental technical reasons why it couldn't, but there just weren't proponents pushing for it the same way and with the same resources.

Web/PC oriented technologies can innovate quickly and powerfully, but it's way harder to migrate from there to consumer electronics and living room than people imagine. Same reason why VP8/9 never had much traction outside of user generated content on the web. Premium content interoperable across all material endpoints requires a huge, huge effort from many, many stakeholders.

[IgorC]

Originally Posted by benwaggoner

There are hundreds of millions of people in developing countries who often connect with 2G

Those hunders of millions of people don't use their 2G connection to watch Netflix (to begin with)! In fact most of these people care more about an access to drinking water rather than to high speed internet connection. Netflix isn't priority there.

More advanced codecs like HEVC, VP9, AV1, Opus, xHE-AAC won't bring possibility to use services like Netflix or Spotify on 2G or 3G as such limited speeds and, most importantly, traffic cap make these services hardly affordable for people with low incomes in developing countries.

Also there is no terrific difference bettween speed of developed/developing countries https://ispspeedindex.netflix.com/

It doesn't support your theory of 2G in developing countries.

[Atak_Snajpera]

Those hunders of millions of people don't use their 2G connection to watch Netflix (to begin with)! In fact most of these people care more about an access to drinking water rather than to high speed internet connection. Netflix isn't priority there.

Exactly! People in those countries do not give a f about some streaming services If you have nothing to eat and drink!
Not to even mention about Electricity...

[IgorC]

@Atak_Snajpera
+1

Originally Posted by benwaggoner

MPEG Surround has been supplanted by MPEG-H...

How does it change the fact that MPEG Surround hasn't seen meaningful adoption?

MPEG Surround is standard since 2007 as MPEG-H is since 2015.

So a period of supplantation took 8 years (?) Ben, really?

[soresu]

Originally Posted by benwaggoner

MPEG-H is really an Atmos/AC-4 competitor, though; not for low bitrate stereo. I see it growing a lot in living room devices, less in North America than in Asia.

You put Atmos and AC-4 in the same place there.

Is AC-4 the coding scheme for all Atmos? Or is that just for web streams using Atmos?

[birdie]

Is this a topic about AV1? I'm not sure I'm at the right forum.

Perhaps some people want to continue here: https://hydrogenaud.io/index.php?board=54.0 ;-)

[skal]

Originally Posted by utack

There are only two I can think of[LIST][*]despite being technically more advanced you can still lose to a decades old legacy format when your encoder is terrible

Do you have a concrete example? Why is the encoder terrible?

[*]it does not matter that your format is worse than the legacy competition,

Sample?

Seriously the only area where it might be a tiny bit better is for ultra-high compression where it does not start falling apart as badly as jpeg, for any sane (mid ot high) image quality range the vast array of jpeg encoders are doing a significantly better job of retaining detail

Could be it because you're trying to recompress an already jpeg-encoded source? (aka, spurious resonance). This seems like an overly broad statement, otherwise.

skal/

[Tadanobu]

Originally Posted by IgorC

Those hunders of millions of people don't use their 2G connection to watch Netflix (to begin with)! In fact most of these people care more about an access to drinking water rather than to high speed internet connection.

Originally Posted by Atak_Snajpera

Exactly! People in those countries do not give a f about some streaming services If you have nothing to eat and drink!
Not to even mention about Electricity...

Guys, I don't mean to be rude but you really sound like people who do not know much about these countries and these people. I live in Madagascar and I don't quite agree with you.

You will find people in very remote places with no water and no electricity but with phones. Not necessarily smartphones, but with an access to 2G/3G/4G. It's widely used to communicate, send money and other stuff. There are small, cheap solar panels to easily charge these phones. Also, a part of the internet is free. Depending on your ISP, you'll have free access to Facebook, Wikipedia and other sites. Most of the time, there are restrictions like no images or no videos. Believe me, there are many many young people who will just buy some credit/data as soon as they have money. They won't buy food or water because these people don't buy food or water. They grow their own food and fetch water at the well or the river. Pocket money is mostly for entertainment so they will buy cigarettes, candies or whatever.

Anyway, back on topic. In the big cities, you have great connections. I'm working 160km South from the capital city and I have 4G+. But as soon as you leave the biggest area, you end up with 2G and sometimes no network at all. And people love streaming here. Well, they have no TV, no newspaper, no nothing. But they have a phone and an access to internet. Of course they want to see pictures and watch videos. Not Netflix of course, but Facebook is absolutely huge, Youtube is not very important here. The real problem here is the cost of the data. It's damn expensive. Browsing text can be fairly inexpensive. Images are quite expensive. Video is really a rich people thing. Personally, I'm not poor but I disable all images when I browse the internet. And I can't afford more than a few minutes of videos per week. Also, keep in mind that people don't care about quality at all. They don't want better quality for same size, they want same quality at lower bitrate, so they can save data and therefore money. So AV1 will be very very useful. Easier to stream in remote areas, less expensive, allowing better quality... Africa, South-East Asia and other areas are big markets that are growing a lot. Hardware is way behind, but apart from that it's all the same (selfie sticks, filters, nomophobia... you name it). It doesn't concern 100% of the population yet, but for the younger generation it's already a wide majority.

[benwaggoner]

Originally Posted by IgorC

Those hunders of millions of people don't use their 2G connection to watch Netflix (to begin with)! In fact most of these people care more about an access to drinking water rather than to high speed internet connection. Netflix isn't priority there.

There are absolutely lots of people watching premium video over 2G networks. The experience isn't great, but it can be better than not being able to watch anything.

More advanced codecs like HEVC, VP9, AV1, Opus, xHE-AAC won't bring possibility to use services like Netflix or Spotify on 2G or 3G as such limited speeds and, most importantly, traffic cap make these services hardly affordable for people with low incomes in developing countries.

Perhaps not in theory, but it is in practice ! Replacing AAC-LC at 96 Kbps with xHE-AAC at 24 Kbps is a whole extra 64 Kbps to either lower minimum bandwidth requirements or increase video bitrate.

Also there is no terrific difference between speed of developed/developing countries https://ispspeedindex.netflix.com/

Self selected to people using Netflix. Netflix has substantially higher minimum bitrates compared to some other services, particularly those local to lower-bandwidth regions. That said, people in developed countries still ride in subways or are in rural areas, so being able to ramp down to very low bitrates with a "better than nothing" experience on mobile devices is valuable worldwide.

AV1 proponents should hope this is a viable market, because it's probably where AV1 would have the biggest differential advantage over H.264 and a market where rapid turnover and Android-centric mobile markets could result in >50% HW decoder installed base by 2025.

[Nintendo Maniac 64]

Originally Posted by Spyros

LG announced that their new 8K TVs will support AV1.


As far as I know these are the first TVs with AV1 hardware decoding. I wonder if they will also support Opus.

Originally Posted by birdie

These TVs will feature quite powerful SoCs and Opus is a very low complexity codec, so I see no reason not to support it.

Besides, YouTube started using it years ago along with VP9 and each device which supports YT must support Opus by default.

Originally Posted by soresu

I think he may have meant ASIC support?

As you say it's low complexity so it wouldn't require an ASIC to run it in a wall powered device like a high end 4K TV, but anything that reduces thermal output is welcome, it's annoying hearing a fan coming from a TV.

I'm a bit late on this, but I was able to confirm from a family friend with an E9 TV that the 2019 LG OLEDs already support VP9+Opus WebM files played from a USB HDD.


And decoding complexity isn't always the reason for lacking format support because I was also able to confirm that, while the 2019 E9 OLED also supports VP8 + vorbis in a WebM as well as VP9 + AAC in an MKV, it does not support VP8 + AAC in an MKV.


Here's the full list of tested formats and combinations that I was able to confirm that worked (all video codecs are 8bit unless otherwise noted):

• AVI: Xvid + MP3
• AVI: AVC + MP3
• MKV: HEVC + AAC
• MKV: VP9 + AAC
• MP4: AVC + AAC
• MP4: Xvid + AAC
• MP4: Xvid + MP3
• WebM: VP8 + Vorbis
• WebM: VP9 + Opus
• WebM: VP9 + Vorbis

And the things that didn't work (all video codecs are 8bit unless otherwise noted):

• MKV: VP8 + AAC
• MKV: AVC 10bit + FLAC
• MP4: AV1 (video only)
• WebM: AV1 + Opus

Unfortunately I didn't provide a test file that combined AVC 10bit and FLAC with other known-working codecs, like AVC 8bit + FLAC as well as AVC 10bit + AAC, so it's uncertain whether it's the AVC 10bit or the FLAC that the TV is unable to play back (though this logic doesn't apply to the MKV with VP8 + AAC as it's able to support all 3 things in other combinations, just not together).

[benwaggoner]

Originally Posted by Nintendo Maniac 64

Unfortunately I didn't provide a test file that combined AVC 10bit and FLAC with other known-working codecs, like AVC 8bit + FLAC as well as AVC 10bit + AAC, so it's uncertain whether it's the AVC 10bit or the FLAC that the TV is unable to play back (though this logic doesn't apply to the MKV with VP8 + AAC as it's able to support all 3 things in other combinations, just not together).

That's the thing about consumer electronics devices. The only way to really know if something works is to actually try it. Something can support all the individual components, but not in particular combinations. Something may work via streaming or an app but not as a file in the native player. Everything might work most of the time except if some esoteric parameter exceeds some internal limit even though it is permitted by the spec.

Something that works on a thing is easy. Something interesting that works on EVERYTHING is a nail-biting adventure.

[hajj_3]

new rav1e build is out: https://github.com/xiph/rav1e/releases/tag/p20200115

[nakTT]

Originally Posted by hajj_3

new rav1e build is out: https://github.com/xiph/rav1e/releases/tag/p20200115

Hi, do we have GUI for this encoder? Something like MeGUI or anything? Thank you in advance.

[paul97]

https://moisescardona.me/rav1e-gui/
https://ffmpeg.zeranoe.com/builds/

Download rav1e gui.
Download the static ffmpeg with the date. (exe)
Copy the ffmpeg in rav1e gui folder that you extracted (with 7-zip or winrar).
Disable pipes (right at the centre that is a checkbox). If it causes problems.
It still could have different aspect ratio and different framerate not PAL (.vob file) 23.9976
It supports anything with ffmpeg, and ffmpeg converts to yuv. Pipes are to not generate .yuv file.
For a GUI there is also Hybrid GUI (with aomenc - svt appveyor you can download) and Svt GUI, the last by Moises (same developer as rav1e gui).

[nakTT]

Originally Posted by paul97

https://moisescardona.me/rav1e-gui/
https://ffmpeg.zeranoe.com/builds/

Download rav1e gui.
Download the static ffmpeg with the date. (exe)
Copy the ffmpeg in rav1e gui folder that you extracted (with 7-zip or winrar).
Disable pipes (right at the centre that is a checkbox). If it causes problems.
It still could have different aspect ratio and different framerate not PAL (.vob file) 23.9976
It supports anything with ffmpeg, and ffmpeg converts to yuv. Pipes are to not generate .yuv file.
For a GUI there is also Hybrid GUI (with aomenc - svt appveyor you can download) and Svt GUI, the last by Moises (same developer as rav1e gui).

Thank you so much for the reply.

How do I check that I get the latest AV1 encoder?

Thank you in advance.