Alliance for Open Media codecs

[soresu]

Ah, someone on the AV1 discord got the me the Xbox decoder PDF through the git clone SW - good thing as I'm useless with that stuff.

Link here.

[hajj_3]

Qualcomm announced their new snapdragon 888 today, it is the new name for the snapdragon 875. Unfortunately it doesn't support hardware decoding of AV1
https://www.anandtech.com/show/16271...88-deep-dive/4
https://www.qualcomm.com/news/releas...obile-platform

[benwaggoner]

Originally Posted by hajj_3

Qualcomm announced their new snapdragon 888 today, it is the new name for the snapdragon 875. Unfortunately it doesn't support hardware decoding of AV1
https://www.anandtech.com/show/16271...88-deep-dive/4
https://www.qualcomm.com/news/releas...obile-platform

This was a surprise to me, as I had thought Google was requiring HW AV1 decode in this time frame.

Given Qualcomm's market share, this is really going to limit the utility of AV1 in mobile until 2022 at the earliest. Especially for premium content with HW DRM requirements.

And it was really at the low bitrates used in mobile where AV1's potential efficiency improvements were the most promising and relevant.

For 2021, I have a hard time seeing all that much value in doing AV1 other than for targeting Firefox or Chrome, which artificially block the use of HEVC HW decoders available to the underlying system. The Chromium/WebKit derived Edge and Safari can play HEVC content just fine. Switching from H.264 to AV1 clearly can offer big efficiency/quality improvements. But is adding a whole new codec any easier than asking users to use the default browser or a native Windows/Mac app? It's not like H.264 can be deprecated yet.

For everywhere but browsers, HEVC support is pretty universal, and I've yet to see compelling demonstrations of big-enough to bother improvements going from HEVC-to-AV1. HEVC can look pretty darn good given as much encoding time as AV1.

Film grain removal/parameterization/synthesis is a very promising feature for some classes of content, but there isn't production-grade robust tooling available to even really estimate the value of it, let alone use it by default in high-volume content publishing.

If AV1 misses 2021, 2022+ is quite likely will have competition from VVC and EVC.

[birdie]

Originally Posted by benwaggoner

This was a surprise to me, as I had thought Google was requiring HW AV1 decode in this time frame.

888 will able to decode 4K 8bit 30fps AV1 in software just fine though battery life will be hugely affected.

Qualcomm often adds new codecs in their lower tier SoCs, so I guess 7XX/6XX/5XX/4XX/whatever SoC which they will release next year will support HW AV1 decoding.

[hajj_3]

Originally Posted by birdie

Qualcomm often adds new codecs in their lower tier SoCs, so I guess 7XX/6XX/5XX/4XX/whatever SoC which they will release next year will support HW AV1 decoding.

They might never support av1, they might be trying to force EVC to get some marketshare.

[Blue_MiSfit]

Echoing what both Ben and I have said several times on this forum - hardware DRM requires hardware decode, and is mandatory for premium content. That's a big deal.

[hbbs]

I think you're onto to something. Because dragging its feet like they clearly did this time. Not only they are creating an opportunity to position EVC against AV1. But also as a "reasonable alternative" to VVC when time comes.

Let's see if Google will play hardball with them. What I'm about to post is from last April.

https://www.axios.com/scoop-google-r...9cf68908c.html

Sent from my Moto Z3 Play using Tapatalk

[soresu]

Originally Posted by benwaggoner

For 2021, I have a hard time seeing all that much value in doing AV1 other than for targeting Firefox or Chrome, which artificially block the use of HEVC HW decoders available to the underlying system. The Chromium/WebKit derived Edge and Safari can play HEVC content just fine. Switching from H.264 to AV1 clearly can offer big efficiency/quality improvements. But is adding a whole new codec any easier than asking users to use the default browser or a native Windows/Mac app? It's not like H.264 can be deprecated yet.

For everywhere but browsers, HEVC support is pretty universal, and I've yet to see compelling demonstrations of big-enough to bother improvements going from HEVC-to-AV1. HEVC can look pretty darn good given as much encoding time as AV1.

If AV1 misses 2021, 2022+ is quite likely will have competition from VVC and EVC.

A lack of prevalent VP9 HW support didn't stop Google from pushing it for Youtube, and I doubt it will be any different for AV1.

Especially when there is already far better SW decoding for AV1 than VP9 had at the equivalent time from release, coupled with far more performant mobile CPU cores to decode it with - Apple aside the best ARM core at the time was A57 at around 2 Ghz, now we have X1 at around 2.84 Ghz which has to be more than 3x faster at least.

I imagine that Qualcomm didn't want to support VP9 either to begin with, but it eventually ended up in there as will AV1 in good time - whether that actually happens before AV2 is released is a different story.

It's also worth noting that for all Qualcomm's market dominance elsewhere, China and India's market will probably be populated with many handsets that use Mediatek SoC's that do support AV1 - and their combined populations/potential market are not something to sniff at for sure.

[foxyshadis]

I've moved dav1d-specific posts to dav1d accelerated AV1 decoder, beginning from a bit over a year ago. There's still plenty of room for a general decoders comparison thread, and of course an encoders face-off thread.

[benwaggoner]

Originally Posted by soresu

A lack of prevalent VP9 HW support didn't stop Google from pushing it for Youtube, and I doubt it will be any different for AV1.

Especially when there is already far better SW decoding for AV1 than VP9 had at the equivalent time from release, coupled with far more performant mobile CPU cores to decode it with - Apple aside the best ARM core at the time was A57 at around 2 Ghz, now we have X1 at around 2.84 Ghz which has to be more than 3x faster at least.

Yeah, in many ways AV1 is already more mature than any VPx implementation ever got to. There certainly are a lot more encoder vendors competing on making better looking and faster encoders, which is a huge deal.

SW DRM is simply not allowed for lots of premium content, however. AV1 is a lot more practical for user-generated and other non-commercial content than for professional licensed content.

Also, the reduced battery life of using a SW decoder matters a lot more when watching a two hour movie than short-form content.

I imagine that Qualcomm didn't want to support VP9 either to begin with, but it eventually ended up in there as will AV1 in good time - whether that actually happens before AV2 is released is a different story.

AV2 is in pretty early stages. EVC and VVC are the next two standardized codecs that HW vendors are going to be deciding whether to put in.

It's also worth noting that for all Qualcomm's market dominance elsewhere, China and India's market will probably be populated with many handsets that use Mediatek SoC's that do support AV1 - and their combined populations/potential market are not something to sniff at for sure.

Yeah, another divide between "Hollywood" content that is globally licensed and more regional content where DRM rules can be much more relaxed. A lot of those markets use ASOP not Google Android, and so might not include all the software decoders like AV1.

As a content creator, if one is choosing one codec beyond H.264, HEVC certainly offers a much bigger audience for 2021 except for Firefox and Chrome.

[el Filou]

Originally Posted by benwaggoner

Firefox or Chrome, which artificially block the use of HEVC HW decoders available to the underlying system.

Oh wow, I had no idea about that. So is that the actual reason why UHD isn't available on Chrome & Firefox for those streaming services that offer it? I always assumed it was because of stronger DRM in Edge.

[ksec]

Originally Posted by soresu

A lack of prevalent VP9 HW support didn't stop Google from pushing it for Youtube, and I doubt it will be any different for AV1.

It's also worth noting that for all Qualcomm's market dominance elsewhere, China and India's market will probably be populated with many handsets that use Mediatek SoC's that do support AV1 - and their combined populations/potential market are not something to sniff at for sure.

VP9 has had hardware support from nearly Day 1 through many different IP vendors along with HEVC as VP9 and HEVC are similar. And it was relatively simple and doesn't cost much in extra die space when HEVC was "the" requirement ( at least at the time ).

All the current hardware decoder including those in Laptops have a much higher power usage allowance, i.e You could have a hardware decoder working in 1+W range without problem. Compare to a mobile phone where it is expected to operate in few hundred mW range. This time around it isn't so simple because VVC has barely finished and on the surface doesn't seems to share that much with AV1. How this translate to hardware decoding block differences remains to be seen, especially when the power requirement is much more stringent. I have previously written this will change with 5nm SoC as both transistor budget and power usage improves, I was referring to TSMC's 5nm, the Sanpdragon 888 based on Samsung 5nm, which has a lower transistor density so it isn't quite there yet.

Finally Mediatek only has one chip that has AV1 decoder. And that is their High End flagship. 90% of Mediatek volume are low to mid range SoC. And transistor budget are even tightener in those segment.

I just wish people are more mindful of different interest in video codec, from hardware to software and from users to producers.

[benwaggoner]

Originally Posted by el Filou

Oh wow, I had no idea about that. So is that the actual reason why UHD isn't available on Chrome & Firefox for those streaming services that offer it? I always assumed it was because of stronger DRM in Edge.

Nope, HEVC decode actually did work by default in both browsers before it was explicitly blocked. Which was done for political, not technical reasons.

This is partly a reflection of the strong focus on user-generated content to Google (YouTube) and Facebook.

Among other things, this is why there's no browser-based HDR premium content. While AV1 technically can do HDR, no one has released an encoder with mature HDR tuning. x265 needed quite a lot of feature development to get optimal HDR encoding, since PQ and 709 have some pretty foundational differences and different optimization requirements.

The net effect is we'll probably see premium content playback on Windows/Mac continue to shift away from browsers towards apps. The large majority of PC and Mac systems can decode 10-bit HEVC in HW.

[rubait]

Any idea if DXVA Checker supports AV1 decode yet. I tried opening some files with it but doesn't seem to recognize it.

[hajj_3]

Originally Posted by rubait

Any idea if DXVA Checker supports AV1 decode yet.

It does: https://bluesky-soft.com/en/DXVAChecker.html

[rubait]

Originally Posted by hajj_3

It does: https://bluesky-soft.com/en/DXVAChecker.html

I tried it but it doesn't recognize the file, as it doesn't give me the option to choose a decoder when I open the file. Has anyone tried it on a Tiger Lake and does it require any special container. I have tried .MP4

[GTPVHD]

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/artic...rom-intel-intc

Since Qualcomm dropped the ball, hopefully Microsoft's own internal inhouse design ARMV8 based SoC has AV1 hardware decoding.

[Jamaika]

Is loopfilter mask function {CONFIG_LPF_MASK} needed in the av1 codec? Seems neglected and buggy.

[GTPVHD]

https://videocardz.com/newz/lenovo-c...-rtx-3060-12gb
https://cdn.videocardz.com/1/2020/12...50-RTX3060.png
https://psref.lenovo.com/Product/Len...?ViewSpec=true

RTX 3050 4GB GDDR6 leaked by Lenovo, the cheapest Nvidia card with AV1 fixed-function hardware decoding when released next year.

[utack]

Originally Posted by GTPVHD

https://videocardz.com/newz/lenovo-c...-rtx-3060-12gb
https://cdn.videocardz.com/1/2020/12...50-RTX3060.png
https://psref.lenovo.com/Product/Len...?ViewSpec=true

RTX 3050 4GB GDDR6 leaked by Lenovo, the cheapest Nvidia card with AV1 fixed-function hardware decoding when released next year.

Not sure if ffmpeg currently works inefficently but mpv with an 8K AV1 Video it allocates just over 4000MB VRAM for me, so that would not work
Could someone cross-check with the native Windows Video Player?