Alliance for Open Media codecs [Archive] - Page 47

benwaggoner

19th October 2020, 18:15

Probably due to the increased availability of hardware decoders.

I expect Netflix to follow the trend of AV1 stream availability due to the quality per bandwidth gain.
Unlike YouTube, Netflix has premium content, much or all of which has DRM requirements. AV1's gains versus HEVC aren't that big at best, so it's the gains versus H.264 that's the real game changer, and the only material platforms that have AV1 but can't use HEVC are Chrome and Firefox (pretty much all current Android phones have HW HEVC decode, just not from Chrome). Premium content also has a smaller usage share of browsers versus apps/TVs/streaming media device.

YouTube also has much lower quality expectations than premium content, so they can get away with consistently suboptimal encoding. One people are paying for a service or content, their expectations go way higher. The general expectation is to not have any distracting artifacts. When someone is paying extra to subscribe to or buy UHD or HDR content, expectations go even higher.

YouTube being free can cut a whole lot of corners. Pretty much all video game footage on YouTube has painful artifacts, for example. Encoding AV1 at high-quality while at low enough bitrates to justify adding another encoding target is slow. If one's willing to spend that amount of time to make AV1 look good, one could also do x264 --preset placebo and x265 --preset veryslow.

One of the biggest AV1 features that was supposed to save bits versus H.264 and HEVC was its film grain modeling. But that only works for moderate degrees of grain. With the really heavy

So, YouTube is pretty much the ideal AV1 platform for the moment, as it targets lower quality SW decode without DRM. It's utility for premium content is a lot lower for the moment due to lack of HW DRM, broader availability of HEVC, and high quality bar.

Obviously trends are going in the right direction, as all the major CPU companies have announced AV1 HW decode support and AV1 quality-at-perf-at-bitrate has improved enormously in the last 12 months. But we're still several years away from having even 50% of PCs having HW AV1 support.

A ROI justification for AV1 would be very hard to make right now. I imagine YouTube is spending far more to encode and store AV1 than they are saving in bandwidth at this point; it's not like they can stop encoding and storing the H.264 streams anytime soon.

dapperdan

19th October 2020, 18:51

I've not investigated it myself yet, but I did see someone complaining recently that new Youtube videos were VP9 and AV1 only, not H.264

Dont know if that's related to Apple rolling out VP9. Or if its possibly just a change in which one gets encoded first. But we must be pretty close to Youtube not having to bother with H.264 anymore.

They claim to no longer support IE11 and push people towards chrome. The fraction of people who can't view VP9 must be pretty small and shrinking.

NikosD

19th October 2020, 19:49

YouTube also has much lower quality expectations than premium content, so they can get away with consistently suboptimal encoding. One people are paying for a service or content, their expectations go way higher. The general expectation is to not have any distracting artifacts. When someone is paying extra to subscribe to or buy UHD or HDR content, expectations go even higher.

YouTube being free can cut a whole lot of corners. Pretty much all video game footage on YouTube has painful artifacts, for example. Being a customer of Netflix's 4K/HDR most expensive and premium subscription for the last few years, I have never seen such disturbing and distracting artifacts from Netflix like this period of time.

Netflix provides 4K at very low bitrates using new techniques like shot based encodings which are the worst thing I have ever seen on my 4K TV despite what they say here:
https://netflixtechblog.com/optimized-shot-based-encodes-for-4k-now-streaming-47b516b10bbb

I mean YouTube is many times better in encoding quality than these new "optimized" techniques.

It's a nightmare and a legacy of Spring-Summer COVID bandwidth restrictions that they decided to fight using these failed new encodings in order to keep bandwidth low, especially in 4K content.

As you work in the industry, is it possible to shake briefly their heads in order to open their eyes and see the mess they have caused ?

I wonder when this nightmare of limited bandwidth will be over, hopefully before the unlimited COVID lockdowns.

benwaggoner

20th October 2020, 18:37

Being a customer of Netflix's 4K/HDR most expensive and premium subscription for the last few years, I have never seen such disturbing and distracting artifacts from Netflix like this period of time.

Netflix provides 4K at very low bitrates using new techniques like shot based encodings which are the worst thing I have ever seen on my 4K TV despite what they say here:
https://netflixtechblog.com/optimized-shot-based-encodes-for-4k-now-streaming-47b516b10bbb

I mean YouTube is many times better in encoding quality than these new "optimized" techniques.
You need to watch some more YouTube. I see some pretty egregious stuff there. Although their 4K VP9 encodes seem to have improved in quality somewhat recently.

It's a nightmare and a legacy of Spring-Summer COVID bandwidth restrictions that they decided to fight using these failed new encodings in order to keep bandwidth low, especially in 4K content.
The COVID spike lead to increased concern about bandwidth utilization across the streaming industry. IIRC, some European government(s) stated concern that streaming was going to use up all the bandwidth.

As you work in the industry, is it possible to shake briefly their heads in order to open their eyes and see the mess they have caused ?
I actually helped design the original Silverlight + VC-1 adaptive streaming encodes with Netflix that they originally launched. But I don't know that they'll take my opinion more seriously than customers' (or VMAF's) at this point.

I wonder when this nightmare of limited bandwidth will be over, hopefully before the unlimited COVID lockdowns.
My unlimited bandwidth from Comcast ended a few months ago. I don't know that we'll ever stop worrying about bandwidth. People still want to watch HDR on tablets in subways :sly:.

The current codec wars are a challenge, as many aren't adopting HEVC (which is broadly available outside of Chrome/Firefox) in favor of using H.264 now and hoping for AV1. HEVC can lower bandwidth by around 40% versus H.264 at similar quality with today's encoders. HEVC would be the best way to drop aggregate bandwidth/increase top bitrate quality in 2020-2021 while people wait for HW AV1 decoders to become common.

benwaggoner

20th October 2020, 18:40

I note that the RDNA 2 GPU that the Xbox Series S/X and the PlayStation 5 have customized versions of include AV1 HW decoders. Those might be the first high-volume AV1 HW decoder devices to the market. Game consoles get used a lot for premium content streaming.

NikosD

20th October 2020, 19:40

The current codec wars are a challenge, as many aren't adopting HEVC (which is broadly available outside of Chrome/Firefox) in favor of using H.264 now and hoping for AV1. HEVC can lower bandwidth by around 40% versus H.264 at similar quality with today's encoders. HEVC would be the best way to drop aggregate bandwidth/increase top bitrate quality in 2020-2021 while people wait for HW AV1 decoders to become common. Talking about Netflix, it uses HEVC 10bit for 4K/HDR streams with highest HW DRM possible and the system doesn't offer any other codec for such content .

So, Netflix is already on the boat of HEVC 10bit since the beginning of 4K in 2014.

The artifacts I'm talking about have nothing to do with low bandwidth or codec of 4K content, but with the change in encoding type as Netflix mentioned in its article.

As I said before, the problem is not low bandwidth by itself but the way Netflix is trying to handle it using the "optimized" techniques of 4K re-encoding during the last few months.

Blue_MiSfit

20th October 2020, 20:11

Where did you see that the PS5 / XBS have hardware AV1 decoding? I wasn't aware of this!

hbbs

20th October 2020, 20:16

@benwaggoner please. I'd love to know that myself.

Sent from my Moto Z3 Play using Tapatalk

unlord

21st October 2020, 04:25

Are there any AOM developers here? It's like talking to a wall...

AOM developer here. There is also a healthy community of AV1 developers, users and codec enthusiasts on IRC. I recommend #daala and #dav1d on irc.freenode.org if you still have questions.

Unfortunately, I don't recognize many of the names on doom9 from the AV1 process, but please speak up if I'm mistaken.

benwaggoner

21st October 2020, 19:19

Where did you see that the PS5 / XBS have hardware AV1 decoding? I wasn't aware of this!
They use a customized RDNA 2 GPU, which has been announced (https://optocrypto.com/amd-big-navi-rdna-2-will-have-support-for-av1-video-decoding/#:~:text=AMD%20Big%20Navi%2C%20RDNA%202%20will%20have%20support,support%20AV1%20decoding%20in%20the%20new%20Radeon%20series.) as having AV1 decode support.

I suppose it's possible one or both cut AV1 as a cost savings measure, but I can't imagine it's a material addition to a GPU of that complexity. It's more in the mobile SoC space where transistors and power are a such a high premium that adding AV1 could be a material cost hit.

I guess I better get on a preorder for both and try them out.

benwaggoner

21st October 2020, 19:27

AOM developer here. There is also a healthy community of AV1 developers, users and codec enthusiasts on IRC. I recommend #daala and #dav1d on irc.freenode.org if you still have questions.

Unfortunately, I don't recognize many of the names on doom9 from the AV1 process, but please speak up if I'm mistaken.
Doom9 is more user than developer centric, so that's not surprising.

Cross-pollination between the communities is always a really good idea. Any decent encoder development needs a lot of experienced eyes for subjective quality evaluation and tuning. There's been a historical bias towards objective metric tuning in the VPx and then AV1 development (PSNR first, now VMAF) which misses lots of psychovisual tuning opportunities. And VMAF is just not a sufficiently sensitive instrument to compare different adaptive quantization approaches.

That's more an issue with the training set used for VMAF's machine learning, which was limited to x264 without much variation in AQ modes or strengths. Especially because AV1 itself and libaom were both tuned using VMAF, we'd really need a new set of subjective ratings of real-world AV1 encodes using a variety of different psychovisual tunings. That ground truth data would then make for a much better-trained VMAF for AV1 evaluation.

As it is, the VMAF tuning baked in during AV1 and libaom development results in AV1 yielding VMAF scores that overestimate its subjective quality ratings versus, say x265 HEVC. That bias will go away if VMAF is retrained on subjective ratings of actual AV1 output.

benwaggoner

22nd October 2020, 19:30

https://forums.anandtech.com/threads/intel-to-develop-discrete-gpus.2526376/page-29#post-40323361
That's the 2nd gen of Intel's discreet GPUs for 2021-2022 launch?

Greenhorn

22nd October 2020, 20:01

That's the 2nd gen of Intel's discreet GPUs for 2021-2022 launch?

First, not second. Speculation leans towards mid-2021, but that just seems to be people spitballing a Computex launch.

(DG2 = Xe-HPG/high-power Gen12 discrete; DG1 = Xe-LP/low-power Gen12 discrete)

hajj_3

23rd October 2020, 08:35

That's the 2nd gen of Intel's discreet GPUs for 2021-2022 launch?

https://www.anandtech.com/show/16190/intel-dg1-gpu-now-shipping-xehpg-dg2-gpu-in-labs

hajj_3

24th October 2020, 08:45

Paint.NET now has full read/write .avif capability: https://blog.getpaint.net/2020/10/23/paint-net-4-2-14-is-now-available/

NikosD

25th October 2020, 11:38

For the owners of Ampere cards (haha it was a joke) there is a new version of NVEnc excellent transcoder by rigaya (the developer) who added AV1 HW decode in his app.

Obviously, you can't use the app for playback but only to transcode in HW even an AV1 clip.

Give it a try, you two unique owners of Ampere cards:

https://github.com/rigaya/NVEnc/issues/273

hajj_3

29th October 2020, 17:42

AMD's RX6000 gpu's can decode AV1, presumably fully hardware decode rather than hybrid decode: https://www.amd.com/en/products/graphics/amd-radeon-rx-6800-xt

Blue_MiSfit

29th October 2020, 18:46

VincAlastor

30th October 2020, 01:00

Very exciting to see 4kp60 4:2:0 10 bit AV1 hardware encoding in the next gen Intel 11th Gen!

https://www.anandtech.com/show/16205/intels-11th-gen-core-rocket-lake-detailed-ice-lake-core-with-xe-graphics

I wonder if their encoder implementation is any good

looks like there was a mistake (?!) by Intel

https://www.reddit.com/r/intel/comments/jkapv5/fresh_new_confirmed_details_on_intels_11th_gen/gahs822/

Decoders:
1x 4k60 8b 4:2:0 AVC

4K60 12b 4:2:2/4:4:4 HEVC/VP9/SCC

4K60 10b 4:2:0 AV1

Encoders

4K60 8b 4:2:0 AVC

4K60 10b 4:4:4 HEVC/SCC/VP9, RA

benwaggoner

30th October 2020, 01:57

Blue_MiSfit

30th October 2020, 07:39

Aw geez Intel! Yeah, I was pretty shocked to see this in the first place. Too bad it was a typo :)

benwaggoner

30th October 2020, 21:20

As Ice Lake is now shipping and we're getting some results from it, I've started a new Sticky to cover hardware AV1 decoding. As usage ramps up, having a single AV1 thread won't be practical before long.

https://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?t=182011

soresu

30th October 2020, 21:37

They use a customized RDNA 2 GPU, which has been announced (https://optocrypto.com/amd-big-navi-rdna-2-will-have-support-for-av1-video-decoding/#:~:text=AMD%20Big%20Navi%2C%20RDNA%202%20will%20have%20support,support%20AV1%20decoding%20in%20the%20new%20Radeon%20series.) as having AV1 decode support.

This slide would seem to refute that assumption:

https://pics.computerbase.de/9/4/4/1/1/9-1080.62f89bc5.jpg

The GPU shader/CU microarchitecture and the VCN encoder/decoder architecture are not fused to each other from what I can gather about it, especially as it has been said that the design of at least one console SoC was already set in stone 2 years ago when AV1 had only just become standardised.

Having said that both consoles do have an 8 core CPU that could easily handle 4K24p for 8 bit content using dav1d.

Sadly davi1d still has not so much as a lick of 10/12/16 bit SIMD assembly for AVX2 or SSSE3.

My Zen1 based R7 1700 can barely manage some 10 bit 4K24p clips without skipping frames, but the Zen2 based CPU in the new consoles should fair a bit better, though I doubt it could even come close to managing 4K60p unless either Sony or Microsoft has made their own decoder with optimised 10 bit SIMD assembly (which itself is not a great stretch of imagination considering their massive resources).

soresu

30th October 2020, 22:23

soresu

1st November 2020, 03:40

https://newsroom.intel.com/news/iris-xe-max-discrete-graphics-deep-link/

AV1 isn't mentioned in that announcement at all?

Yups

1st November 2020, 13:43

My understanding is that none of the new gen GPUs have HW AV1 encoding. Given its complexity, it may be pretty hard to get meaningful compression efficiency gains out of the mm^2 a GPU vendor is willing to devote to encode. The quality@perf math can be very different for a GPU.

I have to add that according to Notebookcheck (https://www.notebookcheck.net/Intel-Tiger-Lake-H-Alder-Lake-P-and-Alder-Lake-S-detailed-Alder-Lake-to-offer-up-to-8C-16T-configs-with-Xe-LP-DDR5-4400-RAM-Wi-Fi-6E-and-PCIe-Gen5-support.496197.0.html) Alder Lake will support AV1 accelerated encode and as we know it's still based on Xe LP. On a further note in the Intel graphics driver since a month there is a file called "Intel Hybrid AV1 Encoder MFT".

As Ice Lake is now shipping and we're getting some results from it, I've started a new Sticky to cover hardware AV1 decoding. As usage ramps up, having a single AV1 thread won't be practical before long.

https://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?t=182011

You made a mistake there. Icelake doesn't support AV1, it's Tigerlake.

VincAlastor

10th November 2020, 00:28

Amlogic S905X4 Android TV & RDK developer kit ships with ATSC, DVB, or ISDB tuners
Video Decoding

AV1 MP-10 L5.1 up to 4Kx2K @ 60fps

https://www.cnx-software.com/2020/11/05/amlogic-s905x4-android-tv-rdk-developer-kit-ships-with-atsc-dvb-or-isdb-tuners/

LigH

17th November 2020, 09:24

New uploads: (MSYS2; MinGW32 / MinGW64: GCC 10.2.0)

AOM v2.0.0-1023-gd198b8e9f (https://www.mediafire.com/file/rz84pbopamz56ef/aom_v2.0.0-1023-gd198b8e9f.7z/file)

rav1e 0.4.0-alpha (9569901a / 2020-11-16) (https://www.mediafire.com/file/dgd28bpkd5l51eo/rav1e_0.4.0-alpha_2020-11-16_9569901a.7z/file)

dav1d 0.7.1 (ffd052b / 2020-11-16) (https://www.mediafire.com/file/tso76qebiie9eze/dav1d_0.7.1_2020-11-16_ffd052b.7z/file)

avif 0.8.3-bf58fe7 (https://www.mediafire.com/file/od25do5r1mnff0q/avif-0.8.3_bf58fe7.7z/file)
dav1d [dec]:0.7.1, aom [enc/dec]:2.0.0-1020-geda52bb92, rav1e [enc]:0.4.0-alpha (p20201110-4-g9569901a)

benwaggoner

17th November 2020, 22:26

Anyone get a Xbox Series X|S or PS5 and had a chance to try to play back any AV1 content yet?

I would try it in a .mp4 container as it is less likely Sony/Microsoft added demuxing for others.

LigH

17th November 2020, 23:11

I may ask among the Twitch gamers I know (but doubt they know the AV1 video codec at all)...

soresu

25th November 2020, 23:16

Anyone get a Xbox Series X|S or PS5 and had a chance to try to play back any AV1 content yet?

I would try it in a .mp4 container as it is less likely Sony/Microsoft added demuxing for others.

It seems I was wrong and there indeed is an AV1 decoder for all XB1+ models in the works, mostly using the GPU for maximum CPU offload (you know, cos Jaguar is so great and all).

Link here (https://aomedia.googlesource.com/av1-xbox-one/)to the repo on googlesource.

soresu

25th November 2020, 23:19

The Xbox decoder seems rooted to UWP and HLSL, but I imagine it could probably be reworked to use GLSL and a more cross platform software architecture than UWP.

soresu

25th November 2020, 23:39

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 (https://drive.google.com/file/d/1fPYK0yewbWeCxm1HfbxRyoGOFcvKtLXm/view?usp=sharing).

hajj_3

2nd December 2020, 17:02

benwaggoner

3rd December 2020, 02:00

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/qualcomm-snapdragon-888-deep-dive/4
https://www.qualcomm.com/news/releases/2020/12/02/qualcomm-redefines-premium-flagship-snapdragon-888-5g-mobile-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

3rd December 2020, 08:55

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

3rd December 2020, 10:26

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

3rd December 2020, 11:31

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

3rd December 2020, 11:38

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-readies-its-own-chip-for-future-pixels-chromebooks-e5f8479e-4a38-485c-a264-9ef9cf68908c.html

Sent from my Moto Z3 Play using Tapatalk

soresu

3rd December 2020, 12:01

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

3rd December 2020, 12:40

I've moved dav1d-specific posts to dav1d accelerated AV1 decoder (https://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?t=182128), 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

3rd December 2020, 23:52

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

4th December 2020, 15:10

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

4th December 2020, 20:09

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

5th December 2020, 01:15

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

18th December 2020, 06:07

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

18th December 2020, 12:06

Any idea if DXVA Checker supports AV1 decode yet.

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

rubait

18th December 2020, 18:13

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

Jamaika

24th December 2020, 11:31

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

utack

6th January 2021, 16:33

https://videocardz.com/newz/lenovo-confirms-geforce-rtx-3050-ti-6gb-rtx-3050-4gb-and-rtx-3060-12gb
https://cdn.videocardz.com/1/2020/12/Legion-Lenovo-Legion-R5-28IMB05-RTX3050-RTX3060.png
https://psref.lenovo.com/Product/Lenovo_Legion_R5_28IMB05?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?