AV1 Unleashes 4K and Higher UHD, Royalty-Free Video for All

[Megalith]

The Alliance for Open Media has announced the public availability of the AOMedia Video Codec 1.0 (AV1), which delivers cross-platform, 4K UHD or higher online video. Unlike video codecs such as h.264 and HEVC, AV1 is royalty-free. It averages 30 percent greater compression compared to competing codecs.

The availability of AV1 as an open-source codec is a significant milestone in fulfilling the organization’s promise to deliver a next-generation video format that is interoperable, open, optimized for internet delivery and scalable to any modern device at any bandwidth.

 

[YeuEmMaiMai]

nice...I'll take 2

 

[Nenu]

Only works on April 1st tho.

 

[IdiotInCharge]

Where's Qualcomm? MediaTek? Samsung?

Going to be a hard takeup if the majority of phones don't ship with hardware codecs.


[but at least everyone on the desktop is in!]

 

[EODetroit]

Been waiting for this one to finish its spec. Hopefully it eventually lives up to the hype.

 

[cjcox]

Hoping this gets implemented everywhere so the curse of MPEG-LA can die. Remember, the only reason you don't owe them "millions of dollars" is because MPEG-LA choose, at this time, to ignore what you've done.

 

[nilepez]

We'll see if this matters. FLAC and Vorbis are free and great codecs and they've barely made a dent in car stereos. My car's stereo supports Wave files and MP3 and that's it. Why don't they support Flac/Vorbis? Don't know, but I'll believe that this will succeed when I see it (even if it's better than the pay versions). Hell, same goes for desktop Linux. Free and ignored by the masses for 20+ years.

 

[glutto]

ffmpeg binaries have started including AV1 with their builds now.

 

[RanceJustice]

This is great! I am interested to see how it compares vs HEVC / X265 and VP9 both in terms of raw performance and resource use. Perhaps most important for wide adoption is to ensure that lower powered (ie ARM) mobile devices can either run it natively in software and/or easily support it in hardware decoding. Now that we have a spec, we need both the leading edge of the encoding world (note: Anime fansubbers have for the past 2 decades held this position, using the latest and best open video, audio, and container formats long before the general public. The same can be said of certain groups in the file sharing "Scene") to get going on actually putting it into practice on content via open source codecs/software, while everyone pushes device/chip manufacturers to build in AV1 support and/or ensure existing more powerful hardware encoding/decoding can be used (ie GPUs for instance, where Intel, AMD, and Nvidia can build in hardware-accelerated support for encoding and playback into latest drivers for all hardware capable of doing so).

I am curious what kind of pushback they'll get from other parts of the industry and the other codecs, but if it is really as good as it appears to be, it could be yet another example of a completely open format being the best not just ethically and financially, but technically as well.

 

[Ranma]

This is great! I am interested to see how it compares vs HEVC / X265 and VP9 both in terms of raw performance and resource use. Perhaps most important for wide adoption is to ensure that lower powered (ie ARM) mobile devices can either run it natively in software and/or easily support it in hardware decoding. Now that we have a spec, we need both the leading edge of the encoding world (note: Anime fansubbers have for the past 2 decades held this position, using the latest and best open video, audio, and container formats long before the general public. The same can be said of certain groups in the file sharing "Scene") to get going on actually putting it into practice on content via open source codecs/software, while everyone pushes device/chip manufacturers to build in AV1 support and/or ensure existing more powerful hardware encoding/decoding can be used (ie GPUs for instance, where Intel, AMD, and Nvidia can build in hardware-accelerated support for encoding and playback into latest drivers for all hardware capable of doing so).

I am curious what kind of pushback they'll get from other parts of the industry and the other codecs, but if it is really as good as it appears to be, it could be yet another example of a completely open format being the best not just ethically and financially, but technically as well.

http://www.streamingmedia.com/Artic...lectual-Property-Questions-Remain-124134.aspx

According to the AOM representatives, at NAB several members will show 30-40% better quality for UHD 4K videos than VP9/HEVC. Encoding times are currently about 100X slower than VP9, which they feel will drop to 5X by the end of the year. For decode, AOM is currently about 5X slower then VP9 on the x86 platform, which should drop to 2X by the end of 2018.

To put that into perspective, a 20 second 1080p clip took 74 minutes to encode on a 12 core Xeon. This won't be used for anime anytime soon.

 

[Sparky]

Pied Piper stocks just fell.

 

[Khahhblaab]

http://www.streamingmedia.com/Artic...lectual-Property-Questions-Remain-124134.aspx

According to the AOM representatives, at NAB several members will show 30-40% better quality for UHD 4K videos than VP9/HEVC. Encoding times are currently about 100X slower than VP9, which they feel will drop to 5X by the end of the year. For decode, AOM is currently about 5X slower then VP9 on the x86 platform, which should drop to 2X by the end of 2018.

To put that into perspective, a 20 second 1080p clip took 74 minutes to encode on a 12 core Xeon. This won't be used for anime anytime soon.

After first hearing about it, I did a little reading about it and also found that they are depending on a measure called PSNR (Peak signal-to-noise ratio). I never heard about this. I have mostly been depending on the simplicity of a smaller file size for the same or better quality. If they are placing this new measurement as proof, and your numbers are correct then it explains why. A newer codec must be easier to use. When I see comparable file sizes than I may be more interested. But for now, I bet that it wont gain wide acceptance because of the issues you present.

 

[DedEmbryonicCe11]

We'll see if this matters. FLAC and Vorbis are free and great codecs and they've barely made a dent in car stereos. My car's stereo supports Wave files and MP3 and that's it. Why don't they support Flac/Vorbis? Don't know, but I'll believe that this will succeed when I see it (even if it's better than the pay versions). Hell, same goes for desktop Linux. Free and ignored by the masses for 20+ years.

When it comes to stock stereos you're completely right. As far as aftermarket goes, that's entirely up to the consumers to vote with their wallets and only purchase equipment that supports every codec that doesn't have licensing fees. Now granted another issue is that today a lot of cars use molded faces to their console for aesthetics that an aftermarket setup will look ugly in. Few people are willing to go all out building their own out of bondo or whatever and sculpting it to match perfectly. In my situation the stereo in my car (2003) is part of a fiber optic ring and if I were to remove it and replace it with aftermarket I lose some features like open door chimes.

In many situations it's better to simply buy a portable digital audio device and using the line-in, aux-in, proprietary connector, etc that hopefully your car has.

 

[Dr. Righteous]

When it comes to stock stereos you're completely right. As far as aftermarket goes, that's entirely up to the consumers to vote with their wallets and only purchase equipment that supports every codec that doesn't have licensing fees. Now granted another issue is that today a lot of cars use molded faces to their console for aesthetics that an aftermarket setup will look ugly in. Few people are willing to go all out building their own out of bondo or whatever and sculpting it to match perfectly. In my situation the stereo in my car (2003) is part of a fiber optic ring and if I were to remove it and replace it with aftermarket I lose some features like open door chimes.

In many situations it's better to simply buy a portable digital audio device and using the line-in, aux-in, proprietary connector, etc that hopefully your car has.

I'm running into this exact crap as I'm putting a car system together with an amp and a sub for the first time in 20 years.
Even on new head units I'm finding only support for MP3s, WMA, no FLAC.
At first I thought it was no big deal; the head unit has a AUX input so I will plug in my cell and let it playback FLAC files. Only issue is it is actually cumbersome as hell.

 

[Nenu]

I recently bought a Pioneer head and it supports WMA, MP3, WAV, AAC and FLAC.

 

[DedEmbryonicCe11]

I'm running into this exact crap as I'm putting a car system together with an amp and a sub for the first time in 20 years.
Even on new head units I'm finding only support for MP3s, WMA, no FLAC.
At first I thought it was no big deal; the head unit has a AUX input so I will plug in my cell and let it playback FLAC files. Only issue is it is actually cumbersome as hell.

Does your chellphone have a good DAC in it? If not there are some pretty cheap options that are so much smaller than a cellphone like the Fiio X1 gen2 (2.2" x 3.82") or X3 gen3 (2.32" x 4.49") so I'm sure you can figure out a way to mount it with velcro without it interfering with other controls.

 

[nilepez]

When it comes to stock stereos you're completely right. As far as aftermarket goes, that's entirely up to the consumers to vote with their wallets and only purchase equipment that supports every codec that doesn't have licensing fees. Now granted another issue is that today a lot of cars use molded faces to their console for aesthetics that an aftermarket setup will look ugly in. Few people are willing to go all out building their own out of bondo or whatever and sculpting it to match perfectly. In my situation the stereo in my car (2003) is part of a fiber optic ring and if I were to remove it and replace it with aftermarket I lose some features like open door chimes.

In many situations it's better to simply buy a portable digital audio device and using the line-in, aux-in, proprietary connector, etc that hopefully your car has.

I understand all that, but ultimately those Codecs aren't widely supported in cars (and my car is like yours you can't really pull the car radio out...which is a drag, because it doesn't save the catalog of songs on the USB drive, so it reindexes whenever the car is turned on, which takes 10 minutes or so for roughly 10k files.

I'm running into this exact crap as I'm putting a car system together with an amp and a sub for the first time in 20 years.
Even on new head units I'm finding only support for MP3s, WMA, no FLAC.
At first I thought it was no big deal; the head unit has a AUX input so I will plug in my cell and let it playback FLAC files. Only issue is it is actually cumbersome as hell.

After DedEmbryonic's post, I did a search and Alpine supports it (at least on some head units) via USB. I don't know how good it is, but it's there. Don't recall all of the other brands, but Sony was another one.

I could use my phone, but I hate using up all my storage for music. robably less of an issue on my next phone, since it'll probably have 256GB of storage. In fairness, 128gb is OK, but not if I need to take a lot of snaps or video.