5 ms·

They'll also need to make sure they stick to AV1 for a long-ass time. H264 is fully accelerated. VP8 was supposed to become a bigwig thing, some (alpha) hardwar

They'll also need to make sure they stick to AV1 for a long-ass time. H264 is fully accelerated. VP8 was supposed to become a bigwig thing, some (alpha) hardware supported started to pop up and then Google nixed it and switched to VP9. Only now are VP9 accelerated CPUs popping up and now they're already planning to switch to AV1 soon.. no damn way the smaller CPU builders (everyone not Intel or AMD) will build in decoding support for another standard that'll be nixxed in a few years. That's also why H265 will (sadly) be victorious, even despite heavy licensing. H264 has been in use for so long without big changes that CPU builders felt comfortable dedicating silicon to it. Unless AOmedia (= Google, Cisco etc.) give a guarantee they won't switch up to 'AV2' or whatever in a few years, it won't see large hardware support. On a sidenote: screw Google for switching YouTube over to VP9 for some bandwidth savings, full well knowing 95%+ of people does not have VP9 acceleration and thus having YouTube absolutely slaughter their laptop battery. H264ify fixes this, but still. ALWAYS put the user first. Edit: to be clear, I know all the big builders (Intel, Nvidia, AMD etc) are part of AOMedia. However, they also all promised VP8 support which never happened, and VP9 support which is more than a generation late.

clouddrover 10y ago
> no damn way the smaller CPU builders (everyone not Intel or AMD) will build in decoding support Companies smaller than Intel or AMD like Chips & Media, VeriSilicon, Polycom, and Broadcom are part of AOMedia: http://aomedia.org/about-us/ http://aomedia.org/about-us/ ARM is also part of AOMedia. So I don't think the claim that there will be no hardware support for AV1 adds up. If anything, AV1 is already well positioned for good hardware support before it's even released.
- Caspy7 10y ago
  For those comment surfers, here's the list of all the current members of the AOM: Adobe, Allegro¹, Amazon, AMD¹, Amlogic¹, ARM¹, ateme, BBC R&D, Broadcom¹, Chips & Media¹, Cisco, Google, Intel¹, Ittiam, Microsoft, Mozilla, Netflix, Nvidia, Polycom¹, Socionext¹, VeriSilicon¹, Vidyo, XILINIX¹ ¹ indicates hardware or hardware IP companies. An article on the codec indicates: > The group is aiming to freeze the bitstream sometime between the end of the 2016 and March 2017. Expect to see browser-based support soon thereafter, with the first hardware support within 12 months after that. http://www.streamingmedia.com/Articles/Editorial/Featured-Articles/A-Progress-Report-The-Alliance-for-Open-Media-and-the-AV1-Codec-110383.aspx http://www.streamingmedia.com/Articles/Editorial/Featured-Ar...
CharlesW 10y ago
Wow, thank you for the h264ify mention! I can now play 4K YouTube videos on my MacBook Pro, who'da thought?
TD-Linux 10y ago
I don't see how VP9 hardware decoders shipping late means that H.265 wins? There's zero H.265 content on the web right now, so if anything H.265 would need to catch up. Also, the ffvp9 software decoder in Firefox is quite efficient. Hopefully Chrome will eventually ship it too.
- rasz_pl 10y ago
  90% of TV series and movies I watch come in x265 at half x264 file size.
  - HNSucksAss 10y ago
    If you're talking about HEVC torrents, you should admit that they look like ASS.
- tornadoboy55 10y ago
  VP9 is already in all Chromium based browsers. And no, its not nearly as efficient, because there's no hardware acceleration/ You can clearly see this in any Chromium browser: Watch a YouTube video without the H264ify extension and Activity Monitor open. Your 'Energy Use' will spike to about 100. With H264ify its only 40. Safari even stays in the upper 20s.
  - TD-Linux 10y ago
    But it uses the libvpx decoder, not ffvp9. https://blogs.gnome.org/rbultje/2014/02/22/the-worlds-fastest-vp9-decoder-ffvp9/ https://blogs.gnome.org/rbultje/2014/02/22/the-worlds-fastes... Also check that you're getting the same resolution on both. H.264 requires more bits, so you might be getting a lower resolution (which also takes less energy to decode).
    - tornadoboy55 10y ago
      Both are 1080p60FPS. Also, VP9 will never be more efficient than H264 on my machine since I have a 2015 13" Macbook Pro, and that model only has H264 acceleration in the CPU. And the 2015 Pro is more modern than 90% of the machines out there..
niftich 10y ago
I can't upvote this enough. They need to resist the urge to treat file formats the same rapidly iterating way as web APIs -- the way the VP8/VP9/VP10 series has been treated so far. Rapid evolution and the lack of well-defined profiles will discourage hardware implementation or lead to a proliferation of profiles the hardware decoders can't play. The fragmentation will discourage the format's use beyond online video, and the next ITU-T or MPEG format will win out for any and all uses where longevity is important. As for online video, this recipe will likely be an archival nightmare regardless [1]. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12980359 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12980359
robert_foss 10y ago
There is definitely a lag between the first software solutions popping up and the first hardware solutions being available. But there are lots of off the shelf product like the ARM Mali Video IP that you can just buy and slap onto your product. This is what many SOC vendors do. These codec engine IP products have their entire business model built around the two facts that: 1) New codecs will be released 2) New codecs will be a lot more computationally expensive. For example: h265 offers up to 50% bandwidth savings compared to h264 but requires about 3x CPU cycles for decoding. During encoding the issue is a lot worse. Full disclosure: I worked in the ARM Video Codec group.
flukus 10y ago
This is way out of my depth, but how different are these decoders? Could we have some more general purpose hardware instead of specific hardware for every format?
- indolering 10y ago
  I know that one of the design goals for Daala was being friendly to multi-core CPU and GPU decoding. However, you can always improve performance using custom hardware.

clouddrover 10y ago

> no damn way the smaller CPU builders (everyone not Intel or AMD) will build in decoding support Companies smaller than Intel or AMD like Chips & Media, VeriSilicon, Polycom, and Broadcom are part of AOMedia: http://aomedia.org/about-us/ http://aomedia.org/about-us/ ARM is also part of AOMedia. So I don't think the claim that there will be no hardware support for AV1 adds up. If anything, AV1 is already well positioned for good hardware support before it's even released.

Caspy7 10y ago
For those comment surfers, here's the list of all the current members of the AOM: Adobe, Allegro¹, Amazon, AMD¹, Amlogic¹, ARM¹, ateme, BBC R&D, Broadcom¹, Chips & Media¹, Cisco, Google, Intel¹, Ittiam, Microsoft, Mozilla, Netflix, Nvidia, Polycom¹, Socionext¹, VeriSilicon¹, Vidyo, XILINIX¹ ¹ indicates hardware or hardware IP companies. An article on the codec indicates: > The group is aiming to freeze the bitstream sometime between the end of the 2016 and March 2017. Expect to see browser-based support soon thereafter, with the first hardware support within 12 months after that. http://www.streamingmedia.com/Articles/Editorial/Featured-Articles/A-Progress-Report-The-Alliance-for-Open-Media-and-the-AV1-Codec-110383.aspx http://www.streamingmedia.com/Articles/Editorial/Featured-Ar...

CharlesW 10y ago

Wow, thank you for the h264ify mention! I can now play 4K YouTube videos on my MacBook Pro, who'da thought?

TD-Linux 10y ago

I don't see how VP9 hardware decoders shipping late means that H.265 wins? There's zero H.265 content on the web right now, so if anything H.265 would need to catch up. Also, the ffvp9 software decoder in Firefox is quite efficient. Hopefully Chrome will eventually ship it too.

rasz_pl 10y ago
90% of TV series and movies I watch come in x265 at half x264 file size.
- HNSucksAss 10y ago
  If you're talking about HEVC torrents, you should admit that they look like ASS.
tornadoboy55 10y ago
VP9 is already in all Chromium based browsers. And no, its not nearly as efficient, because there's no hardware acceleration/ You can clearly see this in any Chromium browser: Watch a YouTube video without the H264ify extension and Activity Monitor open. Your 'Energy Use' will spike to about 100. With H264ify its only 40. Safari even stays in the upper 20s.
- TD-Linux 10y ago
  But it uses the libvpx decoder, not ffvp9. https://blogs.gnome.org/rbultje/2014/02/22/the-worlds-fastest-vp9-decoder-ffvp9/ https://blogs.gnome.org/rbultje/2014/02/22/the-worlds-fastes... Also check that you're getting the same resolution on both. H.264 requires more bits, so you might be getting a lower resolution (which also takes less energy to decode).
  - tornadoboy55 10y ago
    Both are 1080p60FPS. Also, VP9 will never be more efficient than H264 on my machine since I have a 2015 13" Macbook Pro, and that model only has H264 acceleration in the CPU. And the 2015 Pro is more modern than 90% of the machines out there..

niftich 10y ago

I can't upvote this enough. They need to resist the urge to treat file formats the same rapidly iterating way as web APIs -- the way the VP8/VP9/VP10 series has been treated so far. Rapid evolution and the lack of well-defined profiles will discourage hardware implementation or lead to a proliferation of profiles the hardware decoders can't play. The fragmentation will discourage the format's use beyond online video, and the next ITU-T or MPEG format will win out for any and all uses where longevity is important. As for online video, this recipe will likely be an archival nightmare regardless [1]. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12980359 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12980359

robert_foss 10y ago

There is definitely a lag between the first software solutions popping up and the first hardware solutions being available. But there are lots of off the shelf product like the ARM Mali Video IP that you can just buy and slap onto your product. This is what many SOC vendors do. These codec engine IP products have their entire business model built around the two facts that: 1) New codecs will be released 2) New codecs will be a lot more computationally expensive. For example: h265 offers up to 50% bandwidth savings compared to h264 but requires about 3x CPU cycles for decoding. During encoding the issue is a lot worse. Full disclosure: I worked in the ARM Video Codec group.

flukus 10y ago

This is way out of my depth, but how different are these decoders? Could we have some more general purpose hardware instead of specific hardware for every format?

indolering 10y ago
I know that one of the design goals for Daala was being friendly to multi-core CPU and GPU decoding. However, you can always improve performance using custom hardware.