8 ms·

iOS 11 also encodes videos into HEVC, and photos into HEIC, which is basically HEVC still frames. Considering the network effect of iOS devices, this fight is h

iOS 11 also encodes videos into HEVC, and photos into HEIC, which is basically HEVC still frames. Considering the network effect of iOS devices, this fight is hardly won.

dzhiurgis 9y ago
By then time hardware support for these codecs come out most of these iOS devcices will be obsolete.
- Tomte 9y ago
  Apple won't switch codecs again shortly after going the HEVC/HEIF route. All new iPhones will stay there.
  - clouddrover 9y ago
    I think Apple's hand will be forced by major content providers. Hulu, YouTube, Amazon, Facebook, and Netflix all want AV1. YouTube and Netflix in particular want to adopt AV1 quickly. Netflix has been talking about supporting AV1 by the second quarter of this year: https://streaminglearningcenter.com/codecs/netflix-on-av1.html https://streaminglearningcenter.com/codecs/netflix-on-av1.ht...
  - gribbly 9y ago
    They won't remove support for HEVC/HEIF for quite some time, but they will support AV1 alongside them, why else would they join AOM at the top level (governing member) ? This means AV1 will be the de facto next generation codec standard on the web as it will be supported by all browsers and all mobile devices, something HEVC never will.
    - clouddrover 9y ago
      HEIF itself is an image container format that supports a number of different image formats (like HEVC, AVC, and JPEG): https://github.com/nokiatech/heif https://github.com/nokiatech/heif Apple could and probably will add AV1 support to their HEIF implementation in the future.
clouddrover 9y ago
The VP9 decoder installed base is about double HEVC's: https://ngcodec.com/news/2017/10/21/why-we-are-supporting-vp9-and-av1 https://ngcodec.com/news/2017/10/21/why-we-are-supporting-vp... So to me that bodes well for future AV1 support in all kinds of devices.
- scarface74 9y ago
  It doesn't matter. No one is going to support a video format that's not compatible with iOS. Adobe effectively lost the war with Flash on mobile the day that Apple decided not to support it. Even though it was available for Android.
  - clouddrover 9y ago
    Both YouTube and Netflix support VP9: https://medium.com/netflix-techblog/more-efficient-mobile-encodes-for-netflix-downloads-625d7b082909 https://medium.com/netflix-techblog/more-efficient-mobile-en... And YouTube doesn't do 4K encoding in H.264 anymore. If you want 4K video from YouTube you need VP9 support (or AV1 when YouTube starts AV1 encodes): http://appleinsider.com/articles/17/09/21/apple-tv-4k-wont-play-4k-youtube-videos-because-of-missing-google-codec http://appleinsider.com/articles/17/09/21/apple-tv-4k-wont-p...
    - scarface74 9y ago
      The subject of the article was the "fight for patent-unencumbered media codecs is almost won". To "win" that fight means that content providers can abandon patent protected formats. Netflix is still having to deal with patents and now they had to dedicate more resources to support an additional format. Large content providers like YouTube or Netflix really don't care about the patent and have the resources for storage and encoding multiple formats. Where patents hurt are smaller entrants that would benefit from patent free formats. They still have to support patented formats and now they have to spend money on encoding and storage on yet another codec if the want to use VP9. What's the benefit of supporting two formats? One that is supported everywhere and one that isn't it?
mtgx 9y ago
Did you read the article? Apple is going to support the new standard. It doesn't matter that the old phones support HEVC. Now if only Apple would join Vulkan, too, so we can all agree on a cross-platform graphics API, too. Because of Apple Khronos now has to make a subset of Vulkan that will be cross-platform. This means that if developers end-up adopting that one over Metal on iOS, the situation will be worse off for everyone, including Apple. Apple has gotten better with supporting standards from the Steve Jobs days, but I think it still has some way to go.
- ksec 9y ago
  Apple has joined AOM is different to Apple announcing support.
  - gribbly 9y ago
    They joined AOM as a top level (governing) member, why on earth would they do that unless they are going to support the codec on their software/hardware ?
    - ksec 9y ago
      AV1 will likely be voted as IEEE 's NetVC. Much like opus. Apple joining simply means they won't sue AOM's company for video codec patent.
      - gribbly 9y ago
        But why would they join if they're not going to support (as in use) the codec ? They joined AOM at the highest level, which means they get a seat on the board of directors, I can't see any reason why they would do this unless they have decided to use it on their products.
        ksec 9y ago
        I am only guessing, from what I know of Apple. So dont take my word as concrete information. Apple uses Opus too, I think IETF announced it as a RFC standard. ( If my memory serve me correct ) But Apple only support the usage of Opus in limited ways. So why would Apple not use it? If we forget about the patents and royalty fees for the moment. AV1 isn't necessarily better then HEVC from Apple's prospective. HEVC is actually a standard, and has been for many years. There are many difference implementation of HEVC encoder and decoder, all adhering to this standard and conformance. Even Apple has their own implementation, there are Open Sources like x265, and many other commercial solution as well. AV1 isn't a standard, ( yet ) and there is one and only one implementation. Now before any geeks starting arguing about software benefits of implementation as standard over written standard, you need to think of this not as a pieces of software ( While it certainly is ), but a tools for professionals. Those who do TVs, and movies, etc all wanted something different and they want choices. Google, or On2 to be precise; continuing its tradition of over hyping its codec. AV1 at its start was no where near 30% better then HEVC. And since they claim AV1 is now another 30% better then their initial version, you would have expect it to be 1.3 x 1.3 better then HEVC. But truth to be told AV1 when tested by panel of expert provide tangible better results then HEVC, at the cost of much slower encoding time. While that was done a while ago and AV1 has since improved a lot more, we shall wait and see when it finalized. Everyone has been saying they will be forced to support AV1 because of Netflix and Youtube. Well that is only half correct because Netflix are already encoding in HEVC. And Netflix, has yet to provide their newer results of HEVC vs AV1. My guess is that they are waiting for AV1 to finalize. VMAF is a lot better then all other PSNR or SSIM, but it is still not perfect. There are zero Full hardware AV1 decoder ( There may be partial Hardware decode that could be enabled with update, but you be the judge how many hardware manufacture is going to enable that then to sell you something new ) , but there are billions of devices capable of decoding HEVC already. So apart from being royalty free, AV1 doesn't have a lot of advantage to it. The question is, for most business, will using AV1 saves me more money in the long term then using HEVC. Apple joining on board, with No Press Release from AOM, and only Cnet manage to pick up, suggest this may be an Intentional leak. Or one way of Apple saying, HEVC Groups, you either do as I say and lower your fees, allow free software decode implementation ( One of the group already allows that ), or you know what? You can hold on to your patents for as long as you want and you wont earn a single dent in the billion of iOS devices in the future.
TD-Linux 9y ago
At least for HEIC, it's not really exposed to the Web - pictures are silently transcoded to JPEG when uploading. Apple could swap out HEIC for AV1 behind the scenes whenever they want, or alternately sliently transcode HEIC to AV1.

iOS 11 also encodes videos into HEVC, and photos into HEIC, which is basically HEVC still frames. Considering the network effect of iOS devices, this fight is hardly won.

dzhiurgis 9y ago

By then time hardware support for these codecs come out most of these iOS devcices will be obsolete.

Tomte 9y ago
Apple won't switch codecs again shortly after going the HEVC/HEIF route. All new iPhones will stay there.
- clouddrover 9y ago
  I think Apple's hand will be forced by major content providers. Hulu, YouTube, Amazon, Facebook, and Netflix all want AV1. YouTube and Netflix in particular want to adopt AV1 quickly. Netflix has been talking about supporting AV1 by the second quarter of this year: https://streaminglearningcenter.com/codecs/netflix-on-av1.html https://streaminglearningcenter.com/codecs/netflix-on-av1.ht...
- gribbly 9y ago
  They won't remove support for HEVC/HEIF for quite some time, but they will support AV1 alongside them, why else would they join AOM at the top level (governing member) ? This means AV1 will be the de facto next generation codec standard on the web as it will be supported by all browsers and all mobile devices, something HEVC never will.
  - clouddrover 9y ago
    HEIF itself is an image container format that supports a number of different image formats (like HEVC, AVC, and JPEG): https://github.com/nokiatech/heif https://github.com/nokiatech/heif Apple could and probably will add AV1 support to their HEIF implementation in the future.

clouddrover 9y ago

The VP9 decoder installed base is about double HEVC's: https://ngcodec.com/news/2017/10/21/why-we-are-supporting-vp9-and-av1 https://ngcodec.com/news/2017/10/21/why-we-are-supporting-vp... So to me that bodes well for future AV1 support in all kinds of devices.

scarface74 9y ago
It doesn't matter. No one is going to support a video format that's not compatible with iOS. Adobe effectively lost the war with Flash on mobile the day that Apple decided not to support it. Even though it was available for Android.
- clouddrover 9y ago
  Both YouTube and Netflix support VP9: https://medium.com/netflix-techblog/more-efficient-mobile-encodes-for-netflix-downloads-625d7b082909 https://medium.com/netflix-techblog/more-efficient-mobile-en... And YouTube doesn't do 4K encoding in H.264 anymore. If you want 4K video from YouTube you need VP9 support (or AV1 when YouTube starts AV1 encodes): http://appleinsider.com/articles/17/09/21/apple-tv-4k-wont-play-4k-youtube-videos-because-of-missing-google-codec http://appleinsider.com/articles/17/09/21/apple-tv-4k-wont-p...
  - scarface74 9y ago
    The subject of the article was the "fight for patent-unencumbered media codecs is almost won". To "win" that fight means that content providers can abandon patent protected formats. Netflix is still having to deal with patents and now they had to dedicate more resources to support an additional format. Large content providers like YouTube or Netflix really don't care about the patent and have the resources for storage and encoding multiple formats. Where patents hurt are smaller entrants that would benefit from patent free formats. They still have to support patented formats and now they have to spend money on encoding and storage on yet another codec if the want to use VP9. What's the benefit of supporting two formats? One that is supported everywhere and one that isn't it?

mtgx 9y ago

Did you read the article? Apple is going to support the new standard. It doesn't matter that the old phones support HEVC. Now if only Apple would join Vulkan, too, so we can all agree on a cross-platform graphics API, too. Because of Apple Khronos now has to make a subset of Vulkan that will be cross-platform. This means that if developers end-up adopting that one over Metal on iOS, the situation will be worse off for everyone, including Apple. Apple has gotten better with supporting standards from the Steve Jobs days, but I think it still has some way to go.

ksec 9y ago
Apple has joined AOM is different to Apple announcing support.
- gribbly 9y ago
  They joined AOM as a top level (governing) member, why on earth would they do that unless they are going to support the codec on their software/hardware ?
  - ksec 9y ago
    AV1 will likely be voted as IEEE 's NetVC. Much like opus. Apple joining simply means they won't sue AOM's company for video codec patent.
    - gribbly 9y ago
      But why would they join if they're not going to support (as in use) the codec ? They joined AOM at the highest level, which means they get a seat on the board of directors, I can't see any reason why they would do this unless they have decided to use it on their products.
      - ksec 9y ago
        I am only guessing, from what I know of Apple. So dont take my word as concrete information. Apple uses Opus too, I think IETF announced it as a RFC standard. ( If my memory serve me correct ) But Apple only support the usage of Opus in limited ways. So why would Apple not use it? If we forget about the patents and royalty fees for the moment. AV1 isn't necessarily better then HEVC from Apple's prospective. HEVC is actually a standard, and has been for many years. There are many difference implementation of HEVC encoder and decoder, all adhering to this standard and conformance. Even Apple has their own implementation, there are Open Sources like x265, and many other commercial solution as well. AV1 isn't a standard, ( yet ) and there is one and only one implementation. Now before any geeks starting arguing about software benefits of implementation as standard over written standard, you need to think of this not as a pieces of software ( While it certainly is ), but a tools for professionals. Those who do TVs, and movies, etc all wanted something different and they want choices. Google, or On2 to be precise; continuing its tradition of over hyping its codec. AV1 at its start was no where near 30% better then HEVC. And since they claim AV1 is now another 30% better then their initial version, you would have expect it to be 1.3 x 1.3 better then HEVC. But truth to be told AV1 when tested by panel of expert provide tangible better results then HEVC, at the cost of much slower encoding time. While that was done a while ago and AV1 has since improved a lot more, we shall wait and see when it finalized. Everyone has been saying they will be forced to support AV1 because of Netflix and Youtube. Well that is only half correct because Netflix are already encoding in HEVC. And Netflix, has yet to provide their newer results of HEVC vs AV1. My guess is that they are waiting for AV1 to finalize. VMAF is a lot better then all other PSNR or SSIM, but it is still not perfect. There are zero Full hardware AV1 decoder ( There may be partial Hardware decode that could be enabled with update, but you be the judge how many hardware manufacture is going to enable that then to sell you something new ) , but there are billions of devices capable of decoding HEVC already. So apart from being royalty free, AV1 doesn't have a lot of advantage to it. The question is, for most business, will using AV1 saves me more money in the long term then using HEVC. Apple joining on board, with No Press Release from AOM, and only Cnet manage to pick up, suggest this may be an Intentional leak. Or one way of Apple saying, HEVC Groups, you either do as I say and lower your fees, allow free software decode implementation ( One of the group already allows that ), or you know what? You can hold on to your patents for as long as you want and you wont earn a single dent in the billion of iOS devices in the future.

TD-Linux 9y ago

At least for HEIC, it's not really exposed to the Web - pictures are silently transcoded to JPEG when uploading. Apple could swap out HEIC for AV1 behind the scenes whenever they want, or alternately sliently transcode HEIC to AV1.