4 ms·

Using these codecs isn’t going to be better for your users if their hardware cannot natively decode it. Sure, it might shave a few gigabytes off their data plan

Using these codecs isn’t going to be better for your users if their hardware cannot natively decode it. Sure, it might shave a few gigabytes off their data plan, but it’ll also drain their batteries quicker.

iskin 8y ago
Because of this reason, AV1 is now disabled for mobile devices. On desktop hardware support is not critical.
- basch 8y ago
  what percent of desktops are laptops?
  - martinald 8y ago
    Agreed, and I bet AV1 is really heavy on CPU.
  - iskin 8y ago
    Right now 30% of the global market uses AV1 enabled Chrome and Firefox on desktops.
- ysleepy 8y ago
  My Notebook's fan starts spinning quite annoyingly because youtube does vp9. Just for comfort I prefer hardware decoding.
  - jorvi 8y ago
    'media.webm.enabled' set to 'false' in Firefox's about:config will disable VP8 and VP9, gracefully falling back to (hardware accelerated) MP4 in almost all cases. This will break .webm and .webp images though.
    - mort96 8y ago
      Could there be some way to only disable webm on youtube? Disabling webm for all of the web just because it makes youtube annoying seems unfortunate.
      - earenndil 8y ago
        There's an addon called h264ify that does just that. To test if it's working, go to https://www.youtube.com/html5 https://www.youtube.com/html5 and 'WebM VP8' and 'MSE & WebM VP9' are unchecked. Alternately, go to any youtube video and right click->stats for nerds.
TD-Linux 8y ago
Firefox Nightly switched to dav1d, which for many users is only going to use a fraction of their CPU. https://code.videolan.org/videolan/dav1d/issues/15#note_23456 https://code.videolan.org/videolan/dav1d/issues/15#note_2345... It will still be a measurable difference if you are watching hours of video, but for the gif replacement that this site suggests, it's negligible.
- grapeli23 8y ago
  Chrome (74) also: https://bugs.chromium.org/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=924370 https://bugs.chromium.org/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=924370
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
- asddgsgsaxg 8y ago
  They did not switch to av1, they simply added support for it. H264 is still supported.
  - BTeam 8y ago
    They switched their AV1 decoder from libaom to dav1d.
gwbas1c 8y ago
> might shave a few gigabytes off their data plan I think I pay about $10 a gigabyte? If I actually used that many gigabytes a month, the savings would pay for a new phone!
- ct0 8y ago
  I feel bad for you! here is a encoding format that might work for you http://takeovertheworld.org/matrix/ http://takeovertheworld.org/matrix/
billjings 8y ago
As always, it depends on the tradeoffs! In general, encoding will cost you a whole lot more than decoding. Software encoders need to be really good to ship on the encoding side, and they're not there with AV1 yet. Decoding, on the other hand, is pretty cheap. Hardware is still better, but it's been a long time since mobile CPUs were in a state that forced you to use a hardware decoder meet typical performance requirements. Bandwidth is so much more limited that using a software decoder to achieve a higher quality at a given bitrate is almost alway worth it. Depending on the OS, if you watch a lot of video it is not unlikely that you are using a mobile app that uses, say, a software VP9 decoder.
- ksec 8y ago
  >Decoding, on the other hand, is pretty cheap. Hardware is still better, but it's been a long time since mobile CPUs were in a state that forced you to use a hardware decoder meet typical performance requirements. Bandwidth is so much more limited that using a software decoder to achieve a higher quality at a given bitrate is almost alway worth it. It is not. Not with Modern Codec. Battery is so much more limited you will always want to trade high bandwidth than Software Decode. Apple tried VP9 software decode for youtube and all we got was very bad user experience. For most use case within a 20% bitrate, the difference between x264, VP9, x265 and AV1 are small, and you will always want to choose the one your user has hardware decode. No one expect their Laptop , PC, Mobile, Tablet to get burning hot just watching a video for a few mixtures. Hardware decoding is literally the most important hardware on Mobile usage, and I argue the same for PC.
  - imtringued 8y ago
    Yeah just look at the linked dav1d benchmarks. The decoder consumes a whole core for a single video at 30fps.
  - billjings 8y ago
    My language was too strident. But there are shipping production applications that are using software VP9 encoders successfully, with improved user experience.

iskin 8y ago

Because of this reason, AV1 is now disabled for mobile devices. On desktop hardware support is not critical.

basch 8y ago
what percent of desktops are laptops?
- martinald 8y ago
  Agreed, and I bet AV1 is really heavy on CPU.
- iskin 8y ago
  Right now 30% of the global market uses AV1 enabled Chrome and Firefox on desktops.
ysleepy 8y ago
My Notebook's fan starts spinning quite annoyingly because youtube does vp9. Just for comfort I prefer hardware decoding.
- jorvi 8y ago
  'media.webm.enabled' set to 'false' in Firefox's about:config will disable VP8 and VP9, gracefully falling back to (hardware accelerated) MP4 in almost all cases. This will break .webm and .webp images though.
  - mort96 8y ago
    Could there be some way to only disable webm on youtube? Disabling webm for all of the web just because it makes youtube annoying seems unfortunate.
    - earenndil 8y ago
      There's an addon called h264ify that does just that. To test if it's working, go to https://www.youtube.com/html5 https://www.youtube.com/html5 and 'WebM VP8' and 'MSE & WebM VP9' are unchecked. Alternately, go to any youtube video and right click->stats for nerds.

TD-Linux 8y ago

Firefox Nightly switched to dav1d, which for many users is only going to use a fraction of their CPU. https://code.videolan.org/videolan/dav1d/issues/15#note_23456 https://code.videolan.org/videolan/dav1d/issues/15#note_2345... It will still be a measurable difference if you are watching hours of video, but for the gif replacement that this site suggests, it's negligible.

grapeli23 8y ago
Chrome (74) also: https://bugs.chromium.org/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=924370 https://bugs.chromium.org/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=924370
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
asddgsgsaxg 8y ago
They did not switch to av1, they simply added support for it. H264 is still supported.
- BTeam 8y ago
  They switched their AV1 decoder from libaom to dav1d.

gwbas1c 8y ago

> might shave a few gigabytes off their data plan I think I pay about $10 a gigabyte? If I actually used that many gigabytes a month, the savings would pay for a new phone!

ct0 8y ago
I feel bad for you! here is a encoding format that might work for you http://takeovertheworld.org/matrix/ http://takeovertheworld.org/matrix/

billjings 8y ago

As always, it depends on the tradeoffs! In general, encoding will cost you a whole lot more than decoding. Software encoders need to be really good to ship on the encoding side, and they're not there with AV1 yet. Decoding, on the other hand, is pretty cheap. Hardware is still better, but it's been a long time since mobile CPUs were in a state that forced you to use a hardware decoder meet typical performance requirements. Bandwidth is so much more limited that using a software decoder to achieve a higher quality at a given bitrate is almost alway worth it. Depending on the OS, if you watch a lot of video it is not unlikely that you are using a mobile app that uses, say, a software VP9 decoder.

ksec 8y ago
>Decoding, on the other hand, is pretty cheap. Hardware is still better, but it's been a long time since mobile CPUs were in a state that forced you to use a hardware decoder meet typical performance requirements. Bandwidth is so much more limited that using a software decoder to achieve a higher quality at a given bitrate is almost alway worth it. It is not. Not with Modern Codec. Battery is so much more limited you will always want to trade high bandwidth than Software Decode. Apple tried VP9 software decode for youtube and all we got was very bad user experience. For most use case within a 20% bitrate, the difference between x264, VP9, x265 and AV1 are small, and you will always want to choose the one your user has hardware decode. No one expect their Laptop , PC, Mobile, Tablet to get burning hot just watching a video for a few mixtures. Hardware decoding is literally the most important hardware on Mobile usage, and I argue the same for PC.
- imtringued 8y ago
  Yeah just look at the linked dav1d benchmarks. The decoder consumes a whole core for a single video at 30fps.
- billjings 8y ago
  My language was too strident. But there are shipping production applications that are using software VP9 encoders successfully, with improved user experience.