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I would be careful about rooting for a codec that has strengths/weaknesses that are suspiciously tailored to extremely large media-serving companies. By which I

by motbob 7y ago

I would be careful about rooting for a codec that has strengths/weaknesses that are suspiciously tailored to extremely large media-serving companies. By which I mean, Netflix/Google don't care so much about encode time since their scale is so big, and they certainly don't care as much about decode time as users with their precious battery life do. Just because something is open does not mean it is meant to serve consumers' interests.

clouddrover 7y ago
> Netflix/Google don't care so much about encode time And yet Netflix is working on SVT-AV1 with Intel, which is one of the fastest AV1 encoders available: https://medium.com/netflix-techblog/introducing-svt-av1-a-scalable-open-source-av1-framework-c726cce3103a https://medium.com/netflix-techblog/introducing-svt-av1-a-sc... https://www.reddit.com/r/AV1/comments/bxn2uw/svtav1_encoding_1080p_at_74_fps/ https://www.reddit.com/r/AV1/comments/bxn2uw/svtav1_encoding... https://github.com/OpenVisualCloud/SVT-AV1 https://github.com/OpenVisualCloud/SVT-AV1 How does that fit with your narrative?
- ZeroGravitas 7y ago
  Or Twitch and Google Stadia which live encode with VP9 now and will move to AV1 over the next few years
- motbob 7y ago
  Netflix encodes and serves a lot of video. So obviously both encode time and low filesizes are important to them. That doesn't change my point that their priorities may be skewed towards lowering filesize moreso than other entities, since they serve more videos per encode.
rossy 7y ago
> and they certainly don't care as much about decode time as users with their precious battery life do. Of course they do. Google wouldn't sell many Pixels if you could only watch half as much YouTube or Netflix on a single charge compared to, say, an iPhone. Netflix wouldn't sell many subscriptions if you could only watch half as much on a single charge as Hulu or Prime Video either. Your point about encoding is valid, but Google and Netflix are definitely incentivised towards low decoding complexity on the client.
dagenix 7y ago
Netflix and Google definitely care about encoding time precisely because their scale is so big. A 1% increase in encoding time could mean a difference of a tremendous amount of computing time and thus money. Google and Twitch also care about encoding time, but in a different way - they have strong use cases for real time encoding being possible. Everyone cares about decoding efficiency - Google wants you to be able to watch more videos and thus more ads. If your battery is dead, you can't watch any ads. Netflix wants you to get hooked on more series. etc. > Just because something is open does not mean it is meant to serve consumers' interests. This is true in general, but I really don't see how it applies to this case at all. The big companies have incentives that actually do line up pretty directly with user's interests.
- ComputerGuru 7y ago
  http://www.streamingmedia.com/Articles/Editorial/Featured-Ar.. http://www.streamingmedia.com/Articles/Editorial/Featured-Ar.... "We will be satisfied with 20% efficiency improvement over HEVC when measured across a diverse set of content and would consider a 3-5x increase in computational complexity reasonable." Encoding time takes a backseat.
  - dagenix 7y ago
    300% - 500% is indeed a bigger number than 20%. But, that is not proof that it doesn't "serve consumers' interests".
  - aidenn0 7y ago
    FWIW, 3-5x increase is about what x264 to x265 is for me.
lrem 7y ago
Huh? Have you noticed the stats of how much video is uploaded to YouTube? I won't provide any numbers, due to working there, but a back of envelope calculation should answer the question "how much money does it cost for Google to encode at twice the compute cost".
- motbob 7y ago
  I think it used to be that Google encoded every video in H.264, but also encoded some videos in VP9: the popular ones. That made a lot of sense--no need to dedicate a lot of encoding power for every video when quick-and-dirty x264 will get the job done fine for >99% of them. And I assume the same will be true for AV1, where only a small percentage of videos will actually be encoded in it. So my envelope calculations aren't going to help me gain much insight.
  - mcdevilkiller 7y ago
    All are VP9 now.

by motbob 7y ago

clouddrover 7y ago

> Netflix/Google don't care so much about encode time And yet Netflix is working on SVT-AV1 with Intel, which is one of the fastest AV1 encoders available: https://medium.com/netflix-techblog/introducing-svt-av1-a-scalable-open-source-av1-framework-c726cce3103a https://medium.com/netflix-techblog/introducing-svt-av1-a-sc... https://www.reddit.com/r/AV1/comments/bxn2uw/svtav1_encoding_1080p_at_74_fps/ https://www.reddit.com/r/AV1/comments/bxn2uw/svtav1_encoding... https://github.com/OpenVisualCloud/SVT-AV1 https://github.com/OpenVisualCloud/SVT-AV1 How does that fit with your narrative?

ZeroGravitas 7y ago
Or Twitch and Google Stadia which live encode with VP9 now and will move to AV1 over the next few years
motbob 7y ago
Netflix encodes and serves a lot of video. So obviously both encode time and low filesizes are important to them. That doesn't change my point that their priorities may be skewed towards lowering filesize moreso than other entities, since they serve more videos per encode.

rossy 7y ago

> and they certainly don't care as much about decode time as users with their precious battery life do. Of course they do. Google wouldn't sell many Pixels if you could only watch half as much YouTube or Netflix on a single charge compared to, say, an iPhone. Netflix wouldn't sell many subscriptions if you could only watch half as much on a single charge as Hulu or Prime Video either. Your point about encoding is valid, but Google and Netflix are definitely incentivised towards low decoding complexity on the client.

dagenix 7y ago

Netflix and Google definitely care about encoding time precisely because their scale is so big. A 1% increase in encoding time could mean a difference of a tremendous amount of computing time and thus money. Google and Twitch also care about encoding time, but in a different way - they have strong use cases for real time encoding being possible. Everyone cares about decoding efficiency - Google wants you to be able to watch more videos and thus more ads. If your battery is dead, you can't watch any ads. Netflix wants you to get hooked on more series. etc. > Just because something is open does not mean it is meant to serve consumers' interests. This is true in general, but I really don't see how it applies to this case at all. The big companies have incentives that actually do line up pretty directly with user's interests.

ComputerGuru 7y ago
http://www.streamingmedia.com/Articles/Editorial/Featured-Ar.. http://www.streamingmedia.com/Articles/Editorial/Featured-Ar.... "We will be satisfied with 20% efficiency improvement over HEVC when measured across a diverse set of content and would consider a 3-5x increase in computational complexity reasonable." Encoding time takes a backseat.
- dagenix 7y ago
  300% - 500% is indeed a bigger number than 20%. But, that is not proof that it doesn't "serve consumers' interests".
- aidenn0 7y ago
  FWIW, 3-5x increase is about what x264 to x265 is for me.

lrem 7y ago

Huh? Have you noticed the stats of how much video is uploaded to YouTube? I won't provide any numbers, due to working there, but a back of envelope calculation should answer the question "how much money does it cost for Google to encode at twice the compute cost".

motbob 7y ago
I think it used to be that Google encoded every video in H.264, but also encoded some videos in VP9: the popular ones. That made a lot of sense--no need to dedicate a lot of encoding power for every video when quick-and-dirty x264 will get the job done fine for >99% of them. And I assume the same will be true for AV1, where only a small percentage of videos will actually be encoded in it. So my envelope calculations aren't going to help me gain much insight.
- mcdevilkiller 7y ago
  All are VP9 now.