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The encoding still isn't ready for user driven content sites. It's still too slow, even with the 16% savings shown with the new improvements this article talks
by jjcm 7y ago
The encoding still isn't ready for user driven content sites. It's still too slow, even with the 16% savings shown with the new improvements this article talks about. For Netflix it's great as they have a significant amount of time before content goes live (weeks if not months), but for sites like youtube/vimeo/instagram/etc, it just isn't quite there yet. The turnaround time is simply too long.
That's just the UX bottleneck, but there's another elephant in the room: it's cost prohibitive. Encoding time is so slow that we're still measuring in frames per minute for most software encoders. If I want to move my whole video encoding pipeline to AV1 from h264, I need around 100x the horsepower to encode. That's 100x the server costs, and as someone who's looking heavily at using AV1 for the video site I'm working on now, it's simply cost prohibitive.
Don't get me wrong, the steps that Netflix are taking with SVT-AV1 are amazing. We're seeing a huge improvement from the 500x vs h264 it was showing last year, but it still needs a huge amount of effort before it's ready for prime time. I'm really hoping we see some early hardware encoding/decoding implementations for AV1 given the number of companies who are in support of it.
- clouddrover 7y ago> The encoding still isn't ready for user driven content sites. YouTube has lots of AV1 encodes. You've probably watched AV1 encoded content without realising it. Here are a few of examples. To verify that they're AV1 encoded, right-click on the video and select "Stats for Nerds". I'm playing them in Firefox 75 beta. Halo trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fmdb-KmlzD8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fmdb-KmlzD8 Despacito music video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kJQP7kiw5Fk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kJQP7kiw5Fk Porsche Taycan commercial: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=92sXWVxRr0g https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=92sXWVxRr0g For some videos YouTube has AV1 encodes up to 480p, others are up to 1080p, and some are up to 4K.
- fireattack 7y agoAny reason why YouTube only uses it for low(er) resolutions?
- dabei 7y agoDecoding is cheaper at low resolution.
- clouddrover 7y agoThe YouTube video library is huge so they're prioritizing encodes based on encode time (AV1 takes longer to encode), the ability to play it (more systems can play 480p AV1 than can play 4K AV1), and the number of views a video gets (if a video has a low view count then it doesn't much matter what it's encoded in).
- ZeroGravitas 7y agoTo be fair YouTube isn't (or wasn't a few months ago) at the stage where AV1 was earning it's place. They project that it will save them money in the future (widespread hardware decoder will let them send bigger encodes to more people) but at their video symposium they said that they were doing this at the moment as in investment for the future. Which is cool, but means other orgs that are only interested in cost savings may not want to jump in quite yet (though they should probably be preparing so they can switch it in when that point arrives).
- clouddrover 7y agoVimeo is also using it: https://press.vimeo.com/61553-vimeo-introduces-support-for-royalty-free-video-codec-av1 https://press.vimeo.com/61553-vimeo-introduces-support-for-r... An example video: https://vimeo.com/362164795 https://vimeo.com/362164795
- the8472 7y ago> I'm really hoping we see some early hardware encoding/decoding implementations for AV1 given the number of companies who are in support of it. Hardware decoding is fine. Hardware encoding is fine if you want to live-capture something. But if you want to optimize for quality/byte then hardware encoders usually fall short and I assume they would do even more so with something as complex as AV1. I'm more curious why encoders are all-CPU and not offloading some parts of the search to GPGPU code.