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AV1 is an open codec that I hope will be the industry standard soon. It already has the support of the ecosystem (apple, google, qualcomm, netflix, etc). Unfort

AV1 is an open codec that I hope will be the industry standard soon. It already has the support of the ecosystem (apple, google, qualcomm, netflix, etc). Unfortunately, it just takes a while to build that momentum So there is light at the end of the tunnel

baybal2 6y ago
> (apple, google, qualcomm, netflix, etc). And out them, only Apple, and Qcom are hardware makers, and both have dropped the ball on AV1. Qcom removed AV1 from latest snapdragon, and Apple haven't put it into M1 despite being one of first in the AV1 crowd. The momentum is lost, and thus is the war. H265 is already a new de-facto standard by the virtue of it getting first to the hardware, while AV1 crowd was apparently arguing over whose logo design would AV1 bear, and exact legalese wording.
- loufe 6y ago
  Both the new AMD and NVidia graphics cards and the intel CPUs support hardware decoding of AV1. I wouldn't count it out just yet. x265 has been released for many, many years and yet it's not fully adopted by a long shot. Transitioning to new technologies takes time and a step back doesn't proclude a step forward again, in the case of Qcom. Especially considering AV1 is free, more efficient than x265, and pushed forward by powerful actors.
  - selectodude 6y ago
    Hardware decoding is nothing more than a nice to have on desktops. On mobile, it’s mandatory. HEVC is the only format you can be assured will work there.
    - izacus 6y ago
      And AVC. And VP9.
      - grishka 6y ago
        VP9 (and VP8) are only hardware accelerated on Android. On iOS, you only have AVC and HEVC.
        izacus 6y ago
        And Windows, macOS and Linux.
        grishka 6y ago
        No, definitely not on macOS. It uses the same VideoToolbox framework iOS does. You could probably write a kernel extension to add VPx support yourself tho.
        izacus 6y ago
        macOS Big Sur supports VP9 hardware decoding through VideoToolbox.
        grishka 6y ago
        TIL
- oblio 6y ago
  > And out them, only Apple, and Qcom are hardware makers, and both have dropped the ball on AV1. Dropped the ball implies that they made a mistake. Are you sure it wasn't premeditated?
  - colejohnson66 6y ago
    “Drop the ball” also just means an announcement. In colloquial usage, it has a negative connotation, so it’s usage here to mean “announce removal” makes sense.
    - oblio 6y ago
      I'm a bit confused. My point was that "drop the ball" means that they made a mistake. I don't think they did, it was intentional and I'd say even malicious. Why do you think that this was not the case?
- Caspy7 6y ago
  Qualcomm is no supporter of AV1 so they shouldn't have been included in that list. That being said, there's plenty of other hardware makers and licensors in the Alliance.
- hajile 6y ago
  > Qcom removed AV1 from latest snapdragon From what I can tell, they haven't had AV1 support in any chip yet. They said it didn't make the cut this time which probably means they just haven't finished and verified yet. Likewise, I'd guess Apples engineering efforts are more focused on upcoming, larger designs so they can finish moving off x86. Once those ship, they can refocus (plus it's another reason to upgrade your machine). Rollout for most codecs is slow. I remember people saying no vp8/9 hardware decoders was deliberate too. In truth, streaming companies want to save billions in data and licensing costs. Modern mobile SoCs can decode in software reasonably well, but with worse battery life. Netflix isn't paying for that, so they aren't incentivized to care past the most atrocious battery hogging behavior (it's not like you'll be streaming their exclusives from elsewhere). This leaves Qualcomm to implement it or get worse performance reviews.
  - baskire 6y ago
    Disagree. Most large app devs directly care about battery life these days.
  - ksec 6y ago
    >In truth, streaming companies want to save billions in data and licensing costs. They dont, the cost of transferring those bit are minimal. They are much more likely to be in the very low end of millions. Internet Content Distribution Licensing are Zero from all known HEVC licenses. Implantation of hardware codec takes time especially for VP8/9 and AV1 which tends to have changes after their so called finalised version 1. Not something I remember happening with H.26x There are specific power budget requirement for hardware decoding in Mobile SoC. Unlike Desktop / Laptop GPU and iGPU where you can afford to have 2W to decode a video.
  - fomine3 6y ago
    Qualcomm is still the last important company who doesn't join AOmedia.
- Caspy7 6y ago
  > Apple haven't put it into M1 despite being one of first in the AV1 crowd. Except they weren't. They just paid more money to be considered a "founding" members - assuming that's where you got the idea. You seem to muse as though AV1 were on the same development track as H265 but delayed. This also doesn't reflect reality. It started well after and had a relatively quick turnaround (as far as codec development goes).
  - ummonk 6y ago
    Right I remember for a long time early in the development efforts for AV1 Apple was conspicuously absent.
- cogman10 6y ago
  H265 is an older standard than AV1. It's closest relative is VP9. The reason H265 has momentum now is because it's been around for longer. AV1 already has a higher efficiency than H265. The standard that is competing with AV1 is VVC or H.266. As it stands, AV1 has much more momentum than H.266.
- vlovich123 6y ago
  Nope. AV1 has demand due to the companies behind it. I’m 95% confident it’ll start happening within the next couple of years. There’s so much engineering knowledge that has to be built up behind how to make these things fast in hardware since the overlap with other mpeg codes is smaller. There’s also a market timing issue. AV1 will be more battery intensive so the consumer demand for AV1 has to make sense (right now the content ecosystem isn’t there). That means Google and Netflix have to transcode their entire libraries. That doesn’t happen often and I wouldn’t be surprised if there was some investigation into how to do that more cheaply as the current encoders are unusably slow at the moment (ie they may need to put video encoder hardware in their clouds which I don’t think I’ve heard of these companies ever doing, making the undertaking even more expensive)
- dindresto 6y ago
  I find it funny how people try to declare H265 a winner when it will most likely never land in Chrome or Firefox. Safari has its user base, especially on mobile, sure. But it will never gain any momentum on the web until Chrome supports it. Which will never happen, as Google fully stands behind AV1.
  - CharlesW 6y ago
    > …it will never gain any momentum on the web until Chrome supports it. Which will never happen… That's what everyone said about Chrome and H.264, too. As it stands, Chrome has supported H.264 for over a decade. https://caniuse.com/mpeg4 https://caniuse.com/mpeg4 Happily, Google's ability to simply declare new standards only goes so far.
- ezoe 6y ago
  Only the brave and rich companies can use H.265 now, because of the patent. There are two major patent holders and there are some companies not belonging to either of them. Using H.265 to anything other than experiment and research in my country(as the patent law stated these for the exception of patent use) has a risk we cannot take. I guess rest of us, honest patent-abiding citizen and low profit buziness have to wait until the middle of 2030s to use H.265 safely.
Caspy7 6y ago
Confused why you listed Qualcomm as I don't believe they have anything to do with AV1.
- bildung 6y ago
  Indeed they don't appear on the member list: http://aomedia.org/membership/members/ http://aomedia.org/membership/members/ ARM is listed as a founding member, though.
tpush 6y ago
> (apple, google, qualcomm, netflix, etc). Has Apple made any investment into AV1 at all? Meanwhile they actively use and deploy h.265 encoders/decoders & content.

baybal2 6y ago

> (apple, google, qualcomm, netflix, etc). And out them, only Apple, and Qcom are hardware makers, and both have dropped the ball on AV1. Qcom removed AV1 from latest snapdragon, and Apple haven't put it into M1 despite being one of first in the AV1 crowd. The momentum is lost, and thus is the war. H265 is already a new de-facto standard by the virtue of it getting first to the hardware, while AV1 crowd was apparently arguing over whose logo design would AV1 bear, and exact legalese wording.

loufe 6y ago
Both the new AMD and NVidia graphics cards and the intel CPUs support hardware decoding of AV1. I wouldn't count it out just yet. x265 has been released for many, many years and yet it's not fully adopted by a long shot. Transitioning to new technologies takes time and a step back doesn't proclude a step forward again, in the case of Qcom. Especially considering AV1 is free, more efficient than x265, and pushed forward by powerful actors.
- selectodude 6y ago
  Hardware decoding is nothing more than a nice to have on desktops. On mobile, it’s mandatory. HEVC is the only format you can be assured will work there.
  - izacus 6y ago
    And AVC. And VP9.
    - grishka 6y ago
      VP9 (and VP8) are only hardware accelerated on Android. On iOS, you only have AVC and HEVC.
      - izacus 6y ago
        And Windows, macOS and Linux.
        grishka 6y ago
        No, definitely not on macOS. It uses the same VideoToolbox framework iOS does. You could probably write a kernel extension to add VPx support yourself tho.
        izacus 6y ago
        macOS Big Sur supports VP9 hardware decoding through VideoToolbox.
        grishka 6y ago
        TIL
oblio 6y ago
> And out them, only Apple, and Qcom are hardware makers, and both have dropped the ball on AV1. Dropped the ball implies that they made a mistake. Are you sure it wasn't premeditated?
- colejohnson66 6y ago
  “Drop the ball” also just means an announcement. In colloquial usage, it has a negative connotation, so it’s usage here to mean “announce removal” makes sense.
  - oblio 6y ago
    I'm a bit confused. My point was that "drop the ball" means that they made a mistake. I don't think they did, it was intentional and I'd say even malicious. Why do you think that this was not the case?
Caspy7 6y ago
Qualcomm is no supporter of AV1 so they shouldn't have been included in that list. That being said, there's plenty of other hardware makers and licensors in the Alliance.
hajile 6y ago
> Qcom removed AV1 from latest snapdragon From what I can tell, they haven't had AV1 support in any chip yet. They said it didn't make the cut this time which probably means they just haven't finished and verified yet. Likewise, I'd guess Apples engineering efforts are more focused on upcoming, larger designs so they can finish moving off x86. Once those ship, they can refocus (plus it's another reason to upgrade your machine). Rollout for most codecs is slow. I remember people saying no vp8/9 hardware decoders was deliberate too. In truth, streaming companies want to save billions in data and licensing costs. Modern mobile SoCs can decode in software reasonably well, but with worse battery life. Netflix isn't paying for that, so they aren't incentivized to care past the most atrocious battery hogging behavior (it's not like you'll be streaming their exclusives from elsewhere). This leaves Qualcomm to implement it or get worse performance reviews.
- baskire 6y ago
  Disagree. Most large app devs directly care about battery life these days.
- ksec 6y ago
  >In truth, streaming companies want to save billions in data and licensing costs. They dont, the cost of transferring those bit are minimal. They are much more likely to be in the very low end of millions. Internet Content Distribution Licensing are Zero from all known HEVC licenses. Implantation of hardware codec takes time especially for VP8/9 and AV1 which tends to have changes after their so called finalised version 1. Not something I remember happening with H.26x There are specific power budget requirement for hardware decoding in Mobile SoC. Unlike Desktop / Laptop GPU and iGPU where you can afford to have 2W to decode a video.
- fomine3 6y ago
  Qualcomm is still the last important company who doesn't join AOmedia.
Caspy7 6y ago
> Apple haven't put it into M1 despite being one of first in the AV1 crowd. Except they weren't. They just paid more money to be considered a "founding" members - assuming that's where you got the idea. You seem to muse as though AV1 were on the same development track as H265 but delayed. This also doesn't reflect reality. It started well after and had a relatively quick turnaround (as far as codec development goes).
- ummonk 6y ago
  Right I remember for a long time early in the development efforts for AV1 Apple was conspicuously absent.
cogman10 6y ago
H265 is an older standard than AV1. It's closest relative is VP9. The reason H265 has momentum now is because it's been around for longer. AV1 already has a higher efficiency than H265. The standard that is competing with AV1 is VVC or H.266. As it stands, AV1 has much more momentum than H.266.
vlovich123 6y ago
Nope. AV1 has demand due to the companies behind it. I’m 95% confident it’ll start happening within the next couple of years. There’s so much engineering knowledge that has to be built up behind how to make these things fast in hardware since the overlap with other mpeg codes is smaller. There’s also a market timing issue. AV1 will be more battery intensive so the consumer demand for AV1 has to make sense (right now the content ecosystem isn’t there). That means Google and Netflix have to transcode their entire libraries. That doesn’t happen often and I wouldn’t be surprised if there was some investigation into how to do that more cheaply as the current encoders are unusably slow at the moment (ie they may need to put video encoder hardware in their clouds which I don’t think I’ve heard of these companies ever doing, making the undertaking even more expensive)
dindresto 6y ago
I find it funny how people try to declare H265 a winner when it will most likely never land in Chrome or Firefox. Safari has its user base, especially on mobile, sure. But it will never gain any momentum on the web until Chrome supports it. Which will never happen, as Google fully stands behind AV1.
- CharlesW 6y ago
  > …it will never gain any momentum on the web until Chrome supports it. Which will never happen… That's what everyone said about Chrome and H.264, too. As it stands, Chrome has supported H.264 for over a decade. https://caniuse.com/mpeg4 https://caniuse.com/mpeg4 Happily, Google's ability to simply declare new standards only goes so far.
ezoe 6y ago
Only the brave and rich companies can use H.265 now, because of the patent. There are two major patent holders and there are some companies not belonging to either of them. Using H.265 to anything other than experiment and research in my country(as the patent law stated these for the exception of patent use) has a risk we cannot take. I guess rest of us, honest patent-abiding citizen and low profit buziness have to wait until the middle of 2030s to use H.265 safely.

Caspy7 6y ago

Confused why you listed Qualcomm as I don't believe they have anything to do with AV1.

bildung 6y ago
Indeed they don't appear on the member list: http://aomedia.org/membership/members/ http://aomedia.org/membership/members/ ARM is listed as a founding member, though.

tpush 6y ago

> (apple, google, qualcomm, netflix, etc). Has Apple made any investment into AV1 at all? Meanwhile they actively use and deploy h.265 encoders/decoders & content.