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I find it incredibly difficult to find out from this site what exactly differentiates AV1 from, say, x264/5. The introduction appears to only be a legal discla

I find it incredibly difficult to find out from this site what exactly differentiates AV1 from, say, x264/5. The introduction appears to only be a legal disclaimer?

brigade 5y ago
Relative to VP9, https://arxiv.org/pdf/2008.06091.pdf https://arxiv.org/pdf/2008.06091.pdf is a good reference. The technical details on the official AOM site are pretty much just the raw specs and code.
- paulmd 5y ago
  This is fantastic, do you have one of these for VP9, H265, and H264 perchance?
cillian64 5y ago
For starters, x264/x265 are software video encoders, h264/h265 are the respective standards. AV1 is a standard, libaom is the reference software encoder. H264 and h265 are patent encumbered, so depending what you are doing you need to pay royalties to use them. You are free to use AV1 with paying any royalties. Also, AV1 can deliver better quality video at the same bitrate compared to h264/h265 (at the expense of encoding time). This makes it useful for things like netflix where they can put lots of effort into encoding something once and then reap the bandwidth reduction reward for each person who watches it.
- boatsie 5y ago
  This isn’t quite right. While AV1 is “open”, patent holders have still claimed patents covering aspects of it. So there are still issues with trying to use/distribute it as those patent holders can still claim infringement. Linux is another example of this.
- threeseed 5y ago
  > H264 and h265 are patent encumbered Same as AV1 [1]. > use AV1 with paying any royalties Same as H.264/5 for almost all normal usage. https://www.streamingmediaglobal.com/Articles/ReadArticle.aspx?ArticleID=139634 https://www.streamingmediaglobal.com/Articles/ReadArticle.as...
  - kouteiheika 5y ago
    Yeah, a bunch of parasites who had nothing to do with the development of the codec and yet they're desperately trying to extract rent. It doesn't really matter though, because AOmedia's patent license here: https://aomedia.googlesource.com/aom/+/refs/heads/main/PATENTS https://aomedia.googlesource.com/aom/+/refs/heads/main/PATEN... has a defensive clause: > Defensive Termination. If any Licensee, its Affiliates, or its agents initiates patent litigation or files, maintains, or voluntarily participates in a lawsuit against another entity or any person asserting that any Implementation infringes Necessary Claims, any patent licenses granted under this License directly to the Licensee are immediately terminated as of the date of the initiation of action So if you sue anybody for patents you essentially lose access to all of the relevant patents by any of those companies: https://aomedia.org/membership/members/ https://aomedia.org/membership/members/ So please stop spreading baseless FUD.
    - phh 5y ago
      Basically, it's NOT patent-free, it is completely patents encumbered, but since most usages of AV1 are YouTube, Google will help you defend yourself against suers. However, make a competitor of YouTube, and I wish you good luck not paying those fees. With regards to "from people who had nothing to do with development", there are many research centers, not patent trolls, who actually published publicly their researches. Maybe the people who did AV1 didn't read the literature, but I'll presume they did.
      - threeseed 5y ago
        > Google will help you defend yourself against suers They don't indemnify you from patent claims. They merely offer you the ability to use their patents to help defend yourself. But against the likes of NTT, Orange, Phillips etc patents aren't the issue, it's running out of money to litigate the issue.
pornel 5y ago
AV1 is an evolution of VP9 (based on unreleased VP10 + contributions from other codecs). In terms of compression efficiency it's on par with H.265, but it's free to use.

I find it incredibly difficult to find out from this site what exactly differentiates AV1 from, say, x264/5. The introduction appears to only be a legal disclaimer?

brigade 5y ago

Relative to VP9, https://arxiv.org/pdf/2008.06091.pdf https://arxiv.org/pdf/2008.06091.pdf is a good reference. The technical details on the official AOM site are pretty much just the raw specs and code.

paulmd 5y ago
This is fantastic, do you have one of these for VP9, H265, and H264 perchance?

cillian64 5y ago

For starters, x264/x265 are software video encoders, h264/h265 are the respective standards. AV1 is a standard, libaom is the reference software encoder. H264 and h265 are patent encumbered, so depending what you are doing you need to pay royalties to use them. You are free to use AV1 with paying any royalties. Also, AV1 can deliver better quality video at the same bitrate compared to h264/h265 (at the expense of encoding time). This makes it useful for things like netflix where they can put lots of effort into encoding something once and then reap the bandwidth reduction reward for each person who watches it.

boatsie 5y ago
This isn’t quite right. While AV1 is “open”, patent holders have still claimed patents covering aspects of it. So there are still issues with trying to use/distribute it as those patent holders can still claim infringement. Linux is another example of this.
threeseed 5y ago
> H264 and h265 are patent encumbered Same as AV1 [1]. > use AV1 with paying any royalties Same as H.264/5 for almost all normal usage. https://www.streamingmediaglobal.com/Articles/ReadArticle.aspx?ArticleID=139634 https://www.streamingmediaglobal.com/Articles/ReadArticle.as...
- kouteiheika 5y ago
  Yeah, a bunch of parasites who had nothing to do with the development of the codec and yet they're desperately trying to extract rent. It doesn't really matter though, because AOmedia's patent license here: https://aomedia.googlesource.com/aom/+/refs/heads/main/PATENTS https://aomedia.googlesource.com/aom/+/refs/heads/main/PATEN... has a defensive clause: > Defensive Termination. If any Licensee, its Affiliates, or its agents initiates patent litigation or files, maintains, or voluntarily participates in a lawsuit against another entity or any person asserting that any Implementation infringes Necessary Claims, any patent licenses granted under this License directly to the Licensee are immediately terminated as of the date of the initiation of action So if you sue anybody for patents you essentially lose access to all of the relevant patents by any of those companies: https://aomedia.org/membership/members/ https://aomedia.org/membership/members/ So please stop spreading baseless FUD.
  - phh 5y ago
    Basically, it's NOT patent-free, it is completely patents encumbered, but since most usages of AV1 are YouTube, Google will help you defend yourself against suers. However, make a competitor of YouTube, and I wish you good luck not paying those fees. With regards to "from people who had nothing to do with development", there are many research centers, not patent trolls, who actually published publicly their researches. Maybe the people who did AV1 didn't read the literature, but I'll presume they did.
    - threeseed 5y ago
      > Google will help you defend yourself against suers They don't indemnify you from patent claims. They merely offer you the ability to use their patents to help defend yourself. But against the likes of NTT, Orange, Phillips etc patents aren't the issue, it's running out of money to litigate the issue.

pornel 5y ago

AV1 is an evolution of VP9 (based on unreleased VP10 + contributions from other codecs). In terms of compression efficiency it's on par with H.265, but it's free to use.