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The AV2 Video Standard Has Released (Final v1.0 Specification)
- jjcm 5mo agoA few things - this is one step in a long, LONG path. AV2 is currently unusable in its current state (the encoder typically runs at around 1fps on good hardware), and likely will remain so til ~2028 when the first av2 hardware accelerated chips start dropping. Even then, I wouldn't expect AV2 streams to be common til 2030. IMO, if it were just the efficiency gains on the table (which are substantial - ~20-30% over AV1), I'd say that AV2 isn't worth it. The biggest thing it does add though is multi-stream support, which will be a big win for VR and live sports. The other fun thing is you can send an alpha channel as a separate stream, which the file will then composite for proper transparent video support.
- miohtama 5mo agoIn HW accelerated chips, what part of the calculations they usually accelerate? Could it be possible to repurpose old HW?
- boriskourt 5mo agoOne of the biggest gains of having dedicated hardware is that the computation doesn’t happen on the general hardware. This is what makes it viable on mobile devices where system responsiveness and power efficiency are high priority. Generally these hardware decoders haven’t been retoolalble.
- BillStrong 5mo agoEssentially all of the processing of the video data, barring the container format which the CPU uses to know what part of the data to send to the GPU or the Audio chip or codec. And HW acceleration is generally a preset baked in version of the encoder or decoder. These are mostly codec specific. So, no using hardware from previous versions. Now, you can see some software that tries to use the GPU itself, instead of the dedicated hardware acceleration, to decode, but that isn't the HW accelerated, and may not operate in real time. At the same time, that will consume much more power, eliminating some of the advantages or the pure HW rendition, especially important for mobile. I could see an argument being made for encoding, if it is 2x or faster than the CPU, but I haven't looked at any in a while, so don't know the speeds.
- cyberax 5mo agoTypically things like quantization and motion estimation.
- adgjlsfhk1 5mo agoBased on AV1's trajectory, hardware encode isn't necessary (though it is nice). The current encoder is a reference encoder. Now that the spec is finalized, expect significant speed improvements from production encoders (realtime likely won't happen until we get it in hardware though)
- Gigachad 5mo agoHardware encode is required if you want things like video calls, camera recording and such to use it. It isn’t required for content distribution platforms which aren’t realtime and the cost of encode is easily made up by hundreds of thousands of streams.
- Orphis 5mo agoOne of the interesting usage of AV1 was specifically for low bitrate calls, and software encoding was perfectly fine, even on mobile. With low enough resolution, framerate and bitrate, you can get a quality stream without significant encoding artifacts compared to any other codec. It is in production right now and has been for a while. The tradeoff CPU / bandwidth is quite advantageous in situations like this. And no, AV1 HW encoders cannot usually be used, they are not designed for a tight bitrate control or realtime communications like software encoding is usually.
- ksec 5mo agoHave you said this for Audio Codec I would have agreed. I do not know a single Smartphone Video Conferencing software that uses CPU encoding rather than hardware encoding. Neither WhatsApp or FaceTime, perhaps the largest of the two real time Video Call uses AV1.
- dannyw 5mo agoYeah, no production or large scale VC system is running software AV1 encoders on smartphones. You will drain a full phone battery in 1-2 hours of calls. It just doesn’t make sense and will result in extraordinary power/battery drainage at best, or output that’s worse than hardware encoding. The only way you could get AV1 to software encode in realtime AND low latency on a mid-range Android chip is by disabling or skipping nearly all of the compression/encoding features that make it good at low bitrate.
- dgreensp 5mo agoWhere do you see information about the efficiency gains over AV1?
- tom_alexander 5mo agoIt's at the end on the conclusion slide @24:40: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Se8E_SUlU3w&t=1480 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Se8E_SUlU3w&t=1480
- shmerl 5mo agoThat's fine and not anything new for codecs, they always take a long time before mass adoption. Take a look at AV1 itself, you can't even say it's really ubiquitous on all hardware. It's quite well along in adoption compared to early days, but some mobile devices are still lacking hardware acceleration for it.
- BillStrong 5mo agoIt is still ironic to me that my Steam Deck has decode AV1 acceleration, on a really old CPU/GPU combo.
- d--b 5mo agoDoes anyone know what is so costly to calculate in AV2?
- ZeroGravitas 5mo agoIn general they just increase the numbers on everything when they go up a generation. e.g. if you check in 4 directions to see if you can reuse a chunk then make it check in 8 or 16. Faster encoders will have smart heuristics on when to use these new abilities and when to skip them but the reference encoder will try everything in a dumb way to eke out a tiny win to maximize a theoretical advantage and map out the extreme best case.
- xbmcuser 5mo agoThe way things are going, we can pretty much forget about AV2 hardware encoders in PCs anytime soon. All the newest, best chip capacity is being completely hogged by Apple and AI companies. Unless chipmakers port the AV2 design to older, cheaper nodes, it’s just not happening for average users. We’ll probably see some Chinese TV chip makers throw in an AV2 decoder just to check a box, but as an actual encoder? I wouldn't count on it anytime soon.
- Gigachad 5mo agoPCs don’t need hardware encoders. There are no realtime jobs on these. You can let it encode in however long it takes. You need hardware encoders for things like cameras because they need to encode in real time since the buffer would quickly overflow otherwise.
- circuit10 5mo agoUse cases for hardware encoders in PCs: - Video calls - Screen/webcam recording - Live streaming - Real-time transcoding for media servers (don’t know much about this but I’ve heard it’s a thing) - Game streaming - Video editing (making exporting less frustrating)
- sylware 5mo agoEverything here is really niche, except video calls (and even that...). In other words, unless on smart phones, don't expect broadly distributed AV2 encoding hardware. If it does happen on PC, it will be most likely some courtesy of the hardware chip designers.
- circuit10 5mo agoScreen recording is not niche, anyone who works remotely probably does video calls daily and the others are somewhat more niche but I'd guess that at least 50-70% of people do at least one of these things
- Bombthecat 5mo agoI feel like in 2030 it's more likely that we send 480p and just upscale with ai on the other end
- hulitu 5mo ago480p ? More like 200i. There's a race to the bottom driven by those "up to" codecs.
- PunchyHamster 5mo ago> The biggest thing it does add though is multi-stream support, which will be a big win for VR and live sports. AV1 supports it too ?
- ksec 5mo ago>........I'd say that AV2 isn't worth it. Unless they have hardware encoder and decoder design done in parallel, otherwise it would be 2028 before a hardware block design is done and 2030 for the earliest product to ship with it. In reality I think 2031 or 2032 is more likely. And I have been saying the same for quite some time that 20-30% for a generational codec improvement isn't worth it. I think they originally aimed at 50%, and then 40% and then 30%.
- nubinetwork 5mo ago> enabling high-quality video delivery at significantly lower bitrates > likely will remain so til ~2028 when the first av2 hardware accelerated chips start dropping This might sound dumb, but whats the point if its intended for slower devices, but those slower devices don't even exist yet?
- rovr138 5mo agoso that new devices can adopt it They can't adopt it if it doesn't exist.
- nubinetwork 5mo agoAnd what about old devices? I'm sure someone out there is still using an s5 as a daily driver... Future proofing is great and all, but 240p on modern devices looks like trash, even worse than tube tv.
- Gigachad 5mo ago240p for someone’s webcam thumbnail in Microsoft teams is perfectly sufficient though.
- rovr138 5mo agoThey can keep using whatever they're currently using. This doesn't take away anything. It's a new standard. Based on your argument, one should add new safety standards to cars like seat belts, because old cars might not have them.
- nubinetwork 5mo agoTo be fair, some municipalities do actually require old cars to be fitted with seatbelts... air bags, not so much, because apparently changing a steering column is too hard?
- rovr138 5mo ago
- po1nt 5mo agoLooking at how GPU development has been sidetracked for NPU, I worry that this is 2035 target at best. Manufacturers will push for maximising matrix operation silicon area. In the era of trillion dollar investments into datacenters, traffic cost is afterthought. The only benefitors might be YouTube, Netflix and such, but on their scale investment into ISP level caches might be cheaper.
- cyberax 5mo ago> The biggest thing it does add though is multi-stream support This was supported in H.264 MVC but only saw real use for 3D movies on physical BluRays. With almost no content available outside that.
- kalleboo 5mo ago> The biggest thing it does add though is multi-stream support I would have thought this would be a part of the container format rather than the video codec?
- xmichael909 5mo agoGoogle H264 SVC
- 2OEH8eoCRo0 5mo agoI feel like these encoders that require acceleration are a big reason why good hardware obsoletes so quickly.
- mmastrac 5mo agoDav2d doesn't have the same nice ring to it. I hope there's someone with a decent repo-name punning skill who'll contribute before that. avi2ude? av2go?
- toast0 5mo ago2av2quit?
- Dwedit 5mo agoAt least it's not D4vd.
- zamadatix 5mo agoI like it - not as punny as the first but pretty straightforward.
- jbk 5mo agoIt was difficult to find a nice name, with av2 :( It works in French d2vid (Deuvid)
- jgtrosh 5mo agoAlso in French, different similarity, av2il hav2e Slightly worse in English, av2age mav2ick
- themafia 5mo agoe2ed
- Retr0id 5mo agodaviid - or trim to davii and pronounce it "davey". But tbh I quite like dav2d.
- stukenov 5mo ago[dead]
- shmerl 5mo agoCongrats! How is the case of fighting off Dolby's patent racketeering going? They tried to attack Snapchat for using AV1.
- mmastrac 5mo agoLast update seems to be "lawsuit was filed" with zero updates since then. That stuff tends to move slowly.
- shmerl 5mo agoHopefully their patents will be busted and preferably Dolby will be also forced to pay damages for filing invalid lawsuits. That's the only way to teach patent trolls proper lessons.
- lofaszvanitt 5mo agoHow is Dolby a patent troll? :D
- shmerl 5mo agoBecause they have nothing to do with AV1, they simply want to leech on it. It's fitting to call them a patent troll.
- adgjlsfhk1 5mo agothey're a company that doesn't make any products. they just get actual hardware engineers to pay them to put a logo on their devices and to prevent Dolby from suing
- necovek 5mo agoWhile I agree with the general sentiment, I would not classify Dolby as a "patent troll" — they still do invest in research and developing products, right?
- 5mo ago
- Dwedit 5mo agoWhat I'm interested in is seeing how this will improve the AVIF image format. AVIF stomps the competition for low-bitrate still images (where chroma subsampling is used). For lossless images, not so much. Lossless JPEG XL and lossless WEBP make lossless AVIF look like a joke.
- wmf 5mo agoHonestly AVIF2 is the last thing we need now. There are way too many minority image formats already.
- Gigachad 5mo agoThere aren’t _that_ many. HEIF has been an unusually large pain in the ass just because it’s both patent encumbered and incredibly popular since the iPhone and many cameras use it. JPEG is woefully outdated with the lack of HDR and modern compression, HEIF can’t be used without paying a license, webp was designed just for extremely efficient small images rather than local storage, avif I’ve never seen used ever, and JPEG XL is on track to be the next major format. I agree we don’t need an avif2, but until jpeg xl there really weren’t any decent alternatives for jpeg.
- hulitu 5mo ago> There aren’t _that_ many. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_graphics_file_formats#Technical_details https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_graphics_file_fo...
- Gigachad 5mo agoAlmost all of these are historic relics of no relevance today. FLIF for example was a research project that was later the basis of JPEG-XL. Pretty much only the ones I listed previously are serious contenders in the space right now.
- fishgoesblub 5mo agoIt's a silly idea to not improve on things for something as "too many" formats. There's too many ARM processors out there, should companies stop development and keep using old, less efficient CPUs?
- ParadisoShlee 5mo agoMostly a joke... I've been waiting for the AV1 Apple TV, so now I'm just waiting for AV2 support as Apple TV as well now.
- londons_explore 5mo agoOutside the apple ecosystem, AV1 is supported nearly everywhere.
- techpression 5mo agoThey’ve had hardware decoding since M3 and equivalent A cpus. So I’d say it’s pretty well supported.
- Gigachad 5mo agoIt works even without hardware decode. I noticed youtube is using AV1 on my M1.
- breve 5mo agoMy 10 year old iPhone 7 can play 1080p AV1 video in software for more than 200 minutes with VLC. The iPhone 7 was released a year and a half before AV1 was. So I think it's a safe bet the current Apple TV devices are capable of playing AV1 video in software. There's a VLC release for Apple TV: https://www.videolan.org/vlc/download-appletv.html https://www.videolan.org/vlc/download-appletv.html https://apps.apple.com/us/app/vlc-media-player/id650377962?platform=tv https://apps.apple.com/us/app/vlc-media-player/id650377962?p...
- jshier 5mo agoNot especially relevant, as the obvious use of AV1 on the AppleTV is streaming, and the OS frameworks don't request AV1 without hardware decoding. Services which provide their own video decoding (are there any?) don't seem interested providing their own software decoder for the ATV, despite the bandwidth savings.
- tysonbru 5mo agoI’m curious how much AV2 will actually help older hardware in practice. I’m on a 2019 Intel MacBook Pro: 2.6 GHz 6-core i7, 64 GB RAM. The machine is still more than powerful enough for normal desktop work and software dev, but YouTube in Chrome has become borderline unusable for me. My internet is fine, Safari plays the same videos smoothly, and YouTube “Stats for nerds” shows plenty of buffer but the decoding makes youtube unusable in chrome for me.
- wmf 5mo agoUnfortunately for you, newer codecs use more CPU than older ones so AV2 would probably be even worse.
- alephnil 5mo agoNewer codecs has generally introduced more ways a video can be encoded, so that the encoder need to work much harder to encode a video, so that it actually achieve the gains that the newer codec allows much more processing will be required. Decoding on the other hand, will mostly stay the same or increase only slightly. It's not likely do decrease though, so if you struggle playing av1 today, you will also struggle with av2. For encoding, you can always write a simple encoder that use only the features that were present in mpeg2, and it will be about as efficient as mpeg2 as well. Newer codecs has more features that allows more efficient encoding, at the cost of more processing.
- wmf 5mo ago[dead]
- Telaneo 5mo agoSound like a Chrome/Youtube problem. My 2012 Macbook Pro plays 1080p AV1 just fine in VLC (pretty sure Youtube works fine too in Firefox, but I didn't check whether or not it was AV1 or H264).
- Telaneo 5mo ago
- ethin 5mo agoAnd how long will it take before someone implements this standard and gets sued because Adobe or Dolby or whoever wanted to get slapped down? My knowledge may be out of date but if this is as "open" as AV1, I'm very skeptical that the individual companies will actually allow that. Greed and all that.
- zamadatix 5mo agoIt took 7 years for the first patent assertion claim against AV1 to go to the courts and it will probably take a while for that case to resolve. Funnily enough, it wasn't from the pool constantly putting itself in the news about it over the years. I.e. it can take quite a while before attempts are made.
- dataflow 5mo agoOn that topic: https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2026/03/av1s-open-royalty-free-promise-in-question-as-dolby-sues-snapchat-over-codec/ https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2026/03/av1s-open-royalty-fr...
- buran77 5mo ago> It took 7 years for the first patent assertion claim against AV1 This might just mean that if the claim is found valid, there's seven years' worth of inertia slowing down any effort to move on. Seven years in which HW and SW manufacturers worked to build in the support, and you the user developed your processes or workflows around assumptions specifically tied to that solution. I'd rather know on day one if I should go that way or not.
- throawayonthe 5mo agoi'll be surprised if anything comes of it because like... https://aomedia.org/about/members/ https://aomedia.org/about/members/ if the legal departments of all these corporations haven't made them drop av1 in all these years there's probably not much there?
- zamadatix 5mo ago
- maxloh 5mo agoIt takes a few years for vendors to support hardware decoding for a new standard, so we won't see it in widespread use anytime soon.
- Telaneo 5mo agoLooking forward to a decently speedy encoder coming around. The reference one for AV1 is really not that great, and the same is true here. But as soon as we get SVT-AV2 or whatever, I'll be a very happy camper.
- thinkingQueen 5mo agoAV1 is being actively claim-charted by a lot of companies right now, and lawsuits are almost certainly coming. The same process is already starting for AV2, but most players are waiting for the AV1 cases to mature first. People keep calling the AV-family codecs “royalty free,” but in practice they increasingly look like a legal and financial gamble.
- ZeroGravitas 5mo agoPeople have been saying this for decades now. I've never understood why some people seem to cheer this on like a corporation owning some maths was their local sports team. For a while I assumed some people had put in a lot of effort on H.264 encoders and so the digital sharecroppers were angry and jealous that someone might be advocating for messy freedom. But some people seem to just enjoy the thought of corporations putting a tax on video distribution. Luckily those greedy corporations have repeatedly shot themselves on the foot and so their influence is waning.
- Klaus23 5mo agoHow long has it been since AV1 was released? About eight years, and there's still no credible patent holder. The vultures are always circling around compression standards. You shouldn't take that too seriously. Even if a lawsuit is filed, there's a legal defence fund to protect against baseless claims.
- Klaus23 5mo agoMost importantly, there is no alternative. As kasabali said, the patent situation for the other codecs is a mess. Additionally, they could be hit by the same "No FRAND" problem. If someone comes forward with a patent that was used unintentionally, the situation is the same for all codecs.
- kasabali 5mo ago> in practice they increasingly look like a legal and financial gamble As opposed to what, like HEVC? Where you need to pay 3 different patent pools to be sure (which all has different terms), then there's still other patent holders that aren't in any pools and come and hit you with loyalty requests any time under terms however they like to?
- sarah-robiin 5mo agoAV1 already was a big leap toward efficient and open video formats. I'm awaiting AV2 since a long time. Sure it'll take a while since it's implemented in chips and hardware so we got efficient and fast hardware encoding/decoding. But a ~25% higher efficiency sounds very promising in times of increasing storage prices and chip crises.
- angelmanuel 5mo agoI'm not a expert on video encoding But i wonder if the future could depend less on fixed-function compression methods and more on AI networks that recreate the video but weight much less that a compressed video. Neural codecs such as github.com/Orange-OpenSource/Cool-Chic
- jech 5mo agoIt will probably depend on whether NPUs are universally available in smartphones, and whether we get a standard API for accessing NPUs. But I don't know whether AI-based codecs can have battery usage competitive with fixed-function hardware.
- hgoel 5mo agoAgreed, unless AI progress slows down enough that it becomes reasonable to bake weights into circuitry, the conventional approach will probably remain preferable for encoding, at least on power constrained devices.
- perching_aix 5mo agoanyone performed a encoding and decoding benchmarking with the reference codec yet? I'd expect encoding to be dreadful, but maybe the decode is already usable
- stukenov 5mo ago[dead]
- BoingBoomTschak 5mo agoNow the real question: will The Industry™ again need for nerds and digital privateers to actually write and graft all the psy coding tools that makes their encoders usable (and I mean the word, using x264 as benchmark) for the quality-conscious and not just CPU-efficient VoD blurred to death with marketing yelling "PSNR! PSNR! PSNR!" at the top of their lungs? Will FGS be more usable? Take a look at https://gitlab.com/AOMediaCodec/SVT-AV1/-/work_items/2269 https://gitlab.com/AOMediaCodec/SVT-AV1/-/work_items/2269 for details (PS: SVT-AV1 claims to be suitable for AVIF yet doesn't support YUV444, lel)
- deleted 5mo ago[deleted]
- abacadaba 5mo agoIs there an AV1 2.0? I'm not using this codec if they can't do basic semantic versioning right.
- itvision 5mo agoCodecs are final (the only exception being H.265 with a couple of later additions/extensions that required new codec IP and were not that widely deployed or supported). They are not software. You cannot have upgrades for fixed function HW decoders (which is a must for pretty much any established codec and AV2 will be also one of them).
- xmichael909 5mo agoNeat but the real world still, and for decades to come - lives on h264 https://www.wink.co/documentation/Why-H264-Is-Almost-Always-The-Answer https://www.wink.co/documentation/Why-H264-Is-Almost-Always-...
- the-grump 5mo agoDid you read what you shared? It’s talking about security cameras, low-bitrate video. FTA: "Myth Busted: At security camera bitrates (400-800 Kbps), H.265 provides negligible compression benefits. The marketing claims of "50% savings" apply only to high-bitrate content like 4K movies at 25+ Mbps, not security cameras."
- IshKebab 5mo agoThat's also bullshit anyway. Not surprising because the article is slop.