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  • DanNeely - Friday, September 14, 2018 - link

    This article's headline reminds me of why I thought av1 was a terrible name from the beginning. I read it as "AVI", and was all "LOLWUT!" because AVI is a really old format.
  • poohbear - Friday, September 14, 2018 - link

    me too! i was like 4 realz??? could they be anymore confusing???
  • Duwelon - Friday, September 14, 2018 - link

    AVI file is just a container that could hold video/audio encoded in many formats. AV1 is one such codec.

    *puffs chest, walks away*
  • inighthawki - Friday, September 14, 2018 - link

    Probably makes it even more confusing for those who don't understand the difference :)
  • stephenbrooks - Friday, September 14, 2018 - link

    Ugh. Yes, the file extension being the container type not the codec was a mistake IMO, since whenever I run into incompatibility issues with video files, it's due to missing a particular codec.

    I think they thought there'd be a billion different codecs that magically were supported everywhere so no-one would have to care what codec a video is, which is of course not true in an era when some codec support is even in hardware.
  • Santoval - Saturday, September 15, 2018 - link

    You are right about the missing codecs problem (for which the expensive proprietary codecs like HEVC are to blame), however since containers such as mkv support just about any codec, things are kept much simpler and tidier. If each codec was container-less, each with its own extension, the situation would be quite messier due to the many more file extensions.
    The only arguable benefit would be that it would be easier to know if our system, video player or browser supported the x or y codec, but at the trade-off of a much higher video related clutter.
  • SleepyFE - Saturday, September 22, 2018 - link

    Also, the container holds video, audio and subtitles. So having one video codec, 4 audio codecs and 28 subtitles without a container would be annoying, unsightly and unmanageable.
  • phoenix_rizzen - Friday, September 14, 2018 - link

    There's a "yo dawg" meme in there somewhere. :)
  • brunis.dk - Saturday, September 15, 2018 - link

    They could have done worse, like those shitty sites that use fonts where you cant tell the difference between non-capital L and capital i, like this site. Lot's of pass generation sites use it too.
  • qlum - Friday, September 14, 2018 - link

    To be fair it is compounded by the font if I type it here in the comments AVI and AV1 look reasonably different.

    A personal note here I hate font ambiguity between characters like I and l or in deed I and 1
  • edzieba - Friday, September 14, 2018 - link

    At least they didn't go for XV1D.
  • wr3zzz - Friday, September 14, 2018 - link

    Same here. AV1 is basically indistinguishable from AVI to anyone needing reading glasses and were actually there when AVI ruled the world. Either av1 or AV.1 would be OK.
  • Myrandex - Monday, September 17, 2018 - link

    lol same
  • eastcoast_pete - Monday, September 17, 2018 - link

    +1 on that. Exactly the same for me, back to the future? Was AVO or AVOne not available? Alternatively, use a hyphen (AV-1), it's not as sexy as letters only, but much clearer.
  • AdditionalPylons - Wednesday, September 19, 2018 - link

    I read it as AVI as well.
  • kludj - Friday, September 14, 2018 - link

    Great these are moving forward. I record in h265, then edit and publish in h264 because Youtube didn't (and still doesn't, fully) support a modern standard. 264 is pretty outdated and it's a real pain having to deal with hundreds of GB extra space taken when locally archiving published (h264) copies. 100% cool w/ bouncing from recording/editing 265 to AV1. I'd guess Google's reasoning in not being more aggressive is they'll likely still need to convert to and keep video in 264 for older devices? Though savings in bandwidth should still be enormous.
  • iwod - Friday, September 14, 2018 - link

    x264 is still much better than any H.265 encoder at high bitrate.
  • Alexvrb - Friday, September 14, 2018 - link

    Not at high resolutions, and that doesn't even factor in bit depth. Either way for streaming, efficiency is important and H.264 has fallen way behind.

    Back on topic, I'm not convinced AV1 is a real improvement over H.265. The main benefit is content providers (like Google or Netflix) will save money due to the lack of royalties. In the longer term (3-4 years out) they'll have to either keep H.264 as a fall-back or discontinue support for older streaming devices that don't have support for AV1. Basically there's not going to be any tangible benefits for consumers (your Netflix / Hulu subs aren't going to get cheaper), but the big media companies will be happy.
  • iwod - Saturday, September 15, 2018 - link

    >Back on topic, I'm not convinced AV1 is a real improvement over H.265.

    Same here. I am convinced that we are far from tuning x265 quality improvement. And the current AV1 shows "some" improvement at the expense of 1000x encoding time. And we have VVC coming along in by 2020 already.
  • amarcus - Saturday, September 15, 2018 - link

    >Back on topic, I'm not convinced AV1 is a real improvement over H.265

    As someone who appreciates good film grain, film grain synthesis in AV1 could be a significant improvement as it would mitigate the "too smooth" appearance common in low bitrate videos. Although both H.264 and H.265 have had rudimentary support for film grain synthesis it has been overlooked by all major encoders/decoders however I am optimistic that this will not happen with AV1. Early tests (example screenshots can be found on doom9's Alliance for Open Media codecs thread) look great!
  • Lolimaster - Saturday, September 15, 2018 - link

    Specially x264 10bit preset.
  • saratoga4 - Friday, September 14, 2018 - link

    >Great these are moving forward. I record in h265, then edit and publish in h264 because Youtube didn't (and still doesn't, fully) support a modern standard.

    H.265 is dead at this point due to patent infighting. Lack of support in Youtube doesn't matter when Chrome, Firefox and Edge all don't support the format natively. Very few people are going to install plugins to watch a video online, especially if they have to pay for them.
  • Alexvrb - Friday, September 14, 2018 - link

    I'm pretty sure Edge supports HEVC (H.265) natively, since it's the only browser that runs high-bitrate HEVC Netflix content (last I checked). Google and some others deliberately did not support it because they did not want to pay, so they just stalled and stalled until AV1 was ready.
  • saratoga4 - Saturday, September 15, 2018 - link

    Edge by default does not support h.265 (and testing on my windows 10 machine it reports no support). You can download a plugin for kaby lake and newer that will enable it, or buy one for older systems IIRC.
  • Santoval - Monday, October 21, 2019 - link

    You are misinformed. The problem with H.265 is not that the companies "did not want to pay". Up until H.264 they paid royalties with no issues. So what changed with H.265? Well, up until H.264 there was a nice, clear and *single* patent pool companies paid royalties to. However the patent holders of H.265 did not agree to the formation of a single patent pool and it ended up with no less than *three* patent pools (from MPEG LA, HEVC Advance and Velos Media).

    These patent pools are partly complementary but largely competitive with each other, so vendors basically need to choose which of the patent pools to pay royalties to, at a constant risk of being sued by the companies who own the other two pools. The best part? Velos Media has not even (publicly) disclosed royalty rates! They say that they have licensed "many" (undisclosed) companies as well, but if they actually have they must have legally tied them with NDAs to prevent them from "blowing the whistle", i.e. to ... betray the major industrial secret that they paid royalties to Velos Media! (more in the link at the end). Why? Well, your guess is as good as mine, and I can surely guess.

    Now tell me, if you were a part of the legal team of Google, Mozilla etc would you really recommend to the CEO of your company to license H.265/HEVC after looking at this mess even more deeply? The budget allocated for codec royalties only covered one of the three patent pools (besides, no company in their right mind would pay all three patent pools -i.e. pay three times for the same thing- just to be safe). So would you and your colleagues recommend to the CEO to take a gamble by choosing the "safest" option among the three patent pools or rather look elsewhere for another codec?
    https://www.thebroadcastbridge.com/content/entry/1...
  • Santoval - Monday, October 21, 2019 - link

    (p.s. For anyone too bored or busy to click the link). Velos Media might sound like an obscure patent troll from the description above, but (bizarrely) it consists of these non insignificant companies : Ericsson, Panasonic, Qualcomm, Sharp and Sony. And my educated guess about them requiring an NDA turns out to be valid, according to their website. I just did not ever expect them to provide such an outrageous justification for it :

    "Why does Velos Media require an NDA (non-disclosure agreement) to enter into license discussions?
    The use of a non-disclosure agreement (NDA) is a reasonable and well-established practice in patent licensing, and is generally required when companies share confidential information such as claim charts. An NDA helps establishes an environment of trust and openness that results in more efficient and productive negotiations that are beneficial to all parties involved."

    In what alternative reality does an NDA establish "trust" and (particularly) "openness"?!?!
  • mooninite - Friday, September 14, 2018 - link

    I encourage you reconsider your "complete h.265 workflow" because in my tests re-encoding (or recording from non-master sources) result in very washed out, smoothed out, video. Stick with the master source format unless you value space over quality.
  • LMonty - Saturday, September 15, 2018 - link

    I second this. Tried transcoding old videos (mpeg, divx, h.264) to h.265 and tried to achieve the same quality at half the file size. The resulting videos were surprisingly worse than the original.

    I was especially disappointed with the MPEG files from my old digicam, thinking that the gap in compression technology between MPEG and h.265 would result in very good quality (at the same file size). It just wasn't so.
  • kludj - Saturday, September 15, 2018 - link

    I don't experience it. These are almost entirely PC recordings and animations, though, not a conversion from a video camera, so I don't worry much about a gigantic palette of murky colors.
  • Stochastic - Friday, September 14, 2018 - link

    Is AV1 expected to improve image quality over VP9? Or is the benefit purely the 30% greater efficiency?
  • mooninite - Friday, September 14, 2018 - link

    Yes, it is supposed to improve everything across the board.
  • scott967a - Friday, September 14, 2018 - link

    What's the status of GPU hardware decode / Windows and Linux APIs for AV1?
  • timecop1818 - Friday, September 14, 2018 - link

    You gotta wait about a decade or so until the standard is obsolete, and by the time everyone stops caring about it, lunix will get some pre-alpha support.
  • Rocket321 - Friday, September 14, 2018 - link

    Completely absent. You'll need to buy a new Gpu/smartphone/streamer in a couple years down the road for hardware decode. Start saving up now.
  • saratoga4 - Saturday, September 15, 2018 - link

    Probably 12-18 months before hardware support hits.
  • GreenReaper - Sunday, September 16, 2018 - link

    For hardware decode we're probably talking Navi for AMD and whatever is *after* the soon-to-be-shipped Turing architecture for NVIDIA's - think mid-to-late 2019 or perhaps early 2020. On the software side, it'll plug into the existing APIs - it's just another video format in that respect.
  • Santoval - Monday, October 21, 2019 - link

    FFmpeg 4.0+ supports (reasonably fast) AV1 decoding via libdav1d and (slower) AV1 decoding/encoding via libaom-av1 (the reference AV1 encode/decode library). As for software players that I'm aware of mpv fully supports AV1 decoding since version 0.28, while VLC supports full decoding and encoding of AV1 since version 4.0 and preliminary AV1 decoding since version 3.0
    As for hardware decoding & encoding you can do it with Intel's SVT-AV1 if you have an Intel CPU. I don't think Nvidia and AMD have yet announced support for AV1.
  • Morawka - Saturday, September 15, 2018 - link

    How does it compare with HEVC in terms of compression efficiency?
  • GreenReaper - Sunday, September 16, 2018 - link

    It does pretty well especially for low-resolution video, but in some areas HEVC is still better - perhaps in part because it uses certain patented techniques which AV1 has had to avoid:
    https://wyohknott.github.io/video-formats-comparis...

    AV1 is very slow to encode, but in the past few months a lot of work has gone into making it faster (SSE2/3/4/AVX optimizations and the like), so the graph there may not be fully representative.

    What will likely happen is that companies like Google will use their copious free CPU time to crunch their more popular videos to AV1 in the short term until hardware is available. When it can be decoded efficiently, it will be possible to encode it efficiently as well.

    Incidentally, *decode* performance is pretty good. Like, not ideal yet - I can't *quite* run 1080p 30 FPS on my anemic dual-core AMD 2011 netbook. But 720P 30FPS works fine, for example - in fact it can handle 40 FPS.

    If you want more detailed comparisons you can use the tool the developers are using:
    https://arewecompressedyet.com/?job=av1_sp5_twitch...

    You need to select a result set and then add items from both H.265 and AV1. In this case it shows that AV1 is giving a better quality (for the VMAF metric) at a particular file size for this set of videos but takes ~2.5-5 times longer to generate it (I tried H.265's veryslow as well but it didn't improve quality).
  • eastcoast_pete - Monday, September 17, 2018 - link

    Wasn't one of the big "to dos" for AV 1 that current encoders still lag (lagged?, any updates?) support for multithreading. So, in addition to support of SSE and AVX, if an AV 1 encoding program could make use of multiple cores/threads, it'd speed it up a lot. For illustration, try x265 encoding w and w/o multithreading on a modern desktop chip (i5 or better for Intel, Ryzen six core or better for AMD). Encoding speeds scale quite well with number of cores/threads, can't imagine it'll be that much worse for AV 1.
  • GreenReaper - Sunday, December 23, 2018 - link

    They've been adding stuff like that over recent months, because it's best to make something work first before you make it work fast. A few months ago they threw a switch and certain operations got 2-4x faster because of improved threading. AVX and SSE2/3/4 optimizations go in all the time.

    That said, it's still doing more work, and without using certain patented techniques that might be cheaper, so it's going to be expensive CPU-wise. The big push is likely to come with hardware support.
  • eastcoast_pete - Monday, September 17, 2018 - link

    As indicated in my previous post: I would be game to try an AV 1 encoder if (IF) it's at least in the ballpark speed-wise with x265. I use my phone to take videos (so typically 1-10 minutes), and like to store them on my NAS after conversion and compression with handbrake. If the AV 1 developers wants to get fast uptake and broader use by many, making a optimized and multithread-capable AV 1 version available to the handbrake and similar teams would be a great way to do that.
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  • aleena gulzar - Friday, March 11, 2022 - link

    This article's headline reminds me of why I thought av1 was a terrible name from the beginning. I read it as "AVI", and was all "LOLWUT!" because AVI is a really old format. thanks for sharing great information i need suggestion want to increase subscribers on youtube so how can i increase subscribers?

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