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Google added HEVC support in Chrome

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Re: Google added HEVC support in Chrome

#151
post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, "we" cannot just ignore patents by implementing them in software. Maybe you can but that doesn't scale.

tell that to every Linux user who was doing anything with mp3's before the patents expired just a couple years ago. i'm pretty sure even the Windows version of Audacity -- a tool with over 100 million downloads -- integrated with it. are you claiming the LAME approach wasn't successful? or that its success was a fluke, context-dependent, or for some other reason is a bad analogue?

Yeah downloading an OS that couldn't play MP3's by default, and required you to jump through hoops to let it play them, because said distro was avoiding law suits, Just like how Audacity didn't ship with LAME, but required you to supply your own dll. Yes patents had zero effect on the User experience.

Re: Google added HEVC support in Chrome

#152
post #66
post #10

On one hand, that's great for anyone watching HEVC content in Chrome. On the other, I'd prefer to not see further adoption of HEVC and instead see increased deployment of VP9 and AV1 wherever possible. Let MPEG-LA and the other HEVC patent pools+holders... well I'll leave the rest to your imagination. Future looking, no one should even touch VVC/H.266. Unfortunately the above rant does not address the gap in hardware…

It's ironic, not one week ago there were a bunch of complaints on this site saying that Google was abusing their position of power (controlling YouTube, Chrome, Android TV, etc) by pushing AV1. Now they bring HEVC support to Chrome and the top comment is another complaint! (That said, I agree with you. I think a codec being royalty free is a very good reason to prefer it to other codecs.)

TBF they can be abusing their position + helping other companies abuse their position as well.

Just reading about the historical context of AV1 it all feels like huge dirty lawyer battles involving troves of money thrown around, with the user as a hostage indirectly footing the bill in the end so we can't just ignore all the drama.

I would want to side with Google on the open side they seem to be championing, but there's no way it doesn't come with huge side effects that we will pay sooner or later.

All to say, it's looks like a complicated enough matter that opinions will be devised and all options might not be great, some just being more acceptable than others.

Re: Google added HEVC support in Chrome

#153

Why do pirates prefer hevc over AV1? I assume they don’t care about intellectual property so I assume it comes down to technical quality of the algorithms? Maybe they have moved to av1 and I just don’t know it. Either way the quality of the piracy scene has always seemed vastly better than legitimate channels, up until Netflix.

encode is/was slow. Theres at least one group that was running an encode farm for AV1 though. today, theres a TON more AV1 content available these days from pirates as better hardware is available, and ffmpeg is usable with AV1 now.

Re: Google added HEVC support in Chrome

#155
post #53
post #10

On one hand, that's great for anyone watching HEVC content in Chrome. On the other, I'd prefer to not see further adoption of HEVC and instead see increased deployment of VP9 and AV1 wherever possible. Let MPEG-LA and the other HEVC patent pools+holders... well I'll leave the rest to your imagination. Future looking, no one should even touch VVC/H.266. Unfortunately the above rant does not address the gap in hardware…

Did you tried to encode anything with av1? Even with a high end CPU it's just not feasible, I tried with ffmpeg and it was encoding a single digit fps per seconds. A video of just 10min would take many hours, on the other end h265 encoding is slow but doable. Edit: just retried on my laptop: 0.6fps with a 11th Gen Intel(R) Core(TM) i5-1135G7 @ 2.40GHz Using the lastest version of ffmpeg with the sample from the wiki:…

With the correct encoder and settings, it can be faster to encode than x265, for any given "efficiency" that x265 can achieve. Of course, the efficiency can be pushed higher than that, too, still with a reasonable encoding time.

Re: Google added HEVC support in Chrome

#156
post #56
post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did you tried to encode anything with av1? Even with a high end CPU it's just not feasible, I tried with ffmpeg and it was encoding a single digit fps per seconds. A video of just 10min would take many hours, on the other end h265 encoding is slow but doable. Edit: just retried on my laptop: 0.6fps with a 11th Gen Intel(R) Core(TM) i5-1135G7 @ 2.40GHz Using the lastest version of ffmpeg with the sample from the wiki:…

Try compiling ffmpeg with `--enable-librav1e` and use the `rav1e` encoder implementation. It's supposed to be the fastest software encoder, though of course it can still quite slow depending on the settings. If you have a newish Intel CPU they're supposed to have good AV1 hardware encoding support. See SVT-AV1. (which ffmpeg also supports: https://trac.ffmpeg.org/wiki/Encode/AV1#SVT-AV1 )

Intel CPUs don't have AV1 hardware encoding support quite yet. Their latest 13th gen CPUs have AV1 hardware decoding support though. The recent performance improvements[1][2] are for software encoding.

[1] https://www.phoronix.com/news/AOM-AV1-3.5

[2] https://www.phoronix.com/news/SVT-AV1-1.3

Re: Google added HEVC support in Chrome

#157
post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

tell that to every Linux user who was doing anything with mp3's before the patents expired just a couple years ago. i'm pretty sure even the Windows version of Audacity -- a tool with over 100 million downloads -- integrated with it. are you claiming the LAME approach wasn't successful? or that its success was a fluke, context-dependent, or for some other reason is a bad analogue?

LAME is a really great example of why patents exist: the need to avoid the mp3 patents resulted in the development of technology that was superior to that covered by the mp3 patents. Do people really think LAME would have been developed if people were just reimplementing the existing mp3 encoder?

This is wrong in so many ways I'm not sure where to start. LAME was covered by the patents, so your whole idea is backwards and even if it weren't it's not supported by any evidence - there's just no relationship between patentability and how many encoders get implemented independently or not.

Re: Google added HEVC support in Chrome

#158
post #15

Every new software and hardware is moving towards the royalty free, agile and efficient AV1 codec. But out of nowhere and 9 years after its release, they add support to the mother of all royalties HEVC codec. Probably had some kind of deal to benefit their android partner Samsung, since they own pretty much most of HEVC patents. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_Efficiency_Video_Coding#P...

No post body was provided.

Re: Google added HEVC support in Chrome

#159
post #76
post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Try compiling ffmpeg with `--enable-librav1e` and use the `rav1e` encoder implementation. It's supposed to be the fastest software encoder, though of course it can still quite slow depending on the settings. If you have a newish Intel CPU they're supposed to have good AV1 hardware encoding support. See SVT-AV1. (which ffmpeg also supports: https://trac.ffmpeg.org/wiki/Encode/AV1#SVT-AV1 )

I don't think there are CPUs with integrated GPUs from Intel that do AV1 encoding yet. Raptor Lake launched on October 20, 2022, and while RL will decode AV1, it won't encode it. The Intel Arc cards will encode AV1. The next generation of Intel CPUs with integrated GPUs are supposed to have AV1 encode. Maybe a year or two away?

By next month, every current gen discrete GPU will hardware encode AV1, be it Intel Arc, Nvidia 4XXX or AMD 7XXX.

Re: Google added HEVC support in Chrome

#160
post #53
post #10

On one hand, that's great for anyone watching HEVC content in Chrome. On the other, I'd prefer to not see further adoption of HEVC and instead see increased deployment of VP9 and AV1 wherever possible. Let MPEG-LA and the other HEVC patent pools+holders... well I'll leave the rest to your imagination. Future looking, no one should even touch VVC/H.266. Unfortunately the above rant does not address the gap in hardware…

Did you tried to encode anything with av1? Even with a high end CPU it's just not feasible, I tried with ffmpeg and it was encoding a single digit fps per seconds. A video of just 10min would take many hours, on the other end h265 encoding is slow but doable. Edit: just retried on my laptop: 0.6fps with a 11th Gen Intel(R) Core(TM) i5-1135G7 @ 2.40GHz Using the lastest version of ffmpeg with the sample from the wiki:…

exactly. vp9 isn't actually that good. It's clearly worse than hevc. AV1 is better, but there's limited hardware encoding/decoding support. The result is exactly as expected.
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