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AV1 video codec gains broader hardware support

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Re: AV1 video codec gains broader hardware support

#11

Post by ZeroGravitas »

arbitrarian wrote: post #4

According to the article, it's supported by every browser except Edge. It will be interesting to see who ultimately ends up making a better IE, Safari or Microsoft. So far, it seems Safari is winning, given the ever growing set of standards they don't support, but maybe this is Edge trying to catch up?

The data at CanIUse.com seems to suggest they're going backward and used to have an installable plugin:

https://caniuse.com/av1

see also:

https://www.thurrott.com/forums/microsoft/windows/thread/you...

Which seems to be claiming the software fallback has been suddenly yanked, temporarily breaking YouTube which fixed it by serving VP9 instead but maybe AV1 hardware decode is still working?

Re: AV1 video codec gains broader hardware support

#12

Post by lelag »

I would add that broader AV1 support is also a good news for low latency application like Cloud gaming or streaming to VR headsets. HW accelerated encoding/decoding improve upon HEVC on every metrics so you can get near real-time streaming with higher quality and lower bandwidth requirements.

Re: AV1 video codec gains broader hardware support

#13

Post by cubefox »

BoumTAC wrote: post #5

Perhaps this might seem like a basic question, but why has it taken so long for processors to support AV1, given that it has been out for years?

The AV1 ASIC takes up space on the SoC, so effectively it decreases the performance of other parts. This could be why some manufacturers have delayed including support for quite a while. Though Mediatek already had AV1 support three years ago.

Re: AV1 video codec gains broader hardware support

#14

Post by nickpeterson »

londons_explore wrote: post #6
BoumTAC wrote: post #5

Perhaps this might seem like a basic question, but why has it taken so long for processors to support AV1, given that it has been out for years?

Design cycles of hardware is long. The person who benefits from a more efficient codec tends to be netflix/youtube (lower bandwidth costs), and they are far far removed from the chipmaker - market forces get very weak at that distance.

Also, specialized hardware for a specific format feels like a really good way to have a useless part of a cpu if the format stops being used.

Re: AV1 video codec gains broader hardware support

#16

Post by repelsteeltje »

BoumTAC wrote: post #5

Perhaps this might seem like a basic question, but why has it taken so long for processors to support AV1, given that it has been out for years?

Keep in mind that standards are moving slow, CODEC standards more so. The golden standard is still h264/AVC, which dates back to the nineties. This is primarily due to many appliances (set top boxes, cameras, phones, TVs) using the absolute cheapest hardware stack they can get their hands on.

Re: AV1 video codec gains broader hardware support

#18

Post by pjc50 »

arbitrarian wrote: post #4

According to the article, it's supported by every browser except Edge. It will be interesting to see who ultimately ends up making a better IE, Safari or Microsoft. So far, it seems Safari is winning, given the ever growing set of standards they don't support, but maybe this is Edge trying to catch up?

Odd given that Edge is Chromium.

Re: AV1 video codec gains broader hardware support

#20

Post by whynotminot »

FirmwareBurner wrote: post #3
llcooliovice wrote: post #2

Now supported by the Apple M3 chips.

Only decode, not encode. Intel ARC GPUs also do encode.

I think it makes sense for companies to start with decode though. That hits pretty much 100% of users--everyone watches video.

But only a small fraction of users actually create content and need accelerated encode. And Apple especially I think is unlikely to use AV1 for their video recording, given their investment in other formats for that use-case.

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