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AV1 video codec gains broader hardware support

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Re: AV1 video codec gains broader hardware support

#51

Post by ZeroGravitas »

galad87 wrote: post #47
ZeroGravitas wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For software encoding Intel suggest you can beat all the other classic SW encoders with AV1 as long as you have enough cores: https://d1qg7561fu8ubi.cloudfront.net/blog/BD-rate_fiugure5.... Lower and to the left is "better" Edit: resolution on that graph image is terrible but they've been sharing it for a while in slide decks so you can probably find better quality by following links from here: https://networkbuilder…

SVT-AV1 has still a lot of visual quality issues. PSNR, SSIM, VMAF are useful metrics, but optimising for these won't get you the best encoder. x264 didn't get its reputation for going after PSNR and SSIM.

The subjective results in testing follow a similar pattern though. Even with variations between the metrics and subjective scores there's not really enough wiggle room for it to bridgevthe gap:

https://compression.ru/video/index.htm

Re: AV1 video codec gains broader hardware support

#52

Post by RicoElectrico »

Is it really _that_ hard to create a generic video decoding DSP whose firmware could be updated? Most codecs are very similar to each other. IIRC Texas Instruments used multicore DSP to decode MPEG back in the 90s.

Or maybe we should have written codecs to be amenable towards GPU shader implementation...

Re: AV1 video codec gains broader hardware support

#53

Post by ZeroGravitas »

jebarker wrote: post #49
galad87 wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

SVT-AV1 has still a lot of visual quality issues. PSNR, SSIM, VMAF are useful metrics, but optimising for these won't get you the best encoder. x264 didn't get its reputation for going after PSNR and SSIM.

What did x264 go after?

They had some psy optimisations that introduced "false" "detail" that the eye liked but metrics didn't.

Kind of like what AV1 does with film grain or various audio codecs do with filler audio that's roughly the right "texture" even if not accurate to the original signal.

edit: this is on top of the basics all working fast and well. You could argue that many competitors "overfit" to metrics and they had the wisdom or correct organisational incentives to avoid this.

Re: AV1 video codec gains broader hardware support

#54

Post by Vrondi »

dannyw wrote: post #34

Is AV1 better than HEVC? Or is it about the same, just freely licensed?

HEVC is great for giving you quality in a smaller file size, for your local video files (due to being supported by more cameras and phones so far). AV1 has wider support for streaming video online at a higher quality (due to more browser support so far). So, at the moment, they are really best in two different use cases (subject to change, of course).

Re: AV1 video codec gains broader hardware support

#55

Post by Strom »

dannyw wrote: post #34

Is AV1 better than HEVC? Or is it about the same, just freely licensed?

We have to make a distinction between the standard and implementations. AV1 has open source implementations which achieve really high compression. HEVC also has implementations which achieve really high compression and do that faster than AV1, but all the good ones are paid like MediaConcept. [1] The open source HEVC implementations (i.e. x265) are unfortunately quite weak compared to their AV1 counterparts and do not achieve comparable compression.

So yes, the answer depends most on whether you care about licensing. Both in terms of royalities and also implementations.

--

[1] https://www.mainconcept.com/hevc - for the casual user most easily accessed by purchasing Adobe Media Encoder

Re: AV1 video codec gains broader hardware support

#56

Post by mort96 »

xvilka wrote: post #48
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?

[flagged]

So a few things here:

1. A fair number of users are gonna use the default browser. You probably want to support those users.

2. iOS users can't download non-WebKit browsers. You probably want to support iOS users.

Re: AV1 video codec gains broader hardware support

#57

Post by oittaa »

lelag wrote: post #12

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.

Does anyone know if Youtube supports AV1 in their pipeline for ultra low latency streaming?

https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/7444635?hl=en#zipp...

Re: AV1 video codec gains broader hardware support

#58

Post by baggy_trough »

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?

What are the "ever growing set of standards" that Safari doesn't support?

Re: AV1 video codec gains broader hardware support

#60

Post by dannyw »

Strom wrote: post #55
dannyw wrote: post #34

Is AV1 better than HEVC? Or is it about the same, just freely licensed?

We have to make a distinction between the standard and implementations. AV1 has open source implementations which achieve really high compression. HEVC also has implementations which achieve really high compression and do that faster than AV1, but all the good ones are paid like MediaConcept. [1] The open source HEVC implementations (i.e. x265) are unfortunately quite weak compared to their AV1 counterparts and do no…

Very insightful, but is x265 really that bad? If you’re willing to wait, does slower presets help?

I tested NVENC, X265, and DaVinci Resolve Studio’s H265 encoder.

x265 was best by far. What more am I missing on?

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