Codec implementation and optimization was probably my favorite type of work. It would be fun to dive deep into AV2 in those areas but no time!
AV2 video codec delivers 30% lower bitrate than AV1, final spec due in late 2025
51–60 of 227 posts
Re: AV2 video codec delivers 30% lower bitrate than AV1, final spec due in late 2025
#52Will streaming services ever stop over-compressing their content? I have a top-of-the-line 4K TV and gigabit internet, yet the compression artifacts make everything look like putty. Honestly, the best picture quality I’ve ever seen was over 20 years ago using simple digital rabbit ears. You especially notice the compression on gradients and in dark movie scenes. And yes — my TV is fully calibrated, and I’m paying for…
It's a little surprising to me that there generally aren't more subscription tiers where you can pay more for higher quality. Seems like free money, from people like you (maybe) and me.
Re: AV2 video codec delivers 30% lower bitrate than AV1, final spec due in late 2025
#53Will streaming services ever stop over-compressing their content? I have a top-of-the-line 4K TV and gigabit internet, yet the compression artifacts make everything look like putty. Honestly, the best picture quality I’ve ever seen was over 20 years ago using simple digital rabbit ears. You especially notice the compression on gradients and in dark movie scenes. And yes — my TV is fully calibrated, and I’m paying for…
Seems like piracy is the way for you
Re: AV2 video codec delivers 30% lower bitrate than AV1, final spec due in late 2025
#5430% over AV1 is crazy, it doesn't feel too long since AV1 released but that was in 2019.
Yet I still only got hardware support for it on my first devices last year. The downside of "rapid" iteration on video codecs is that content needs to always be stored in multiple formats (or alternatively battery life on the client suffers from software playback, which is the route e.g. Youtube seems to be preferring).
It'd be really cool if we had 'upgradable codec FPGAs' in our machines that you could just use flash to the newest codec... but that'd probably be noticeably more expensive, and also not really in the interest of the manufacturers, who want to have reasons to sell new chips.
Re: AV2 video codec delivers 30% lower bitrate than AV1, final spec due in late 2025
#55Earlier quoted context omitted.
While funny, that's not really what I would call accurate. Users get reduced data consumption, potentially higher quality selection if the bandwidth now allows for a higher resolution to be streamed, and possibly lower disk usage should they decide to offline the videos. Better codecs are an overall win for everyone involved.
> Users get reduced data consumption, potentially higher quality selection if the bandwidth now allows for a higher resolution to be streamed They also get increased power usage, lesser battery life, higher energy bills, and potentially earlier device failures. > Better codecs are an overall win for everyone involved. Right.
Not to mention making your device obsolete. My 12 year old laptop already can't decode some of the videos on Pirate Bay in real time, because the codec is too demanding.
Re: AV2 video codec delivers 30% lower bitrate than AV1, final spec due in late 2025
#56It’s pretty amazing people are still finding ways to make video smaller. Is this just people being clever or is it also more processing power being thrown at the problem when decoding / encoding?
Yes, and it's allowing the format to change to allow more cleverness or apply more processing power. For example, changes from one frame to the next are encoded in rectangular areas called "superblocks" (similar to a https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Macroblock ). You can "move" the blocks (warp them), define their change in terms of other parts of the same frame (intra-frame prediction) or by referencing previous frames…
In general with movement through scenes it would seem that rectangular update windows seem like a poor match.
Is there a reason codec's don't use the previous frame(s) as stored textures, and remap them on the screen? I can move a camera through room and a lot of the texture is just reprojectivetransformed.
Re: AV2 video codec delivers 30% lower bitrate than AV1, final spec due in late 2025
#57It’s pretty amazing people are still finding ways to make video smaller. Is this just people being clever or is it also more processing power being thrown at the problem when decoding / encoding?
I believe patents play a big role here as well. Anything new must be careful to not (accidentally) violate any active patent, so there might be some tricks that can't currently be used for AV1/AV2
I think patents are quickly becoming less of a problem. A lot of the foundational encoding techniques have exited patent protection. H.264 and everything before it is patent free now.
It's true you could still accidentally violate a patent but that minefield is clearing out as those patents simply have to become more esoteric in nature.
Re: AV2 video codec delivers 30% lower bitrate than AV1, final spec due in late 2025
#58Earlier quoted context omitted.
While funny, that's not really what I would call accurate. Users get reduced data consumption, potentially higher quality selection if the bandwidth now allows for a higher resolution to be streamed, and possibly lower disk usage should they decide to offline the videos. Better codecs are an overall win for everyone involved.
> Better codecs are an overall win for everyone involved. I don’t remember ever watching a movie and wishing for a better codec, in the last 10 years
I do because the quality of av1 on youtube is often significantly better than vp9 and especially h264, even though the filesize is usually lower than both. And the quality of the video at 1080p when only the worse formats are available is noticeably bad.
Re: AV2 video codec delivers 30% lower bitrate than AV1, final spec due in late 2025
#59It’s pretty amazing people are still finding ways to make video smaller. Is this just people being clever or is it also more processing power being thrown at the problem when decoding / encoding?
I believe patents play a big role here as well. Anything new must be careful to not (accidentally) violate any active patent, so there might be some tricks that can't currently be used for AV1/AV2
There are numerous patent trolls in this space with active litigation against many of the participants in the consortium who brought AV1. The EU was also threatening to investigate (likely to protect the royalty revenues of European companies)
Re: AV2 video codec delivers 30% lower bitrate than AV1, final spec due in late 2025
#60Earlier quoted context omitted.
While funny, that's not really what I would call accurate. Users get reduced data consumption, potentially higher quality selection if the bandwidth now allows for a higher resolution to be streamed, and possibly lower disk usage should they decide to offline the videos. Better codecs are an overall win for everyone involved.
> Users get reduced data consumption, potentially higher quality selection if the bandwidth now allows for a higher resolution to be streamed They also get increased power usage, lesser battery life, higher energy bills, and potentially earlier device failures. > Better codecs are an overall win for everyone involved. Right.
> power usage, lesser battery life, higher energy bills
I like how you padded this list by repeating the same thing thrice. Like, increased power usage is obviously going to lead to higher energy bills.
And it’s especially weird because it’s not true? The current SOTA codec AV1 is at a sweet spot for both compression and energy demand (https://arxiv.org/html/2402.09001v1). Consumers are not worse off!