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The AV2 Video Standard Has Released (Final v1.0 Specification)

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41–50 of 190 posts

Re: The AV2 Video Standard Has Released (Final v1.0 Specification)

#41
post #31

I’m curious how much AV2 will actually help older hardware in practice. I’m on a 2019 Intel MacBook Pro: 2.6 GHz 6-core i7, 64 GB RAM. The machine is still more than powerful enough for normal desktop work and software dev, but YouTube in Chrome has become borderline unusable for me. My internet is fine, Safari plays the same videos smoothly, and YouTube “Stats for nerds” shows plenty of buffer but the decoding makes…

Sound like a Chrome/Youtube problem. My 2012 Macbook Pro plays 1080p AV1 just fine in VLC (pretty sure Youtube works fine too in Firefox, but I didn't check whether or not it was AV1 or H264).

For reference: dav1d 0.5 can decode 143 FPS of a 1080p 8-bit video on a third gen core i7.[1] I doubt there's been much in the way of regressions since then. 10-bit and 4k is obviously a lot more heavy, but not really relevant to older devices.

[1] https://www.phoronix.com/news/dav1d-0.5 (it's mislabled as a core i3, but the 3770K is a core i7).

Re: The AV2 Video Standard Has Released (Final v1.0 Specification)

#42
post #12
post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Last update seems to be "lawsuit was filed" with zero updates since then. That stuff tends to move slowly.

Hopefully their patents will be busted and preferably Dolby will be also forced to pay damages for filing invalid lawsuits. That's the only way to teach patent trolls proper lessons.

While I agree with the general sentiment, I would not classify Dolby as a "patent troll" — they still do invest in research and developing products, right?

Re: The AV2 Video Standard Has Released (Final v1.0 Specification)

#44

I’m curious how much AV2 will actually help older hardware in practice. I’m on a 2019 Intel MacBook Pro: 2.6 GHz 6-core i7, 64 GB RAM. The machine is still more than powerful enough for normal desktop work and software dev, but YouTube in Chrome has become borderline unusable for me. My internet is fine, Safari plays the same videos smoothly, and YouTube “Stats for nerds” shows plenty of buffer but the decoding makes…

I use Firefox but YouTube has recently started giving me a pop-up occasionally telling me that they are intentionally slowing down the site because they don't like some of the browser extensions I use.

Re: The AV2 Video Standard Has Released (Final v1.0 Specification)

#45
AV1 is being actively claim-charted by a lot of companies right now, and lawsuits are almost certainly coming. The same process is already starting for AV2, but most players are waiting for the AV1 cases to mature first.

People keep calling the AV-family codecs “royalty free,” but in practice they increasingly look like a legal and financial gamble.

Re: The AV2 Video Standard Has Released (Final v1.0 Specification)

#46
post #2

A few things - this is one step in a long, LONG path. AV2 is currently unusable in its current state (the encoder typically runs at around 1fps on good hardware), and likely will remain so til ~2028 when the first av2 hardware accelerated chips start dropping. Even then, I wouldn't expect AV2 streams to be common til 2030. IMO, if it were just the efficiency gains on the table (which are substantial - ~20-30% over AV…

The way things are going, we can pretty much forget about AV2 hardware encoders in PCs anytime soon. All the newest, best chip capacity is being completely hogged by Apple and AI companies.

Unless chipmakers port the AV2 design to older, cheaper nodes, it’s just not happening for average users. We’ll probably see some Chinese TV chip makers throw in an AV2 decoder just to check a box, but as an actual encoder? I wouldn't count on it anytime soon.

Re: The AV2 Video Standard Has Released (Final v1.0 Specification)

#47

AV1 is being actively claim-charted by a lot of companies right now, and lawsuits are almost certainly coming. The same process is already starting for AV2, but most players are waiting for the AV1 cases to mature first. People keep calling the AV-family codecs “royalty free,” but in practice they increasingly look like a legal and financial gamble.

People have been saying this for decades now.

I've never understood why some people seem to cheer this on like a corporation owning some maths was their local sports team.

For a while I assumed some people had put in a lot of effort on H.264 encoders and so the digital sharecroppers were angry and jealous that someone might be advocating for messy freedom.

But some people seem to just enjoy the thought of corporations putting a tax on video distribution.

Luckily those greedy corporations have repeatedly shot themselves on the foot and so their influence is waning.

Re: The AV2 Video Standard Has Released (Final v1.0 Specification)

#48

AV1 is being actively claim-charted by a lot of companies right now, and lawsuits are almost certainly coming. The same process is already starting for AV2, but most players are waiting for the AV1 cases to mature first. People keep calling the AV-family codecs “royalty free,” but in practice they increasingly look like a legal and financial gamble.

How long has it been since AV1 was released? About eight years, and there's still no credible patent holder. The vultures are always circling around compression standards. You shouldn't take that too seriously. Even if a lawsuit is filed, there's a legal defence fund to protect against baseless claims.

Re: The AV2 Video Standard Has Released (Final v1.0 Specification)

#49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Based on AV1's trajectory, hardware encode isn't necessary (though it is nice). The current encoder is a reference encoder. Now that the spec is finalized, expect significant speed improvements from production encoders (realtime likely won't happen until we get it in hardware though)

Hardware encode is required if you want things like video calls, camera recording and such to use it. It isn’t required for content distribution platforms which aren’t realtime and the cost of encode is easily made up by hundreds of thousands of streams.

One of the interesting usage of AV1 was specifically for low bitrate calls, and software encoding was perfectly fine, even on mobile.

With low enough resolution, framerate and bitrate, you can get a quality stream without significant encoding artifacts compared to any other codec. It is in production right now and has been for a while.

The tradeoff CPU / bandwidth is quite advantageous in situations like this. And no, AV1 HW encoders cannot usually be used, they are not designed for a tight bitrate control or realtime communications like software encoding is usually.

Re: The AV2 Video Standard Has Released (Final v1.0 Specification)

#50

I’m curious how much AV2 will actually help older hardware in practice. I’m on a 2019 Intel MacBook Pro: 2.6 GHz 6-core i7, 64 GB RAM. The machine is still more than powerful enough for normal desktop work and software dev, but YouTube in Chrome has become borderline unusable for me. My internet is fine, Safari plays the same videos smoothly, and YouTube “Stats for nerds” shows plenty of buffer but the decoding makes…

I gave up using Chrome a decade ago. It’s a power sucking pig. Safari has its own issues, but at least it’s usable. When I need something that isn’t Safari, I use Firefox.
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