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AV1 video codec gains broader hardware support

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171–180 of 210 posts

Re: AV1 video codec gains broader hardware support

#171

I love AV1 for compressing my movies to 720p. I also convert any audio to Opus. I get to archive a ton of content on peanuts. The videos look great on my PC monitor or my phone and they come in at around 452MB (1hr 24m video). Here's my script if you're interested in trying it out on your content. param ( [Parameter(Mandatory=$true)] [string]$sourceDir, [string]$destDir = $sourceDir ) $ffmpegPath = 'C:\Users\sergi\Do…

wait, you convert to 720p and want to play that using a shield pro type of device. This might be ok in your current setup, but as soon as you upgrade the panel to 1080p or 2160p, you would want the source to be in at the same resolution, or better.

Re: AV1 video codec gains broader hardware support

#172
post #103

Microsoft Edge does support AV1, but weirdly only through a Microsoft Store extension [1], even though Chrome has support built-in. This actually really sucks because in practice hardly any normal consumers would bother to install a strangely named extension, and so web developers have to assume it's largely unsupported in Edge. Safari ties support to a hardware decoder, which I suppose is understandable to avoid acc…

> Safari ties support to a hardware decoder, which I suppose is understandable to avoid accidental battery drain from using a software codec I still have a pretty deep dislike for Google for turning on AV1 for everyone in Chromium. It’s the ultimate “fuck you, I care more about my bottom line than your user experience”. Edit: and clown HN rears its head again. I guess cutting users their battery life to a third is wo…

>Edit: and clown HN rears its head again. I guess cutting users their battery life to a third is worth it as long as Google saves a little bandwidth?

Why do you think so much in browsing has been offloaded to users via JS?

Re: AV1 video codec gains broader hardware support

#173
post #167
post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Safari ties support to a hardware decoder, which I suppose is understandable to avoid accidental battery drain from using a software codec I still have a pretty deep dislike for Google for turning on AV1 for everyone in Chromium. It’s the ultimate “fuck you, I care more about my bottom line than your user experience”. Edit: and clown HN rears its head again. I guess cutting users their battery life to a third is wo…

Stop using Google software and services if they annoy you so much. Vote with your browsing habits.

Ah yes, let me switch to the YouTube competitor that every channel is multi-loading their content to.

Re: AV1 video codec gains broader hardware support

#174
post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's important context! Adoption of HEVC was so slow that I honestly thought it was released around the same time as AV1.

It wasn't really all that slow in general, just slow on dedicated streaming hardware. Basically, it was the push to 4K (and especially HDR) that caused HEVC to roll-out. In 2016 4K Blu-rays started coming out and they were all HEVC 10-bit encoded. It took a couple more years before dedicated streaming devices and lower-end smart TVs bothered to start including HEVC support as standard because at first 4K content was…

I didn't know about Blu-Ray being relatively prompt. But I still think HEVC adoption was slow in broadcast TV, which I would have thought was a shoo-in market.

Re: AV1 video codec gains broader hardware support

#175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yet no information on what the licensing issue is... This is ridiculous.

Patent trolls probably.

I don't accept the vague claim of "patent trolls" as enough for Microsoft to bar support of AV1 in Edge.

This is extra bad when you consider what Microsoft does to pressure people into using Edge, despite Edge itself being literally Chromium with features disabled.

Re: AV1 video codec gains broader hardware support

#176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is a pure marketing slide. The M3 variants floorplans don't look anything like that, as can be seen on other pictures of the dies. That being said, it's pretty common to have dedicated silicon for video codecs. It normally takes the form of a little DSP with custom instructions to accelerate operations specific to the codec.

> The M3 variants floorplans don't look anything like that Maybe I'm misunderstanding what you're saying, but the slide is of an A17, not an M3 chip.

Oh, fair enough, got my wires crossed from the M3 announcement.

The A17 floorplan looks nothing like that either.

https://twitter.com/highyieldYT/status/1711453511848706228

Re: AV1 video codec gains broader hardware support

#177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is a pure marketing slide. The M3 variants floorplans don't look anything like that, as can be seen on other pictures of the dies. That being said, it's pretty common to have dedicated silicon for video codecs. It normally takes the form of a little DSP with custom instructions to accelerate operations specific to the codec.

Yes exactly. But are you going to have a different DSP for each codec ? Doubtful.

I've seen it. Sometimes because the DSP is hyperspecialized for a particular codec. Sometimes just because the SoC vendor bought the hard codecs from different sub vendors.

Re: AV1 video codec gains broader hardware support

#178
post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Doesn't the Media Capabilities API [1] provide a way to determine if a codec is "power efficient" (presumably meaning hardware supported)? So then you can switch to another codec if AV1 isn't hardware-supported. [1] https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/Media_Capab...

That might be, but on (most?) Chromium browsers you have to install h264ify to force-disable AV1/VP9 on devices that have no AV1 hardware decode. What is even more annoying is that you can only do a full disable. You can’t disable AC1/VP9 video decode but leave image decode intact.

Thanks for shouting out h264ify. I run older hardware and have been (mostly passively / randomly) trying to figure out how to use less resources.

A lot of older hardware isn’t _too much slower_ than today’s with the exception of these codecs wasting system resources.

Re: AV1 video codec gains broader hardware support

#179
post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In context of format war, winning means that they earn patent fee from every device. I don't think it's Apple's intension, but possibly Qualcomm's.

Qualcomm isn't even a part of the HEVC alliance patent pool, so that theory doesn't hold. Indeed, the fact that Qualcomm is currently building AV1 support into their next chip (purportedly) puts them at risk of being sued because while AV1 is open, we all know how patents work and there are almost certainly actionable overlaps with the pool. Apple ships probably more devices than anyone, and given that the patent poo…

Qualcomm may gave up? https://www.iam-media.com/article/qualcomm-ends-participatio...

Re: AV1 video codec gains broader hardware support

#180

How much silicon does it take to add an AV1 decoder to a chip? The areas Apple highlighted in their A17 release looked pretty substantial, but I wasnt sure if it was to scale. https://b3148424.smushcdn.com/3148424/wp-content/uploads/202...

It's important to understand that Av1 hardware designs have only recently become available.

In practice a combined Av1/H264/etc. decoder core is most likely. A lot of logic would be shared.

https://www.allegrodvt.com/products/al-d310-decoder-ip/

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