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First release of dav1d, the AV1 decoder

jbkempf.com

21–28 of 28 posts

Re: First release of dav1d, the AV1 decoder

#21
post #2

When is this coming to Firefox?

I tried it out in Firefox 65 beta. You can enable dav1d via about:config by setting "media.av1.use-dav1d" to true. dav1d seems to perform worse than libaom for me on some videos I tried. I have a 2014 MacBook Pro with a 2.2ghz Haswell i7 (i.e. with AVX2). Firefox using libaom struggles to play YouTube AV1 video at 1080p60 on my system. It gets to a point where it drops too many frames and the video becomes unwatchabl…

> dav1d seems to perform worse than libaom for me on some videos I tried.

As far as I know, the Firefox buildsystem does not compile dav1d with asm yet. So, that is expected, for now.

Re: First release of dav1d, the AV1 decoder

#22
post #8

I am thinking if H.264 AVC will be like Jpeg, where the worse is actually better. They are ubiquitous, and hardware decode in visually all Smartphone, and seems to be good enough for a lot of cases (non-4K usage). But it is still nice to see AV1 coming along, especially coming from VLC (dav1d) and Xiph ( rav1e ) .

Agreed, but I'm very curious which codec (h265 or av1) will eventually "win" in the 4K+ and HDR space.

I still consume nearly all of my content in 720p. The bandwidth requirements usually outstrip my need for fidelity. This is especially true when traveling when I don’t have access to my own broadband. It’s easy to get stuck in a place with slow internet services.

Re: First release of dav1d, the AV1 decoder

#23
post #19
post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Perhaps AV1 will in the loooong term, but as of today h265 is what every 4K Blu-Ray uses and just about every modern device has a hardware decoder. So that’s gotta count for something.

H.265 is a much worse patent minefield than h.264 ever was: the h.265 patents are owned by different patent pools with different licensing terms, some of which even without revenue cap. The only way to relatively safely produce h.265 content is to be one of these companies in one of the patent pools. AV1 in contrast is supposed to be free of patents and open for everybody to use. Of course there could still be some p…

>AV1 in contrast is supposed to be free of patents

It is not, it never was, and never will be. It is only Royalty Free.

Re: First release of dav1d, the AV1 decoder

#24
post #8

I am thinking if H.264 AVC will be like Jpeg, where the worse is actually better. They are ubiquitous, and hardware decode in visually all Smartphone, and seems to be good enough for a lot of cases (non-4K usage). But it is still nice to see AV1 coming along, especially coming from VLC (dav1d) and Xiph ( rav1e ) .

But 4K is kinda ready. Majority of YouTubers switched to it already, some years ago. Personally I find 1080p not enough nowadays.

The problem is 4K are streamed in much higher bitrate, making the video looks better. But in reality, if 1080P had the same bitrate you might not be able to tell the difference. Standard Youtube using VP9 stream 4K at nearly 20Mbps. Most of the best encoded BluRay torrent aren't even using this bitrate, and they are still using x264.

Re: First release of dav1d, the AV1 decoder

#25
post #8

I am thinking if H.264 AVC will be like Jpeg, where the worse is actually better. They are ubiquitous, and hardware decode in visually all Smartphone, and seems to be good enough for a lot of cases (non-4K usage). But it is still nice to see AV1 coming along, especially coming from VLC (dav1d) and Xiph ( rav1e ) .

Agreed, but I'm very curious which codec (h265 or av1) will eventually "win" in the 4K+ and HDR space.

I don't think h265 will ever be widespread as h264. I am counting on H266, which has an industry formed alliance MC-IF for patents and they include All most of the original H.263, H.264, H.265 members. ( Missing Qualcomm )

Hopefully they will work out a deal and move things forward.

Re: First release of dav1d, the AV1 decoder

#26
post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I tried it out in Firefox 65 beta. You can enable dav1d via about:config by setting "media.av1.use-dav1d" to true. dav1d seems to perform worse than libaom for me on some videos I tried. I have a 2014 MacBook Pro with a 2.2ghz Haswell i7 (i.e. with AVX2). Firefox using libaom struggles to play YouTube AV1 video at 1080p60 on my system. It gets to a point where it drops too many frames and the video becomes unwatchabl…

> dav1d seems to perform worse than libaom for me on some videos I tried. As far as I know, the Firefox buildsystem does not compile dav1d with asm yet. So, that is expected, for now.

Ah, that explains it then. Thanks.

Hopefully they'll enable the asm code during Firefox 65 beta.

Re: First release of dav1d, the AV1 decoder

#27
post #23
post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

H.265 is a much worse patent minefield than h.264 ever was: the h.265 patents are owned by different patent pools with different licensing terms, some of which even without revenue cap. The only way to relatively safely produce h.265 content is to be one of these companies in one of the patent pools. AV1 in contrast is supposed to be free of patents and open for everybody to use. Of course there could still be some p…

>AV1 in contrast is supposed to be free of patents It is not, it never was, and never will be. It is only Royalty Free.

"free of patents" is like atomic hydrogen; a very short lived state in practice.

Re: First release of dav1d, the AV1 decoder

#28
post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>AV1 in contrast is supposed to be free of patents It is not, it never was, and never will be. It is only Royalty Free.

"free of patents" is like atomic hydrogen; a very short lived state in practice.

Ummm...kinda the opposite? The terminal value is always "patent free" :-)
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