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AV2 video codec delivers 30% lower bitrate than AV1, final spec due in late 2025

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Re: AV2 video codec delivers 30% lower bitrate than AV1, final spec due in late 2025

#81

Post by muststopmyths »

nickthegreek wrote: post #76
alberth wrote: post #50

Will 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…

for the super affluent, https://www.kaleidescape.com/compare/

Fascinating.

Pricing, if I am reading the site correctly: $7k-ish for a server (+$ for local disks, one assumes), $2-5k per client. So you download the movie locally to your server and play it on clients scattered throughout your mansion/property.

Not out of the world for people who drop 10s of thousands on home theater.

I wonder if that's what the Elysium types use in their NZ bunkers.

No true self-respecting, self-described techie (Scotsman) would use it instead of building their own of course.

Re: AV2 video codec delivers 30% lower bitrate than AV1, final spec due in late 2025

#82

Post by bee_rider »

whycome wrote: post #64
jonplackett wrote: post #2

It’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?

Soon we will just have local AI processors which will just make stuff up between scenes but adhere to a “close enough” guideline where all narratively critical elements are maintained but other things (eg landscapes or trees) will be generated locally. Movies will practically be long cutscenes with photorealistic graphics.

At that point we aren’t even all watching the same movies. Which could be interesting. But very different—I mean, even stuff like talking with your friends about a movie you saw will change drastically. Maybe a service could be centered around sharing your movie prompts so have a shared movie experience to talk to your friends about.

Re: AV2 video codec delivers 30% lower bitrate than AV1, final spec due in late 2025

#83

Post by mdasen »

RamRodification wrote: post #52
alberth wrote: post #50

Will 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.

I'm not surprised they don't offer an even higher tier. When you're pricing things, you often need to use proxies - like 1080p and 4K. It'd be hard to offer 3 pricing tiers: 1080p, 4K, 4K but actually good 4K that we don't compress to hell. That third tier makes it seem like you're being a bit fraudulent with the second tier. You're essentially admitting that you've created a fake-4K tier to take people's money without delivering them the product they think they're buying. At some point, a class-action lawsuit would use that as a sort of admission that you knew you weren't giving customers what they were paying for and that it was being done intentionally, both of which matter a lot.

Right now, Netflix can say stuff like "we think the 4K video we're serving is just as good." If they offer a real-4K tier, it's hard to make that argument.

Re: AV2 video codec delivers 30% lower bitrate than AV1, final spec due in late 2025

#84

Post by cogman10 »

amiga386 wrote: post #80
cogman10 wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You especially notice the compression on gradients and in dark movie scenes. That's not a correctly calibrated TV. The contrast is tuned WAY up. People do that to see what's going on in the dark, but you aren't meant to really be able to see those colors. That's why it's a big dark blob. It's supposed to be barely visible on a well calibrated display. A lot of video codecs will erase details in dark scenes because…

> but you aren't meant to really be able to see those colors Someone needs to tell filmmakers. They shoot dark scenes because they can - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qehsk_-Bjq4 - and it ends up looking like shit after compression that assumes normal lighting levels.

As I said, I think the streamer services have too aggressive settings there. But that doesn't change the fact that the a lot of people have their contrast settings over tuned.

It should be noted, as well, that this generally isn't a "not enough bits" problem. There are literally codec settings to tune which decide when to start smearing the darkness. On a few codecs (such as VP1) those values are pretty badly set by default. I suspect streaming services aren't far off from those defaults. The codec settings are instead prioritizing putting bits into the lit parts of a scene rather than sparing a few for the darkness like you might like.

Re: AV2 video codec delivers 30% lower bitrate than AV1, final spec due in late 2025

#85

Post by Neywiny »

IshKebab wrote: post #74
RicoElectrico wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe not only reference software, but also reference RTL should be provided? Yes, this is more work, but should speed up adoption immensely.

There's no point having reference RTL. The point of reference software is to demonstrate the correct behaviour for people implementing production grade libraries and RTL. Having an RTL version of that wouldn't add anything - it should have identical behaviour. Providing a production grade verified RTL implementation would obviously be useful but also entire companies exist to do that and they charge a lot of money fo…

Could help people on the hobby or lower budget FPGA side. H.264/5/etc never really made it

Re: AV2 video codec delivers 30% lower bitrate than AV1, final spec due in late 2025

#86

Post by rokweom »

nani8ot wrote: post #70
Boss0565 wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seems like piracy is the way for you

Sadly many shows aren't released on BluRay anymore, so even piracy won't deliver better quality.

Piracy enables you to do things like debanding on playback, or more advanced video filtering to remove other compression issues.

Re: AV2 video codec delivers 30% lower bitrate than AV1, final spec due in late 2025

#87

Post by redox99 »

mdasen wrote: post #83
RamRodification wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I'm not surprised they don't offer an even higher tier. When you're pricing things, you often need to use proxies - like 1080p and 4K. It'd be hard to offer 3 pricing tiers: 1080p, 4K, 4K but actually good 4K that we don't compress to hell. That third tier makes it seem like you're being a bit fraudulent with the second tier. You're essentially admitting that you've created a fake-4K tier to take people's money witho…

YouTube does 1080p premium without much problem.

Re: AV2 video codec delivers 30% lower bitrate than AV1, final spec due in late 2025

#88

Post by bee_rider »

badpun wrote: post #55
calcifer wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Of course, we’re living in the future where Moore’s law has seriously slowed down. But, as a product of the 90’s this is a kind wild thing to see. I can’t imagine in the year 2000 being disappointed content wouldn’t play on a 386 or something.

But, I mean, your expectation is not that unreasonable, computers were quite good by 2013. It is just an eye-opening framing.

Re: AV2 video codec delivers 30% lower bitrate than AV1, final spec due in late 2025

#89

Post by Neywiny »

Avamander wrote: post #72
RamRodification wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

You can already pay for 4K or "enhanced bitrate" but it's still relatively low bitrate and what's worse, this service quality is not guaranteed. I've had Apple TV+ downgrade to 1080p and lower on a wired gigabit connection so many times.

And on top of that a lot of streaming services don't go above 1080p on desktop, and even getting them to that point is a mess of DRM. I sometimes wonder if this is the YouTube powerhouse casting a bad shadow. As LTT says, don't try to compete with YouTube. They serve so much video bandwidth it's impossible to attempt. So all these kinda startup streaming services can't do 4k. Too much bandwidth.

Re: AV2 video codec delivers 30% lower bitrate than AV1, final spec due in late 2025

#90

Post by rokweom »

nickthegreek wrote: post #76
alberth wrote: post #50

Will 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…

for the super affluent, https://www.kaleidescape.com/compare/

Funny that they're marketing the supposed advantages of higher bitrates using pictures with altered contrast and saturation lol. I would expect the target audience to be somewhat affluent in the actual benefits? Then again, I wouldn't expect somebody like Scorsese to be a video compression nerd.

Also the whole "you can hear more with lossless audio" is just straight up a lie.

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