[Tech] The New AV1 Codec

FurCast

We’re excited about the new open source AV1 video & image codec. Nearly every major tech company seems to be behind it, so what’s the motivation? Our sysadmin doggo Riley and software developer wolf s0ph0s join to go on a deep dive on the history of AV1, what features it will bring, when it will start to appear, and how it even works.

FurCast is sponsored by Twin Tail Creations. Use coupon codes REDWOLF or BLUEFOX to save 15% on silicone products during checkout. Free FurCast Themed Colorations are also available which can be applied as a color choice to your toy purchase.

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Discussed:

• AV1 is a free video codec with more intelligent image compression that takes advantage of how good computing power is getting, while being 50%+ more efficient in bandwidth than most existing solutions
  • Developed by Alliance for Open Media
  • Backed by: Amazon, Apple, ARM, Cisco, Facebook, Google, IBM, Intel, Microsoft, Mozilla, Netflix, NVIDIA, Samsung, Tencent
    • More support from: BBC, AMD, Adobe, Hulu, CableLabs, Polycom, VideoLAN, Vimeo, Twitch, AND MORE….
  • Built off a foundation of Google’s already deployed VP9, Google’s planned VP10, Cisco’s Thor, and Xiph’s Daala
• Existing codecs:
  • Today’s older H.264 is a licensing nightmare, the successor H.265 is even worse
  • Apple didn’t like VP9’s licensing or battery consumption
  • DVD uses H.262 (MPEG-2), Blu-ray uses H.264, and UHD Blu-ray uses H.265
  • Cisco’s OpenH264 decoder announced in 2013 saved Mozilla $9.75 million a year
  • H.265 carries 23 patents
  • NVIDIA’s matrix of codec support for encoding & decoding on various GPU models
• AV1 is already here!
  • YouTube has a beta setting you can enable, plus a playlist of videos known to support AV1
  • Netflix has started deploying AV1
  • LG’s latest gen SmartTV models have native AV1 decoding
  • AOM’s timeline has hit phase 4.
  • It is rumored Apple will announce AV1 support at the next WWDC or hardware release
  • Chrome and Firefox are getting AVIF support
  • AV1 bit-stream frozen in December 2018
  • AV1 encoding with SVT-AV1 is now faster than H.265
• AV1 uses Opus for audio by default, which sounds good compared to other codecs
• Netflix wrote a tech blog on using AV1 for images, aka AVIF format
  • Farm photo example
  • Barn door photo example
• AV1 is very smart
  • Perceptual Vector Quantization
  • Variably Sized Blocks
  • Lapped Transforms
  • Chroma from Luma Prediction
  • Support for new motion types such as warped motion
  • Film grain synthesis
  • and much much more
  • JPEG in comparison primarily uses Discreet Cosine Transform
  • Do I look like I know what a JPEG is?
• Three encoders:
  • Reference encoder (proves every concept but very slow)
  • rav1e backed by Xiph Mozilla and Vimeo
  • SVT-AV1 backed by Netflix and Intel