av1

Posted on by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 1 Comment on Broadcom BCM7218X STB SoC Comes with AV1 Hardware Decoding, WiFi 6

Broadcom BCM7218X STB SoC Comes with AV1 Hardware Decoding, WiFi 6

Broadcom-BCM7218X STB SoC AV1 Codec

CNX Software first covered AV1 open-source, royalty-free video codec aiming to compete against H.265 and succeed VP9 in 2016. I also tried the reference implementation and both encoding and decoding were really slow at that time and an AMD FX8350 powered computer would only achieve 0.36 fps encoding on a 352 x 288 video, while decoding was much faster at over 1,000 fps. This was really early work, and the final AV1 specifications were only released in March 2018, before companies like YouTube and Netflix started to publish AV1 video samples, and now I’ve noticed the former is sometimes streaming videos using AV1 codec on desktop computers and laptops. This still relies on software decoding, and most Arm platforms and entry-level level Intel computer may not be able to handle AV1 decoding, so hardware decoding will eventually be required, especially on battery-operated devices since it will consume much less power. […]

Posted on by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 1 Comment on Dav1d Open Source AV1 Decoder Aims to be Fast and Lightweight

Dav1d Open Source AV1 Decoder Aims to be Fast and Lightweight

Dav1d AV1 Decoder

Lots of efforts are being put into AV1 open source, royalty-free video codec with the AV1 specification published in March, and companies like YouTube and Netflix having recently uploaded AV1 video samples for testing and evaluation. We also reported FFmpeg 4.0 was released with AV1 supporting using libaom reference decoder. However, the library is not really optimized for code size and speed, but instead just to demonstrate AV1 decoding and encoding. So VideoLAN, VLC and FFmpeg communities have been working on another decoder called Dav1d – which stands for “Dav1d is an AV1 Decoder” – that aims to be lightweight, cross-platform, fast and open source. Some of the technical details about dAV1d include: written in C99 without VLAs (Variable Length Arrays) ASM in NASM/GAS syntax (no intrinsics), Meson/ninja buildsystem, Works on x86, x64, ARMv7, ARMv8 architectures for now Runs on Windows, Linux, macOS, Android, iOS operating systems Licensed under BSD […]

Posted on by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 1 Comment on AV1 Video Samples Now Available on YouTube & Netflix

AV1 Video Samples Now Available on YouTube & Netflix

Youtube AV1 Video

We first covered AV1 royalty-free, open source video codec in 2016, which with backing from companies like Google, Amazon, Intel, Microsoft, and many others with the aim to compete with H.265, and lower the cost of delivering video both thanks to a better compression ratio, and the lack of royalties. Since then progress has been made, with AV1 specifications released last March, and now both YouTube and Netflix are offering some beta AV1 video samples for testing. If you want to play some videos in AV1 format in YouTube as I did in the screenshot above, you’d need to install a very recent (beta) version of Chrome or Firefox, follow the other instructions as explained in YouTube’s AV1 beta playlist: Support for AV1 in MP4 within Media Source is available in Chrome 70, and Firefox 63 builds newer than September 13 with the media.av1.enabled pref set. Using a supported browser […]

Posted on by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 5 Comments on FFmpeg 4.0 Released with Initial AV1 Support, aptX, etc..

FFmpeg 4.0 Released with Initial AV1 Support, aptX, etc..

Whenever you are playing videos on a machine running Linux, Android or Windows, chances the software is at least partially using code from FFmpeg, a free software project that produces libraries and programs for handling multimedia data. The developers just outed a new major release FFmpeg 4.0 “Wu” which adds new filters, more hardware features, drops Windows XP and ffserver, implements initial AV1 codec support, aptX, TiVo ty+, and more. FFmpeg 4.0 includes the following libraries version:

and some of the main changes include: Bitstream filters for editing metadata in H.264, HEVC and MPEG-2 streams Experimental MagicYUV encoder TiVo ty/ty+ demuxer Intel QSV-accelerated MJPEG encoding & overlay filter native aptX and aptX HD encoder and decoder NVIDIA NVDEC-accelerated H.264, HEVC, MJPEG, MPEG-1/2/4, VC1, VP8/9 hwaccel decoding mcompan & acontrast audio filters OpenCL overlay filter video mix filter video normalize filter audio lv2 wrapper filter VAAPI MJPEG and VP8 decoding […]

Posted on by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 10 Comments on AOMedia AV1 Video Codec Specifications Released

AOMedia AV1 Video Codec Specifications Released

AOMedia’s AV1 video codec is an open source, royalty-free video codec aiming to surpass H.265 capabilities, and considering the savings to be made, as no royalties need to be paid, and potentially lower bandwidth requirements, many companies are on board including Google, Arm, Facebook,. Amazon, Apple, Intel, Cisco, and many others. Back in February we got an AV1 progress update at FOSDEM 2018, and the speaker explained there was still a few items to work out to finalize the specifications. This is now complete, as AOMedia (The Alliance for Open Media) has just released the (draft) specifications. Beside the Bitstream specification, the AV1 release includes: Unoptimized, experimental software decoder and encoder to create and consume the bitstream Reference streams for product validation Binding specifications to allow content creation and streaming tools for user-generated and commercial video AV1 has already been shown to outperform both H.265 and VP9 in tests using […]

Posted on by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 11 Comments on AV1 Open Source Video Codec Update at FOSDEM 2018 (Video)

AV1 Open Source Video Codec Update at FOSDEM 2018 (Video)

We first covered the Alliance for Open Media’s AV1 video codec in summer 2016, as an open source, royalty-free video codec aiming to replace VP9, and compete or even surpass H.265 capabilities. At the time, everything was pretty new, and when I tried the open source implementation encoding was really slow. Since then, AV1 has gained momentum with for example Apple, Facebook, and IBM recently joining AOMedia, and Mozilla adding HTML5 AV1 video support to Firefox Nightly builds at the end of last year. I was able to play a 720p video @ 800 Kbps almost smoothly in my computer based on AMD FX8350 processor. Many companies want AV1 to succeed since they may not be willing to pay MPEG LA license fee for H.265 and future MPEG codecs (e.g. H.266), and there indeed seems to be issues with the currently MPEG licensing business model. However, AV1 is not quite […]

Posted on by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 6 Comments on Mozilla Adds HTML5 AV1 Video Support to Firefox 59 Nightly Builds

Mozilla Adds HTML5 AV1 Video Support to Firefox 59 Nightly Builds

Last year, we wrote about AV1 royalty-free open source video codec managed by the Alliance for Open Media (AOMedia), a non-profit organization with members such as Amazon, Cisco, Google, Intel, Microsoft, Mozilla, and other companies. Eventually AV1 should be 25 to 35% more efficiency than H.265 or VP9, but encoding will be slower, and at the time, my AMD FX8350 based computer could encode CIF (352×288) video  at less than 0.5 fps, and I had to use command line tools to encode and decode/playback the videos. But thing are progressing nicely, and it’s now possible to stream AV1 video with HTML5 / in Firefox 59.0 (nightly) using Bitmovin Player. If you are using Ubuntu, you can also install Firefox nightly as follow:

Start it and visit the demo page to stream an AV1 MPEG-DASH/HLS stream in your web browser. It works from 360p @ 200 Kbps up to 720p […]

Posted on by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 21 Comments on AOMedia AV1 is a Royalty-free, Open Source Video Codec Aiming to Replace VP9 and Compete with H.265

AOMedia AV1 is a Royalty-free, Open Source Video Codec Aiming to Replace VP9 and Compete with H.265

The Alliance for Open Media, or AOMedia, is a new non-profit organization founded in 2015 by Amazon, Cisco, Google, Intel Corporation, Microsoft, Mozilla, and Netflix, and more recently joined by AMD, ARM, and NVIDIA, whose first project is to develop AV1 royalty-free and open video codec and format to provide an alternative to H.265 / HEVC, and a successor to VP9. The project is a team effort combining teams working on Daala, Thor, and VP10 video codecs, and while AFAIK, AV1 specifications have not been released yet (target: Q1 2017), the organization has already released an early implementation of AV1 video decoder and encoder under the combination of an BSD-2 clause license and the Alliance for Open Media Patent License 1.0 , which can be found on googlesource.com. So I’ve had a quick my myself following the instructions, by first downloading one uncompressed YUV4MPEG sample:

and the source code:

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