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but is there any reason this is a big deal ?

Yes, AV1 is a royalty-free, efficient video codec that has good industry support. Anyone can implement AV1 without having to pay patent licensing fees, as opposed to H.264 and most especially as opposed to HEVC (aka H.265).

AV1 outperforms VP9 and as time goes on AV1 will become the dominant video codec on the web.

If MPEGLA pull their heads out of their arses and makes the codec as cheap to use as MPEG2

The problem is that it's not just the MPEG LA. It's HEVC Advance, it's Velos Media, and it's individual companies that aren't in any patent pool. There's a reason why Leonardo Chiariglione calls HEVC an unusable modern standard.

AV1 will almost certainly be as dead in the water as Theora was

Theora never had the backing AV1 has. Theora wasn't on the roadmap for YouTube and Netflix.

Trolls are always a problem for anything you do, but at least here's a long list of companies that are providing royalty-free licensing of their video patents for AV1. It's no guarantee, but it sure beats any other free video codec effort.

You assume Apple and Google will allow software decoding of AV1, which is extremely bad for battery life.

Apple : No, they wont. They have high stake in H265 patents. (I am actually surprised that there are part of the alliance)

Apple don't seem to be a member, see the list of alliance members
(scroll to "ALLIANCE MEMBERS", there's no anchor to link to...)

The problem is that only high-end devices are just getting H.265 support

(which is also due to the patent mess and thus nobody being in a hurry to jump into the bandwagon)

If the industry keeps coming out with new codecs at this rate,

If you look, "the industry" is more or less grouping around two entities :
- the MPEG which still tend to design codecs the old way (file patents and monetize through licensing)
- and the Alliance for Open Media, where basically any industry member that has anything to do with video in their business is represented (the whole chain from the camera to the mobile device receiving the stream seem to be represented) with a completely different approach to financing it (these are video companies. they earn money from video any way : be it selling hardware, services, etc. they don't need to sell AV1, they only need to get rid of the licensing madness of h265. Making an open/free codec makes entirely sense for them)

So we're not bound to see dozens of new codecs, we're basically only expecting 2 :
- whatever MPEG comes up with after H265
- AV1
given the list of members behind AV1, it's bound to be supported by most software and hardware pretty fast.

we are going to have to adapt our chips to be more flexible, perhaps even programmable in the hardware decoder area

Congratulation, you've successfully described a compute shader.
More seriously : GPU have flexible blocks - the compute shaders available to Vulkan and OpenCL. They might not be as efficient as a dedicated core, but they are deffinitely better than a naked CPU core. AV1 is on purpose designed in a way to be easily implemented on a GPU, and decision are taken in this favor.

H.264 and VP8 is easy to find these days,

Yes.

VP9 and H265 is slowly but surely coming,

h265 is *very slow* at coming, mostly due to the patent minefield making manufacturer less in a hurry to support it.

releasing a brand new codec today will take 5 years to get it in the majority of high-end chip fabs and another 5-or-so years to go mainstream with at least 15-20y more years of having to have both available.

Unless the chip manufacturer are part of the process. Which is the case (ARM, AMD, Nvidia, Broadcom, etc.)
They are considering hardware implementation while the AV1 is being designed and contributing appropriate feed-back.
- compute shader code will be available at codec release time (you'll be able to have decent performance on smartphone on day 1).
- the manufacturer plan to have chips ready within one year.
- means by 3 year (counting the current 2 year churn) there will be a lot of smartphone native-capable on the market.

The problem is that only high-end devices are just getting H.265 support

H.265 support is irrelevant at this point. Twice as many devices can decode VP9 than can decode H.265 and AV1 outperforms H.265. So the straightforward encoding approach is to use H.264 and VP9 now and look to AV1 in future.

we are going to have to adapt our chips to be more flexible

Maybe. Or maybe there's a good opportunity for special purpose USB or Thunderbolt devices that offer accelerated video encoding and decoding. I'd quite like a small, cheap device that could give me accelerated AV1 encoding.

releasing a brand new codec today will take 5 years to get it in the majority of high-end chip fabs

Not so for AV1. Hardware manufacturers have been involved in AV1 development from the start. They'll have hardware prototypes ready when the AV1 bitstream is frozen. The time to market will be shorter because of it, even more so because content distribution companies (like Netflix, Amazon, Hulu, and YouTube) have made clear their intention to adopt AV1.

the content producer needs to drive the adoption

So it's a good thing that content producers like Amazon, Hulu, and Netflix are members of AOMedia. Facebook in particular would benefit from an AV1 still image format.

We'll see wide spread use of 12bit HEVC

Not for web video. VP9, for example, has twice the installed base of HEVC. The royalty-free licensing of AV1 (and HEVC's patent licensing mess) will encourage quick adoption of AV1. The fact that AV1 also out-performs HEVC is a nice bonus.

HEVC has no future on the web. That future belongs to AV1, and it's not too far away. Netflix wants to start encoding to AV1 in the second quarter of this year.

owners of all the said patents agree for it to be so

They've already made that commitment by joining AOMedia. They've agreed to abide by AOMedia's patent license.

said patent holders you are basically living on borrowed time

There is no borrowed time. The whole point of the alliance is to build a royalty-free video codec. That's what it's aimed at and all the contributors to AV1 are aware of the issues. Do you have any evidence that AV1 won't be royalty-free or is this just more idle speculation?

Do we really need lossy compression for still images any longer?

Yes. Smaller images saves bandwidth for everyone. A company like 500px from the article wants the bandwidth savings. Netflix wants AV1 for video for the same reasons, which is why they and other content providers are members of AOMedia.

How can the parties participating in AOMedia be sure that no non-participating party holds essential patents that cover AV1?

How can any parties participating in any format development be sure that no non-participating party holds essential patents that cover their new format? It's a pointless argument.

AOMedia is going out of its way to avoid patent problems. That's the best anyone can ever do.

Do we really need another one?

Yes. AV1 outperforms JPEG and PNG. WebP (based on VP8) also outperforms JPEG and PNG. WebP never saw much adoption but AV1 (a descendant of VP8) has a better chance given all the organsiations supporting it.

Heic is an image container.

You're thinkig of HEIF. HEIC is the file extension convention Apple adopted to indicate a HEIF file which contains HEVC encoded images.

With backing from every major tech company but Apple

No. Apple has joined the Alliance for Open Media. So Apple is an AV1 backer as well.

why is Netflix not using VP9

Netflix is using V9 and will be using AV1.

The question you should be asking is why is Netflix a member of the Alliance for Open Media if HEVC is so great? Why would they need to be if there wasn't a problem?

I'm thinking

That's a start.

they've been conditioned that higher bitrates are better.

Touchy-feely nonsense. Where's your evidence?

Google and Netflix are both rich companies. They can buy more bandwidth.

They're investing in better codecs. They're not in the Alliance of Open Media for the fun of it.

I suspect Google will support h.265 in addition to their own codecs

No. They use VP9 on YouTube and have been for two years. They dropped support for 4K video in H.264 on YouTube a while back. YouTube will start encoding video with AV1 around six months after the bitstream is finalized.

H.265 is futureless for web video. Major streaming services are members of the Alliance for Open Media (Google, Netflix, Hulu, Amazon) because they want to use AV1 on their service. They recognize correctly that H.265's licensing mess makes it a poor option.

baked into all hardware

There's broad hardware support for VP9 as well. The major CPU and GPU manufacturers are all members of the Alliance for Open Media, so eventually they'll all have AV1 support when it's finished.

The licensing mess around H.265 makes it a non-starter. There are three separate patent pools you need to buy a license from (MPEG LA, HEVC Advance, and Velos Media).

No one can tell you what your final licensing cost will end up being. Velos Media hasn't even announced their licensing terms yet. Some companies, like Technicolor, are not in any patent pool so you need to negotiate a separate license will them.

The farcical licensing situation makes H.265 impractical. VP9 and AV1, in contrast, are both royalty-free for all use cases. There's no point wasting time with licensing uncertainty when you can just go ahead and use royalty-free codecs.

indications are Netflix is going with h.265.

No. Netflix is going with VP9 and in future will go with AV1. Netflix is a member of the Alliance for Open Media.

indications are Netflix is going with h.265.

No. Netflix is going with VP9 and in future will go with AV1. Netflix is a member of the Alliance for Open Media.

I wonder if GPUs can speed things up?

given that AMD, Nvidia, Intel, ARM, Broadcom are also on board (beside content providers like Netflix, Amazon, Hulu and Google)
you can bet that Yes, there are going to be GPU implementations.

(And if you've followed the posts of Xiph - you know that they take GPU into account from the beginning).

Also there are already currently cloud based solution that distribute the compression workload accross a cluster.
(Video is split into smaller segment, each segment is independently compressed by a separate job on the cluster, then the compressed streams are concatenated together).
And bitmovin is already providing alpha support for AV-1 as it is now (so they can already test their solution and so, in a few months, on the day when AV-1 hits version 1.00 they are already ready and their users have already tested pipelines).

Actually the only single major player that is missing here is Apple.
Probably because they are betting all their marbles on their own patended H265/MPEG4 HEVC.
They are among the patent owners of the patent - so using/licensing H265 comes much more cheaper for them.
Which was the main reason for everybody else to drop H265 and consider joining Aomedia for AV-1 (between the original patent-pool, the other competing pools that have formed with other sets of patents and patent troll waiting to sue to try to get their share, licensing H265 is a much more expensive adventure than licensing H264/MPEG4 AVC was- To the point that H265 licenses cost a significant part of the price of embed ARM SoC as those used by cheap phones, ruining their competitivity)

HEVC is out now

VP9 is out now and has broader use than HEVC.

as well as software players like Microsoft and Apple

Microsoft supports VP9 in Edge.

VP9 has virtually zero mindshare outside the Googleplex

Netflix uses VP9. Wikipedia uses VP9. And, of course, even though it's inside the Googleplex it's difficult to ignore that YouTube uses VP9. YouTube no longer offers 4K video to Safari by default due to Safari's lack of VP9 support.

set top boxes, etc. that support VP9

Roku has VP9 support, Chromecast Ultra has VP9 support, Android phones have VP9 support, etc, etc.

AV1, on the other hand, looks very compelling... it actually has broad industry support, from big players like Microsoft, Cisco, Netflix, Google, all the way down to silicon makers like Broadcom, Xilinx, RealTek, ARM, AMD, and NVIDIA.

Right. Just like VP9. When will Apple add VP9 support?

It's disingenuous to complain that Apple isn't going to include AV1 when it isn't - and won't be - ready before High Sierra.

Show me where I complained that AV1 won't be in High Sierra. Quote me. Maybe re-read what I wrote.

In the meantime, let's acknowledge that Apple hasn't joined the Alliance for Open Media. When will Apple join?

this isn't a problem

If it wasn't a problem then the Alliance for Open Media wouldn't exist and they wouldn't be developing AV1.

But it does. And they are.

this isn't a problem

If it wasn't a problem then the Alliance for Open Media wouldn't exist and they wouldn't be developing AV1.

But it does. And they are.

The main problem with HEVC is the patent licensing. In order to use HEVC you need to get 3 different patent licenses from 3 different patent pools (MPEG LA, HEVC Advance, and Velos Media).

There are some companies with HEVC patents, like Technicolor, which aren't in any patent pool so you also need to get a patent license from them. Technicolor says they have done this "to enable direct licensing" of their HEVC patents. Sounds convenient.

The patent licensing situation has reduced the x265 developers to begging the patent pools for better licensing terms. I recognise the x265 team is trying to make a buck but I think they'd be better off focusing on building an AV1 implementation than throwing their lot in with HEVC. HEVC's licensing is just not web friendly.

Luckily, the HEIF image format is content format agnostic (presentation and slides). In principle you could use HEIF with VP9 or with AV1. Apple may never support VP9 but I don't think they can avoid adding support for AV1 in future. AV1 will have too many advantages over HEVC (better performance, royalty-free licensing) to ignore.

Amazon sure is getting with the times. They joined the Alliance for Open Media. When's Apple joining?

Google subsidized it.

What's your argument? That Google made it royalty-free? Yeah? And? So? What?

Remember that Google acquired the VP8 codec by buying On2 Technologies for $124.6 million. Remember that Google funded the development of VP9.

Read the licenses. Read the licensing FAQ. VP9 is royalty-free for all use cases.

Like everything else until they get bored and move on to the next thing.

The next thing is AV1.

Before or after the patent lawsuits?

Where's the evidence to support your claim that there will be patent lawsuits? And if there will be, what's your evidence that all of these companies will lose them?

Apparently not that much of a mess.

Tell that to content encoders, distributors, and publishers. Demand for HEVC encoding has declined by 50%. Amazon, Bitmovin, and Netflix joined the Alliance for Open Media precisely because the licensing for HEVC is unusable and demand for HEVC encoding is falling. They joined because AV1 makes the most business sense.

Fixed that for you.

You didn't fix anything. You have only demonstrated your ignorance. Read the article. Look at the companies backing AV1. Learn from your mistakes.

1. VP8, VP9, and AV1 are royalty-free.

I'll relevant to me as an end user.

AV1 already outperforms HEVC in coding efficiency.

Statement not supported by facts.

Most of the major browser vendors are in the Alliance for Open Media which develops AV1.

I only use safari.

You have given me zero reasons to use your fly by night codec that nobody will ever use.

Netflix. Netflix is in the Alliance for Open Media. Netflix will be encoding their content in AV1.

Why? Give us one good reason why Apple should bother with any of these.

Three good reasons:

1. VP8, VP9, and AV1 are royalty-free. Anyone can use them to encode and decode for any purpose without paying licensing fees. HEVC, in contrast, requires you to buy separate three licenses from three separate patent pools (MPEG LA, HEVC Advance, and Velos Media). Additionally you must negotiate another license from Technicolor to use HEVC and licenses from any other company that isn't in one of the three patent pools.

2. AV1 already outperforms HEVC in coding efficiency. The goal is to be 30% better than HEVC by the time AV1 is released at the end of this year.

3. Most of the major browser vendors are in the Alliance for Open Media which develops AV1. Apple is the only one that isn't.

HEVC is a losing proposition. Apple's making a mistake here.

Ah good news, it would be no help as another technological footnote like Vorbis & Theora.

regarding Vorbis : back in the days it did see some success. By virtue of being BSD-like licensed (i.e.: a permissive license) it was used to compress audio in several game engines (e.g.: at ID starting from Quake3 and up). Also Spotify apparently used it on their app, at least for some time.

regarding Theora : Google used it on Youtube as a possible alternative, so still some use.

But yes, both pale in comparison with OPUS (the offspring of Xiph and Skype collaboration) which incredibly widespread (again permissive license AND best quality in A/B/X tests AND patent free), seems like any modern communication application uses it : it's used for WhatsApp, Skype (well obviously), etc. but also even in some un expected places (Digital Radio Mondial - the digital success of AM Radio, same relationship as DAB+ to FM Radio - supports OPUS. It's not in the official specs, but the major software suite all have ways to use it).

And again the number of AOMedia members is impressive, so it's clearly going to be a success.

The things which changed in the recent time :
- Patent real-word problems: Frauenhofer was some pain back in the MP3 era (hence some in the wild usage of Vorbis). During the MPEG4 AVC / H 264 era, a nice single central patent pool made the things not that much difficult. Theora was a nice concept or patent-free-ness, but in practice there wasn't much difficulties in obtaining the necessary license. Nowaday H265 / HEVC is pure madness. To the point that several hardware manufacturer have backpedalled and we currently see a *decrease* of device manufactured with H265 support enabled. There is definitely room for a patent-free / freely licensed codec.
- Quality : Vorbis was a provably better than MP3 back then (hence tiny better success in the wild). But Thoera was just a repurposed old codec from On2 (VP3) that just got opensourced, not much more arguments going for it.
Compare the situation nowadays with OPUS which completely blasts everything in ABX tests except for the ultra-low-bandwith ( 4 kbits) which are beyond its scope anyway.
Currently AV-1 is the offspring of the Daala efforts of Xiph (and there's some really interesting idea going in: perceptual vector quantization, chroma-from-luma, lapped transforms, rANS entropy coding, etc.), Google's VP10 (now we are several generations down) and Cisco's thor.
Even at the current state of development, it's already showing promises.

So yeah, big thing are in the making.

No, it's really not. All patents mean is you have to pay to use the technology.

No. You're confusing patents with the licensing. Many patented formats are licensed under royalty-free terms such as, for example, baseline JPEG. HEVC does not and will not make the business case that VP9 does and AV1 will.

Google/Youtube is sacrificing quality in using VP9.

No. There's little browser support for H.265. YouTube's getting better than H.264 quality using a codec with broad browser support (i.e. VP9).

I don't give a crap if the codec is open

It's irrelevant if you don't. The web video industry does.

it's often the first to market that wins.

But not this time.

The only thing it has going for it over HEVC is that it isn't patent-encumbered.

And given the ridiculous licensing situation for HEVC patents, that feature alone is enough to make VP9 the better option. But, in the end, HEVC versus VP9 doesn't matter because the future of web video is the AV1 codec. The companies involved in the Alliance for Open Media will standardize on AV1 as their preferred video encoding format.

I'd say it won't be long before they switch to H.265.

Netflix has done some H.265 streaming already but H.265 is a dead end as far as web video is concerned. The pathway forward is to use VP9 now and then switch to AV1 from the Alliance for Open Media when it's ready. Netflix is a member of the AOM.

H.265 would have easily dominated the market already

But it hasn't and it won't. H.265 has no future in web video. AV1 from the Alliance for Open Media is the future of web video. Netflix will use VP9 for now and transition to AV1 when it's ready.

Not worried. Patents expire.

In twenty years. It's a junk option. Always bet on royalty-free.

No one gives a fuck about WebM except FOSStards.

An incomplete list of those "FOSStards" includes:

Adobe, Amazon, AMD, ARM, Ateme, Cisco, Google, Intel, Ittiam, Microsoft, Mozilla, Netflix, NVIDIA, Vidyo, and the IETF.

http://aomedia.org/about-us/

Also supporting/enabling WebM are:

Broadcom, Marvell, Mediatek, MStar, Realtek, Rockchip, Qualcomm, Samsung, SigmaDesigns, STMicroelectronics, Hisilicon, Sony, LG, Roku, HiSense, Philips, Westinghouse, Allwinner, Texas Instruments, and many more.

http://wiki.webmproject.org/ha...

No one gives a fuck about WebM except FOSStards.

YouTube uses VP9. And these companies are working on AV1 which is VP9's successor. It would appear fucks are being given.

BPG is not viable due to the licensing situation around HEVC. Don't waste your time on formats which require patent royalty payments. AV1 is the future of web video, so a new still image format based on that (similar to WebP) is a better option.

I had a lengthy conversation with netflix support, apparently, there is NO way to view 4K netflix content except for a smart TV that supports "software" as they call it. Essentially, its DRM as demanded by studio.

Is it DRM or is it just because Netflix is encoding their 4K content with H.265 (aka HEVC). There is no H.265 support in browsers and it's unlikely there ever will be due to patent licensing issues (two separate patent pools which means two separate patent licenses and there are rumours that there will be a third pool). Fortunately, the future for web video is AV1, royalty-free and aiming to be better than H.265 (see Alliance for Open Media and NetVC). In the meantime, Netflix is looking to stream 4K with VP9 so that may be an option for you soon.

Name another media company that went out of their way to develop a patent-free media codec that was independent and competitive with other codecs of the time?

All the companies involved with the Alliance for Open Media and NetVC.

does not make it the all-around best web browser.

Who said Edge was the best all-around web browser? Your premise is faulty. You're arguing the wrong point.

and it fails to support free audio and video data formats.

You yourself linked to their roadmap for adding support for these. Edge supports Opus in ORTC (Skype, now owned by Microsoft, did contribute SILK to Opus after all) and VP9 support is coming. VP9 video won't be "silent" in Edge as you claim. In DASH the audio and video streams can be separate so you can easily have VP9 video and, say, AAC audio. YouTube streams video like this.

Edge is going to support Opus in the video and audio tag eventually. Microsoft is part of the Alliance for Open Media which is working towards a new royalty-free video codec (aka NetVC). Additionally, Windows 10 has Matroska (aka the superset of WebM) and FLAC support.

Microsoft is open sourcing Edge's JavaScript engine. And don't forget that with Edge's improvements to asm.js performance, and with WebAssembly support in the future, audio codecs become practical to implement in JavaScript.

Take the time to study Edge and Microsoft's direction with this stuff. They're doing a lot.

Just stick with a standard please.

Better, royalty-free video compression than H.264 can offer is needed. VP9 will deliver it today and the codec developed via NetVC and the Alliance for Open Media (of which Microsoft is a member) will deliver it tomorrrow.

If they actually want to support open codecs

Microsoft supports Opus because they have IP in it via their purchase of Skype. And Microsoft has joined the Alliance for Open Media to participate in the development of the video codec to follow VP9, which will be built from the best features of Thor, Daala, VP10 and whatever anyone else brings to the table.