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Hulu Joins Netflix and Amazon In Promoting Royalty-free Video Codec AV1 (fiercecable.com)
theweatherelectric writes: Hulu has joined the Alliance for Open Media, which is developing an open, royalty-free video format called AV1. AV1 is targeting better performance than H.265 and, unlike H.265, will be licensed under royalty-free terms for all use cases. The top three over-the-top SVOD services (Netflix, Amazon, and Hulu) are now all members of the alliance. In joining the alliance, Hulu hopes "to accelerate development and facilitate friction-free adoption of new media technologies that benefit the streaming media industry and [its] viewers."
Currently AV1 encoding with common encoding tools is a very time consuming process, as can be seen in the below screenshot taken from a Lenovo T540p notebook with an i7-4800MQ, 8GB RAM running Ubuntu 14.04. It would take 8 hours and 42 minutes to encode a 1080p@24fps 40 second long sequence (Tears of Steel Teaser) with a target bitrate of 1.5Mbps.
I wonder if GPUs can speed things up?
but I'm going to wait for AV2
It will take about 10 years for it to become a viable standard. Considering how many devices out there that won't support it. I know that I won't rush out to replace my Smart TV that can now handle H265 and H264. Nor will I be re-encoding my videos until forced to, which would be around 15-20 years IF IF IF this 'new video code' (heard this story before) becomes viable.
What about Dirac? Invented for the exact same reason. Theora anyone? Same thing. VP1? Again.
What's got me slightly pissed off is why the fuck these assholes all went "Nope, fuck off" to all of those in turn? Were they hoping to make enough money with locked down codecs at the time that they wanted the ability to enforce rights in codecs? Or just NIH?
Even an evil clock is just twice a day. They don't want to be controlled by MPEG-LA and the like, and that competition benefits us all. Granted, it would be better if they were just against software patents.
This is my signature. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
I see a problem with Bitmovin's comparisons (linked in the article) not telling us which encoder was used for the H.264 and H.265 tests. This matters tremendously - there are shitty encoders producing bad H.264/265, and there are amazing encoders producing excellent H.264/265, at one and the same bitrate. It's like comparing a new audio coded to MP3 and using Xing MP3 instead of LAME, and calling the test legit.
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)
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
That, and writing a non-prototype encoder, most likely.
yup, currently AV-1 is still an alpha.
it's still a playground in which to experiment by activating feature which are currently being developped.
(e.g.: the Perceptual Vector Quantization (PVQ) and Assymetic Numeric System entropy coder (ANS) that were developped at Xiph as part of Daala, can be tested into AV-1)
Wait until it hits AV-1, only then will developers start optimizing performance instead of chasing compression factors.
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
I like my movies encoded in RealMedia, they're warmer and the buffering adds to the experience of watching digital video.
If you look at the membership lists its the whose who of software, hardware, streaming and editing. It looks like a very real chance of happening unless some of those members are actively sabotaging the process.
It is all about not wanting to pay the royalties
Yes. I, too, don't want to pay royalties just to work with a video file and transmit it over the internet. I don't see video licensing as needing to be different from and I want it to be the same as HTML and PNG and JPEG and all the royalty-free protocols and formats that make the web and the internet possible. We have that now with VP9 and we will have it with AV1.
In this instance their agenda matches our agenda. That's a good thing. Exploit it.
But even then they are salvageable, even if a big chunk is damaged. Some media files won't play correctly if even 10% is damaged.
Big scratch on a DVD disc on the wrong side of the disc? might render it unplayable. VHS that got eaten by a deck? simple splice job...
(thinking about delamination problems on laserdiscs, even worse)
I've got better things to do tonight than die.
Like Apple pushing for the HEIF that uses the h265 codec.
During their HEIF presentation at WWDC 2017 (video and transcript, slides) Apple made the point that the HEIF format is designed to be codec agnostic. Apple will be using HEIF with H.264 and H.265, but in principle you could use any codec inside HEIF. HEIF itself is just an image container format.
I imagine Apple will support AV1 eventually. If and when they do, they could go ahead and use AV1 in HEIF.
There's something very ironic about these three companies joining an "open media" alliance, while they all rely on DRM *extensively*.