Slashdot Mirror
An Open Source, Royalty-Free AV1 Codec Has Been Released (aomedia.org)
Artem Tashkinov writes: After three years in development the Alliance for Open Media is releasing the royalty-free AOMedia Video Codec 1.0 (AV1) specification. The AV1 codec promises an average of 30 percent greater compression over competing codecs according to independent member tests.
The release of AV1 includes:
The release of AV1 includes:
- Bitstream specification to enable the next-generation of silicon
- 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
The original point in this thread is that this is completely unoptimized, and being open source doesn't magically fix that.
Someone pointed to LAME as being better than commercial solutions, but that's only true because got where it is by stealing and copying.
Further, by the time LAME surpassed commercial solutions it was largely because those commercial solutions were done. No further spec changes, no further development, no further optimization. Instead, they were busy working on specs for the next generation of codecs.
The same exact thing happened with MPEG 4 video.
MPEG is shit, and the patents involved are a ridiculous mess and I'd like for almost all of them to be thrown out.
But the simple fact is the open codecs have historically succeeded by stealing from the closed codecs and them hammering away on them long after the creators of the closed codecs had moved on.
In the end, designing codecs isn't easy, nor is it free in terms of time/money (the only things that matter for getting shit done). However shitty MPEG is, you have to give the devil his due.