AV1 Beats x264 and Libvpx-Vp9 in Practical Use Case (facebook.com)

An anonymous reader shares a blog post by Facebook engineer: We tested AV1 (a new open-source, royalty-free media codec) under conditions that closely match the most common real-world use cases for Facebook video. Our test examined AV1's performance vs. practical open source video encoders that can be deployed to a practical production system, rather than merely testing efficiency vs. standard reference software encoders (i.e., H.264/AVC Joint Model or JM). By structuring the test this way, we were able to show how the codec will perform in a true production environment compared with current widely used alternatives, such as x264 and libvpx-vp9.

Our testing shows AV1 surpasses its stated goal of 30% better compression than VP9, and achieves gains of 50.3%, 46.2% and 34.0%, compared to x264 main profile, x264 high profile and libvpx-vp9, respectively. The new codec requires longer encoding times vs. current alternatives, however, due to increased complexity. Our tests were conducted primarily with Standard Definition (SD) and High Definition (HD) video files, because those are currently the most popular video formats on Facebook. But because AV1's performance increased as video resolution increased, we conclude the new compression codec will likely deliver even higher efficiency gains with UHD/4K and 8K content.

Comments

How about

[ArchieBunker]

AV1 compared to x265?

Re:How about

[Joce640k]

Also: What's the decoder efficiency? Does it have hardware decoding on mainstream CPUs/GPUs?

Re:How about

[afidel]

Royalty free and supported by all the major players goes a lot farther than a few percentage points so if it's even close AV1 wins. It also helps that they got the input of the hardware guys and that the algorithm is optimized for hardware implementations, combine that with the royalty free status and you can expect rapid uptake in the mobile space, something x265 has failed to achieve.

Re:How about

[MBGMorden]

Time has shown that that for the most part "royalty free" doesn't mean a whole lot (ie, while Ogg and Matroska are perfectly functional, they never became the dominant forms used in their sectors).

x265 is catching on slowly because a lot of things don't have hardware decoding for it yet and it's pretty intensive to do using CPU alone. If AV1 isn't any better in that regard, then it won't gain any ground compared to x265 there.

Re:How about

[thegarbz]

May go further than a few but let the numbers speak. Hardware H265 encoders are common. The algorithm is not the reason that encoders aren't in the mobile space.

Re:How about

[trabby]

Ogg and Matroska are contrainers not codecs. AV1 is a codec.

Re: How about

[Type44Q]

They say "don't knock it 'till you try it..."

... sounds like you tried it.

Re:How about

[Kjella]

Time has shown that that for the most part "royalty free" doesn't mean a whole lot (ie, while Ogg and Matroska are perfectly functional, they never became the dominant forms used in their sectors).

Well Ogg and Matroska are container formats, if you mean Vorbis (2000) it was extremely late to the party compared to MP3 (1993) and missed the whole revolution. You can use Matroska with H.264/HEVC, if you mean Theora, the VPx codecs, Dirac and the other alternative codecs I'll agree they lost badly to H.264 and I think it's mostly because they never moved out of the software research stage and into accelerated hardware. After Google bought On2 then VP9 became something of a trial balloon for that through Android, now it looks like a broad alliance is ready to kick MPEG to the curb. I wouldn't bet on history repeating itself this time.

Re:How about

[Dwedit]

H.265 is only usable by Big Media Companies and Pirates. Media companies are vertically integrated and can deal with the horrible licensing fee situation, and Pirates simply don't care.

Re:How about

[TigerTime]

I don't think you understand the support behind AV1 vs x265. Only Apple is going to implement x265 in browser. The others, no. They ALL will implement AV1 in the browser. Netflix will be AV1. YouTube will be AV1. Facebook will be AV1. Amazon Video will be AV1.

The licensing around x265 is a complete disaster. Just about every major media company is going to steer clear away from them where possible. This is a completely different scenario than x264 vs the lesser known media formats.

Bottom line is the difference is support/backing. And it's vastly in favor of AV1.

Re:How about

[thegarbz]

Ogg and Matroska are contrainers not codecs. AV1 is a codec.

Thanks Mr pedant. "ogg" is also the typically shortened form of saying "Ogg Vorbis" the latter part of which IS a codec, and the comment still stands.

Re:How about

[darkain]

And to add, this isn't conjecture either. Every major player you can name pretty much is a member of the alliance that is building AV1 (not just supporting, but the actual developers of the codec). Just right off the bat, you have nVidia, AMD, ARM, Intel (hardware), Cisco, Broadcom, Realtak (networking), Microsoft, Apple, Google, Mozilla, Adobe, VLC (software), Facebook, Netflix, Amazon, Hulu (content publishers). And this isn't even a complete list by far.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

Re:How about

[grub]

I hope he finds his virgin.

Any patent troll?

[aglider]

I am looking forward...

Re:Any patent troll?

[afidel]

The legal teams of 40 tech giants have gone over the spec for a few years, the chances of there being an unknown patent is unlikely. If there's going to be a troll attack it's likely to be an unrelated overbroad patent that's unlikely to stand up to re-review.

Re:Any patent troll?

[JackieBrown]

It's a shame how you feel about jury duty. You'd rather have professional jurors? Or just binding arbitration?

Re:Any patent troll?

[afidel]

Not since TC Heartland, now they have to go after the company where they are incorporated, and that's Delaware in the majority of cases.

Not something to brag about

[Eravnrekaree]

If it didnt beat 264, that would be a problem and quite a shock, since 264 is old technology. So, thats not an accomplishment at all, beating a 10 year old format. They are really after beating 265, I would hope.

Re:Not something to brag about

[DigitAl56K]

Beating x264 (the encoder) is a very big accomplishment, because:
  - It is very well recognized as the leading H264 encoder
  - An incredible amount of time has been spent optimizing it
  - It has been done while avoiding patent encumbered, which takes many well established algorithms/techniques off the table

Claiming that it's "not an accomplishment at all" tells me that you're extremely ignorant of the level of work involved here.

Re:Dangerous to use open source

[Eravnrekaree]

Ever look at the problems with Flash, IE, Edge, Windows, etc etc? Open Source has a better record. I don't think any large C/C++ program has never had a bug. Propreitary software has a history of being much worse.

h265/hevc

[DrYak]

Current benchmarks (mostly synthetic tests) already show promising advantages in favour of AV-1 (the previous /. on AV-1's official announcement has links. Here 's yet another)
i.e.: per bits, it managed to pack more information than H265/HEVC

Now the psycho-visual optimization needs to be tuned a bit (the compressor need to learn better *which* of the information to pack or drop for a given amount of bits, but in general AV1 allows for more). And Netflix and Google should release more of the quality oriented tests (subjective tests from actual humans, and from AIs trained to have a somewhat similar response to human's visual system).
(As AV1 was just released, it's compressor isn't finely tuned yet and might wasting bit on packing information that an actual human viewer wouldn't give a shit)
(just like back when it was release x265 compressor didn't perform as visually pleasing as the older and better tested x264 compressor)

Over all that isn't much as a surprise.

H265/HEVC is an already released codec with a history.
AV1 is the new comer released now and supposed to be the next generation.

H265/HEVC isn't AV1's main competitor
AV1 supposed competitor is the next gen codec that will come out of MPEG (JVET), but that one isn't any close to release (but is expected to perform similarily good as AV1 compared to H265/HEVC)
Also the licensing shitstorm of JVET will also need to get solved once it is released, whereas the whole purpose that sparked AV1 was to make it royalty free.

Re:Dangerous to use open source

[JackieBrown]

Why would you even respond to such an obvious troll?

Re:Practical Use

[TigerTime]

Right now? It's not practical. But they haven't optimized the encoders, and there isn't any silicon developed for it yet.

It's like trying to play some intense video game without a dedicated video card and using software to generate the scenes using un-optimized code. You're going to have a bad time.

Give it a couple years until the hardware is out there, and we'll see where we're at.

I keep seeing AVI not AV1...

[gosand]

They couldn't come up with a better name for it this codec? I know AVI is a container, while this is a codec, but AVI and AV1 just look so similar and could be nearly identical depending on the font. Might as well make it AllI1 (that's A el el EYE one)

Re:I keep seeing AVI not AV1...

[grub]

Me too. They should call it something like D1VX or Xv1d.