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VideoLAN Announces Dav1d, a New Libre and Open Source AV1 Decoder (jbkempf.com)

Jean-Baptiste Kempf, president of VideoLan and developer of VLC media player, made the following announced Monday: AV1 is a new video codec by the Alliance for Open Media, composed of most of the important Web companies (Google, Facebook, Netflix, Amazon, Microsoft,...). AV1 has the potential to be up to 20% better than the HEVC codec, but the patents license is totally free, while HEVC patents licenses are insanely high and very confusing.

The reference decoder for AV1 is great, but it's a research codebase, so it has a lot to improve. Therefore, the VideoLAN, VLC and FFmpeg communities have started to work on a new decoder, sponsored by the Alliance of Open Media. The goal of this new decoder is: be small, be as fast as possible, be very cross-platform, correctly threaded, libre and (actually) Open Source. Without further due, the code: https://code.videolan.org/videolan/dav1d
Recommended: A talk during VDD 2018 conference about dav1d.

44 of 88 comments (clear)

  1. How long before ... by Alain+Williams · · Score: 2

    a patent troll magics up some patent relating to AV1 ?

    1. Re:How long before ... by jmv · · Score: 1

      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.

    2. Re:How long before ... by Kjella · · Score: 2

      a patent troll magics up some patent relating to AV1?

      Well that could certainly happen but it's a risk for all codecs or indeed software in general, they've done an IPR review to make sure it doesn't infringe on the patents of their competitors in the HEVC camp so it'll have to be a surprise contender. But if you look at the Fortune global 500 they got #11 (Apple), #18 (Amazon), #52 (Alphabet/Google), #71 (Microsoft), #92 (IBM), #146 (Intel), #212 (Cisco) and #274 (Facebook) on board. I think they can afford a few lawyers to get the patent declared invalid or not applicable and if that fails a big payday for a patent troll is still pocket change for them. And if it turns out AV1 doesn't infringe your patent and that's the next dominant standard well too bad your patent is worthless, it'd be a pretty big gamble. If you're not first in line to be sued, what does it matter? I doubt they'll ever get to number two.

      --
      Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
    3. Re:How long before ... by grep+-v+'.*'+* · · Score: 1

      a patent troll magics up some patent relating to AV1 ?

      *I* have a patent on letters, and my wife has a patent on numbers. My son, however, has the patent on mixing letters and numbers so HE'LL be the one doing the suing in this case. Expect a notice R3a1 S00n N0w.

      (Oh nuts, he saw that, I'm in trouble now!)

      --
      If the universe is someone's simulation -- does that mean the stars are just stuck pixels?
  2. Re:Just What We Need... by Tough+Love · · Score: 1

    Got some skin in the game, hmm?

    --
    When all you have is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a thumb.
  3. What happens when one isn't fluent in English by macraig · · Score: 1

    When one isn't fluent in English, either because it's not the primary language or because one is an idiot incapable of being fluent in any language, the result is minor mayhem like replacing "without further ado" with "without further due".

    Why do Slashdot editors exist at all, if not to maintain that fluency when submitters cannot?

    1. Re:What happens when one isn't fluent in English by Cyberax · · Score: 1

      "Without further due" is actually a native language speaker's mistake. Foreign learners are likely to learn English as a written language first, so they won't confuse "ado" and "due".

    2. Re:What happens when one isn't fluent in English by macraig · · Score: 1

      I don't discount that possibility, since I accounted for it in the phrase "because one is an idiot incapable of being fluent in any language". Such a person will repeat the same stupid mistake with any language he only learns phonetically and otherwise not fully.

      Regardless, the question that demands an answer is: did the current Slashdot editor(s) also only learn English phonetically, or did they approve the submitter's stupid mistake for some other equally stupid reason? In either instance, why are they employed in an editorial role?

  4. Re:So does it spy on you? by Tough+Love · · Score: 2

    Good thing this is a real open source project so you can check.

    --
    When all you have is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a thumb.
  5. Eggcorn by The+Evil+Atheist · · Score: 3, Funny

    Without further due

    For all intensive purposes, this has peaked my interest in one foul swoop.

    --
    Those who do not learn from commit history are doomed to regress it.
    1. Re:Eggcorn by julian67 · · Score: 1

      Ah men!

    2. Re:Eggcorn by commodore64_love · · Score: 2

      I had to look-up "egghorn" and discovered all kinds of comical errors:

      "eggcorn" instead of acorn. "Mating name" instead of maiden name. "On the spurt of the moment" instead of on the spur of the moment. "Passes mustard" instead of passes muster. "Sammwich" instead of sandwich.

      - And since it's Oktoberfest: "Ziggy Zaggy" instead of the actual German phrase Ziche zache.

      - And in India: "Updation" instead of update.

      --
      "I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
    3. Re:Eggcorn by ortholattice · · Score: 1

      Here's my list, fellow gnurds.

      Once and a lifetime opportunity, laundry mat, ad homonym attack, commynism, weight lifting can stump your groth, trial by error, refudiate, all of the sudden, a whole nother thing, nucular, aniliation, laxadaisical, irregardless, so long as, anyhow, besides the point, asterix, ax a question, Daylight Savings Time, every once and a while, misunderestimate, should of, a mute point, wreck havoc, hang grenade, brandy sniffer, bob wire fence, statue of limitations, try and make me, Sodom & Gonorrhea, viscous cycle, old timers [alzheimer's] disease, sickly cell anemia, squeamish cell carcinoma, prophylactic shock, prostrate cancer, escape goat, pre-Madonna, Klu Klux Klan, Signore Weaver

    4. Re:Eggcorn by thegarbz · · Score: 1

      My god don't these people have spell chequers on their pee sea?

    5. Re:Eggcorn by ath1901 · · Score: 1

      "Passes mustard"

      Oww... that just got to hurt...

    6. Re:Eggcorn by gosand · · Score: 1

      I am glad you can now breath easier.

      --

      My beliefs do not require that you agree with them.

    7. Re:Eggcorn by cellocgw · · Score: 1

      that's fowl swoop .... you insensitive cloud.

      --
      https://app.box.com/WitthoftResume Code: https://github.com/cellocgw
  6. the very best compression by Skapare · · Score: 1

    do we still need to squeeze every last byte out of video files given how big our storage devices have gotten to be and how fast our networks are getting to be? or what about a decade from now? or is this going to be a cause for compression for the next millenium?

    --
    now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
    1. Re:the very best compression by mentil · · Score: 1

      Yes. Look into the bitrates required for light-field videos (~2 terabytes per minute IIRC). Mobile bandwidth caps are still going to suck in the USA a decade from now.

      --
      Corruption is convincing someone that the selfless ideal is the same as their selfish ideal.
    2. Re:the very best compression by iampiti · · Score: 1

      Yes, imagine you're Netflix or Youtube and you're streaming millions of videos at any given time. Better compression will save them lots of money.
      The change to H265 allowed for 4k Blurays which wouldn't be possible with the older codecs. Also many phones still have relatively small amounts of storage so saving space when recording video is worthwhile.

  7. Re:Just What We Need... by Skapare · · Score: 1

    So where is the open and free ENcoder?

    --
    now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
  8. Re:So does it spy on you? by gweihir · · Score: 1

    And how would that work with a _codec_? The interfaces are just not there. A backdoor of this type could be found with a simple string-search.

    --
    Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
  9. Re: Content creation is too expensive by MachineShedFred · · Score: 3, Informative

    LOL nobody uses H.265 in wide distribution because nobody can afford to with the multiple patent pool licensing. It's dead, and will never generate the revenues needed to fund development of any further standard. MPEG killed the golden goose and sent their members to build their own org to cut them out, and AV1 is the result.

    The codec will get faster with optimization and forthcoming hardware en/decode acceleration, just like all codecs do.

    Nice FUD though.

    --
    Slashdot still doesnâ(TM)t support Unicode after it was added to the HTML standard in 1997.
  10. Re:Just What We Need... by Cyberax · · Score: 2
  11. English by sexconker · · Score: 1

    AV1 is a new video codec by the Alliance for Open Media, composed of most of the important Web companies (Google, Facebook, Netflix, Amazon, Microsoft,...).

    I would have added "developed" or "written" or "created" before "by", but whatever, I'm busy figuring out how a codec is composed of "most of the important Web companies" or why we're capitalizing "Web".

    AV1 has the potential to be up to 20% better than the HEVC codec, but the patents license is totally free, while HEVC patents licenses are insanely high and very confusing.

    I'm going to give you a pass on the unexplained "better", and "the patents license" may be an awful Britishism that I'll ignore (for now), but if the HEVC "patents licenses" are "insanely high", isn't that a problem? Are they going to go out and announce that they're taking HEVC public at $420?

    The reference decoder for AV1 is great, but it's a research codebase, so it has a lot to improve.

    I'd throw in "based on" or "compiled against" before "a research codebase", and probably throw in an "on" after improve (or rewrite it so there's no preposition at the end of a sentence, though I never found that to be a logical rule). However, the big concern here is that you're calling the reference decoder "great" while simultaneously saying that it isn't.

    Therefore, the VideoLAN, VLC and FFmpeg communities have started to work on a new decoder, sponsored by the Alliance of Open Media. The goal of this new decoder is: be small, be as fast as possible, be very cross-platform, correctly threaded, libre and (actually) Open Source.

    You shouldn't be capitalizing "Open Source" here, and something being "very cross-platform" doesn't really fit, unless you're talking about a waffling politician. Can we at least agree on quantity, though? You've listed more than one goal. You want "goals" and "are".

    Without further due, the code: https://code.videolan.org/vide...

    It's "without further adieu", you clown!

    1. Re:English by jaa101 · · Score: 1

      It's "without further adieu", you clown!

      Try "without further ado," you clown!

    2. Re:English by Zontar+The+Mindless · · Score: 1

      When it is incorrect, it is, at least *authoritatively* incorrect. -- Hitchiker's Guide To The Galaxy

      --
      Il n'y a pas de Planet B.
    3. Re:English by sexconker · · Score: 1

      Woosh

    4. Re:English by sexconker · · Score: 1

      AV1 isn't "by" the Alliance for Open media unless it's physically beside it. It's a minor nitpick, sure.

      If the "composed of" piece refers to the codec, then there should be an "and" before "composed of" to indicate that the codec is both "by..." and "composed of ...". Otherwise, it's ambiguous as to what "composed of" refers to. Alternatively, you could add a comma after "codec".

      "Web" is not a proper noun. It's an adjective here, describing the type of companies. The companies are not owned by the "Web", nor do they make up the "Web".

      Further, it's not the 90s and we don't need to capitalize internet or web, just like we don't need to say "electronic mail". Unless you're talking about a very specific thing (e.g., in relation to Internet2) the proper nouns aren't involved. This article was not talking about the official, proper noun "World Wide Web".

      And the Britishism I was referring to was not license, but "patents". I could just hear the jackass pronouncing it with a long "a". An American would say "patent license" or "patent licenses" as we are referring to the type of license or licenses. The quantity is not applied to the adjective "patent". But the British love that shit. Hell, we can't get them to drop the "s" when abbreviating "mathematics".

  12. Re:Just What We Need... by markdavis · · Score: 1

    >"Dav1d is not a codec. It's an encoder. It encodes video into the AV1 codec."

    Not according to the summary nor the description on the code site:

    "dav1d is an AV1 decoder :)"

    Nor inside the code readme:

    "**dav1d** is a new **AV1** cross-platform **D**ecoder, open-source, and focused on speed and correctness."

  13. Re:That whole "license" bullshit is so silly. by Trongy · · Score: 2

    Nowadays, everyone already uses H.265.
    With regard to the licenses ... Nobody cares.

    Nowadays, the streamer negotiates with the client to chose the codec. People watching Netxflix on a Chromcast are probably using a different codec to those watching Netflix in a web browser and those watching Netflix on an ipad. Streamers care about the license fees - they will chose the cheapest codec that the client supports.

    Web browsers will have AV1 support next year and hardware devices will probably start rolling out in 2021. There's a huge installed base that won't have AV1 support, but the same thing is true for H.265.

    You can see which codec Youtube is using in a web browser by right clicking on "Stats for nerds". On most systems I see it's using VP9.

  14. Re: Content creation is too expensive by mentil · · Score: 2

    UHD Bluray and ATSC 3.0 (the upcoming US television broadcast standard) both use HEVC. Newer smartphones use it for encoding video taken with their cameras. AFAIK video sites like Youtube don't use it for distribution because software decoding is impractical on older mobile devices (and Google was pushing VP9 instead, which Youtube does use).

    --
    Corruption is convincing someone that the selfless ideal is the same as their selfish ideal.
  15. Re:That whole "license" bullshit is so silly. by default+luser · · Score: 3, Interesting

    What were you saying about HEVC being too expensive to be available in less-expensive devices?

    $40 for a 4k HDR h.265 Roku is pretty much mainstream. Which means aV1is dead-in-the-water.

    AV1 hardware acceleration will be TWO YEARS behind the $40 Roku, and you can be sure that it will cost OVER $100 o release (like the first 4k Roku).

    HEVC enjoyed early adoption beause of early phone spec war. My Galaxy S4 had HEVC playback built in,

    HEVC encode support was added to devices after the S4 a Apple, because video storage space is limited on a cellphone. The TVs have actually been slow to adopt HEVC compared to the rest of the industry, but 4k TVs with HEVC haw been around fo five years now, an 4k BluRay is almost two years old. Both are standard devices that don't support AV1.

    The other upcoming standard hat will also kill AV1 is ATSC 3.0.

    https://www.atsc.org/newslette...

    --

    Man is the animal that laughs.
    And occasionally whores for Karma.

  16. Re: Content creation is too expensive by thegarbz · · Score: 2

    LOL nobody uses H.265 in wide distribution

    Nobody except for netflix and streaming producers who offer 4k.
    Nobody except for anyone producing any content for VR.
    Nobody except for live streamers who have native hardware codecs available.

    AV1 is the future, but HEVC will be around for quite a while yet. AV1 risks missing the boat entirely. There are native hardware decoders and encoders available in pretty much every computer right now. They are shipped with graphics cards, mobile phones, in TVs, media players, they are required for 4k Netflix support for example.

    AV1 runs the very real risk of being killed overnight. Their hardware codecs are behind the game with a new generation of higher resolution A/V equipment being shipped with HEVC codecs right now which embeds those codecs and entrenches them in the market. If MPEGLA pull their heads out of their arses and makes the codec as cheap to use as MPEG2, AV1 will almost certainly be as dead in the water as Theora was.

  17. Re:That whole "license" bullshit is so silly. by thegarbz · · Score: 2

    There's a huge installed base that won't have AV1 support, but the same thing is true for H.265.

    My several year old budget graphics card boasts a hardware h.265 decoder. As does my TV (pretty much every 4K TV does), any UHD bluray player, any computer with a Skylake or more recent CPU (though you could happily decode UHD in software on Haswell)

    You can see which codec Youtube is using in a web browser by right clicking on "Stats for nerds". On most systems I see it's using VP9.

    And? Netflix uses HEVC for 4k streams, as do UHD blurays. The install base is far larger than you think.

  18. VLC is poorly now by skovnymfe · · Score: 1

    I had to downgrade from v3 to v2 because whatever they did to the interface has completely fucked it up.

  19. Re:So does it spy on you? by Rick+Schumann · · Score: 1

    Oh gee sorry I forgot the tag.

  20. Re:So does it spy on you? by Rick+Schumann · · Score: 1

    Considering who's behind it and their general pattern of behavior I posted sarcasm.

  21. Re:Just What We Need... by theweatherelectric · · Score: 1

    You can view the source for libaom, which is the reference encoder and decoder. And FFmpeg 4.0 (which incorporates libaom) has been released.

  22. Re: Content creation is too expensive by theweatherelectric · · Score: 2

    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.

  23. Re:So does it spy on you? by gweihir · · Score: 1

    Ah, sorry. Sometimes it is hard to tell.

    --
    Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
  24. Re: Content creation is too expensive by thegarbz · · Score: 1

    And again AV1 only has the backing due to the licensing issues. If the lunatics that are shitting in their bed see some resemblance of common sense then the AV1 alliance will be about as big as the rebel alliance at the end of the Last Jedi.

    Ultimately you're still underestimating the staying power. "Netflix: I have a great idea, let's make the fans twirl when people play 4k content by switching to a computationally expensive codec without hardware decoder support!" Me personally I run a plugin that forces youtube to pretend to not be capable of VP8 so that Youtube stops slamming my CPU and draining my battery.

    And while people love talking about the decline of disc scales it's still a $4.7bn industry that in its latest standard specifies required HEVC support.

    It's amazing how well people use the unusable.

  25. Re: Content creation is too expensive by theweatherelectric · · Score: 2

    And again AV1 only has the backing due to the licensing issues.

    No, it has the backing because it has better licensing and better quality at the same bitrate (or the same quality at a lower bitrate) than HEVC.

    Netflix: I have a great idea,

    The great idea is that Netflix accounts for 15% of downloads globally, so AV1's bitrate savings over HEVC are needed.

    pretend to not be capable of VP8

    I think you mean VP9. If you really are only blocking VP8 then you're probably using VP9 a lot without even realizing it.

    It's amazing how well people use the unusable.

    There's no value in the HEVC tax any longer. AV1 is the future. Might as well get on board.

  26. Re: Content creation is too expensive by westlake · · Score: 1

    LOL nobody uses H.265 in wide distribution because nobody can afford to with the multiple patent pool licensing. It's dead,

    That will be news to people playing 4K video as streaming media or off 4K UHD Blu Ray video disks.