Microsoft Launches Free AV1 Video Codec For Windows 10 (softpedia.com)

Microsoft has released a free AV1 video codec for Windows 10 devices that's available via the Microsoft Store.

"Play AV1 videos on your Windows 10 device. This extension is an early beta version of the AV1 software decoder that lets you play videos that have been encoded using the AV1 video coding standard developed by the Alliance for Open Media," the company says. "Since this is an early release, you might see some performance issues when playing AV1 videos. We're continuing to improve this extension. If you allow apps to be updated automatically, you should get the latest updates and improvements when we release them." Softpedia reports: Oddly enough, the codec can only be installed on devices running Windows 10 October 2018 Update, which is no longer up for grabs after Microsoft pulled it last month. It remains to be seen how often Microsoft updates the codec in the coming months, but I've already tried it out for a test earlier today and the initial release seems to be running just fine. You can install the codec from the Microsoft Store to be notified when new versions are out, and make sure you report any potential issues to Microsoft for more bug fixes.

Comments

AV1 on Chromecast

[Anonymous Coward]

Shouldn't Google release AV1 for Chromecast? Or are they too busy virtue signaling?

Re:AV1 on Chromecast

[tepples]

Chromecast receivers rely heavily on hardware decoders. Once AV1 silicon is out, I'm almost certain that new Chromecast models will include AV1 decoding.

Any particular reason this is significant ?

[Crashmarik]

I'm not really up on the current state of video encoding and the article doesn't say but is there any reason this is a big deal ?

I can't recall the last time I had to even update a codec to play any kind of video. It seems that most content producers have gotten the message and encode using codecs people actually have.

Re:Any particular reason this is significant ?

[Gravis Zero]

I'm not really up on the current state of video encoding and the article doesn't say but is there any reason this is a big deal ?

I can think of one: when it comes to open standards, Microsoft has historically been so far behind the curve that you had to just assume they might catch up because you couldn't see them anymore. Seriously, do you know how many years it was until they finally fully supported PNG images let alone PNG images with transparency? I'm pretty sure it took two decades.

Re:Any particular reason this is significant ?

[theweatherelectric]

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.

Re:Any particular reason this is significant ?

[Kjella]

I'm not really up on the current state of video encoding and the article doesn't say but is there any reason this is a big deal ? I can't recall the last time I had to even update a codec to play any kind of video. It seems that most content producers have gotten the message and encode using codecs people actually have.

Well yes and no. Bandwidth, licensing and hardware support is still a big deal for providers, but it's sufficiently hidden by applications and user agent strings now that they'll send you a H.264/HEVC/VP9/AV1 stream that works for you. You don't care, but Netflix and YouTube do. If you don't control both end points though H.264 is now almost universal as long as you're willing to use Cisco's OpenH264 patent licensed binary or one of the many other open source decoders, which is 99.99% of the market. That was as late as 2013 though, so it's only been 5 years since missing codecs actually was an end user problem. Not anymore though.

Re:Any particular reason this is significant ?

[mobby_6kl]

Any idea how it compares to H.265 in terms of quality/compression rate? I haven't followed video codecs too much recently now that almost everything is pretty much good enough, but was quite impressed when I tried 265 on a few videos. If there's something comparable but without the licensing headaches, that's even better.

Re:Any particular reason this is significant ?

[theweatherelectric]

AV1 beats H.265 on quality. The libaom AV1 encoder is still very slow but it's improving, and there are other encoder efforts like rav1e which are faster but don't yet produce the same image quality.

There are various AV1 demos you can try in Chrome and Firefox. I'm using Firefox 64 beta with "media.av1.enabled" set to true in about:config. Bitmovin has a demo.

You can switch on AV1 for YouTube via their TestTube page and try some high bitrate videos in their AV1 demo playlist. Many YouTube videos have AV1 encodes available up to 720p resolution (try popular music videos to see examples), but YouTube's not optimizing for file size yet. The standard definition AV1 encodes typically have smaller file sizes than the VP9 equivalents, but the 720p AV1 encodes are typically of similar or even larger file sizes than the VP9 versions.

Re:Any particular reason this is significant ?

[MachineShedFred]

It's significant because it's a massive middle finger to MPEG. They made a complete hash of the licensing around H.265 so that nobody can figure it out, and those that can either have to have contributed IP to the licensing pools or get financially raped to use it. So the vast majority of the tech industry threw all their patents together into this effort to cut MPEG out, and by the way made it free of cost to use.

It's supported by ARM, Nvidia, Intel, AMD, Microsoft, Google, Apple, and many others. Surprisingly, Samsung, Sony, and Qualcomm aren't on the list, so expect some Android hardware to not have hardware support unless they inherit it from an included GPU design.

List of members in the Alliance for Open Media

Re:Any particular reason this is significant ?

[thegarbz]

efficient video codec that has good industry support

Nitpick for a tech forum. Using the word support makes it sound like all those people listed are using AV1. No they are backing it in the hopes to adopt it in the future. Currently "support" for AV1 is horrible which is not surprising since it's brand new on the block.

Conversely HEVC has good industry support with efficient CODECs everywhere and hardware CODECs already in place in many computers, mobile devices and home entertainment devices. Fortunately it is losing favour with the primary content creators.

CODECs have incredible staying power once they exist. About the only thing that truly gives me hope for AV1 is seeing Intel and NVIDIA listed as founding members, and AMD as promotional. In the computer world these three are key in ensuring AV1 becomes something usable rather than a horrid drain on user's batteries. Unfortunately the hopes to truly unseat HEVC will depend on it being depreciated in the home entertainment world as well.

Re:Any particular reason this is significant ?

[cheesybagel]

AV1 is just a codec. If those things happen it will be at the container level.

Re:Any particular reason this is significant ?

[cheesybagel]

There is such a thing as being good enough. Much like JPEG-2000 never replaced JPEG.

Re:Any particular reason this is significant ?

[nanoflower]

Where money is concerned there is no such thing as good enough. Though anything new must be significantly better such as cheaper or faster. In the case of video codecs companies like Netflix are looking at the speed to encode and the size of the encoded files (for equivalent video quality.) If something new comes along that reduces file size at equivalent quality by half at the same or close to the same cost (both in $$ and speed) you can bet that Netflix would be moving to the new codec.

Or any other recent media player/browser

[Kjella]

It's royalty free, hopefully patent free... it's in VLC, ffmpeg, MPC-HC, Chrome, Firefox and so on. Hardware support is coming but not here yet:

fixed-function hardware will take 12-18 months after bitstream freeze until chips are available, plus 6 months for products based on those chips to hit the market. The bitstream was finally frozen on 28 March 2018

AV1 is going to be big, the licensing situation has kept HEVC adoption back and kept H.264 as the preferred alternative. What's missing right now is optimized software encoders, the reference encoder is ridiculously slow while decoding is no problem.

Re:Or any other recent media player/browser

[theweatherelectric]

while decoding is no problem.

Decoding is still a bit slow. But development of dav1d is progressing and it's achieving big speedups over libaom.

VLC 3 plays AV1

[tepples]

VLC media player 3.0.0 reportedly introduces AV1 playback.

(Google Search query: vlc player av1)

why wouldn't it be "free"?

[superwiz]

Weren't all video codecs MS has ever released free?

Re:why wouldn't it be "free"?

[theweatherelectric]

No.

Re:why wouldn't it be "free"?

[superwiz]

Thanks for the info.

Does OpenH264 encode? Needed for video call to iOS

[tepples]

If you don't control both end points though H.264 is now almost universal as long as you're willing to use Cisco's OpenH264 patent licensed binary or one of the many other open source decoders, which is 99.99% of the market. That was as late as 2013 though, so it's only been 5 years since missing codecs actually was an end user problem.

Here's one: Video calling between end users. This requires both sides to have an audio encoder, video encoder, audio decoder, and video decoder for the codec suite used for the call.

As for audio: Apple WebKit appears to support Opus (webrtcHacks).

As for video: Apple WebKit supports only H.264 (webrtcHacks; bug 173141) and therefore doesn't fully conform to WebRTC (RFC 7742 section 5). If one end of a WebRTC video call is an iOS device running Safari or another Apple WebKit wrapper, then the call must use H.264, and the other device must also include a licensed H.264 encoder. Does OpenH264 encode, or is it only a decoder?

P.S. VP8 in WebRTC was added to Apple WebKit 37 days ago (bug 189976), but it may take months for this fix to reach the version of Apple WebKit included with iOS.

AV1 is very complex for encoding

[TheSync]

An AV1 encoder is about 130x times more complex to encode than HEVC (H.265) when comparing reference models.

See UNDERSTANDING THE VIDEO CODEC JUNGLE: A COMPARISON OF TCO AND COMPRESSION EFFICIENCY.

No wonder the public cloud people like it, you'll pay them a ton of money encoding files!

Live is going to be a real hassle, almost impossible. It is all we can do to get a good 4K live encode with HEVC at reasonable bit rates.

What is really exciting is the next MPEG JVET codec, VVC (likely H.266). Even better performance than AV1 or HEVC, but with a minor increase in complexity.

Re:AV1 is very complex for encoding

[Dutch Gun]

If VVC is controlled by the MPEG group, then why should we expect it to be any less of a licensing clusterfuck than H.265? That's the entire reason these companies are getting behind AV1, not some nefarious scheme to increase encoding costs - and I'm pretty sure you know that as well.

Re:AV1 is very complex for encoding

[thegarbz]

Live is going to be a real hassle, almost impossible.

No one has "live" encoded video on anything other than dedicated encoding hardware in a really REALLY long time. I'm concerned about unseating HEVC given that the CODECs are available on any graphics card (including CPU integrated) bought in the past few years. Hardware acceleration for AV1 is not expected to get mainstream until about 2020.

What is really exciting is the next MPEG JVET codec, VVC [itu.int] (likely H.266). Even better performance than AV1 or HEVC, but with a minor increase in complexity.

"Better" in the compression world is dime a dozen. The only thing that matters though is adoption and industry backing.

Re:AV1 is very complex for encoding

[TheSync]

"No one has "live" encoded video on anything other than dedicated encoding hardware in a really REALLY long time."

That is actually not true - the industry is moving away from specialized encoding ASICs to more flexible VM-based encoders (for example see the Cisco/Synamedia Virtual DCM.

But regardless, it takes years for the ASICs to be spun up, and complexity is complexity. ASICs are more efficient than CPU/GPU, but they still need to do all the computational work, so an HEVC encoder ASIC will take a lot less power than an AV1 encoder ASIC.

Re:AV1 is very complex for encoding

[JohnStock]

"No one has "live" encoded video on anything other than dedicated encoding hardware in a really REALLY long time." Tell that to the 10's of millions of Twitch users that don't use CPU or GPU acceleration.

Re:'Free' codec- only it isn't...

[theweatherelectric]

AV1 is a dominance move by the demonic Google and Microsoft

Also, I heard AV1 kicks puppies!

you can bet your life AV1 crap will more windows store promoting trash

Yeah! You sure proved them.

Because who wouldn't want yet another codec?

[Tony Isaac]

There are already a ton of codecs out there. On a PC, this is a nuisance when you run into a codec you don't already have loaded, and you have to go hunting for it on dodgy Web sites. On other hardware, you might just be plain out of luck.

Free

[JThundley]

It doesn't cost money, but you do have to use the Microsoft store. Some things cost more than just money.