AV1 is Well On Its Way To Becoming a Viable Alternative To Patented Video Codecs, Mozilla Says (mozilla.org) 66
Here's a surprising fact: It costs money to watch video online, even on free sites like YouTube. That's because about 4 in 5 videos on the web today rely on a patented technology called the H.264 video codec. From a report: It took years for companies to put this complex, global set of legal and business agreements in place, so H.264 web video works everywhere. Now, as the industry shifts to using more efficient video codecs, those businesses are picking and choosing which next-generation technologies they will support. The fragmentation in the market is raising concerns about whether our favorite web past-time, watching videos, will continue to be accessible and affordable to all.
Over the last decade, several companies started building viable alternatives to patented video codecs. Mozilla worked on the Daala Project, Google released VP9, and Cisco created Thor for low-complexity videoconferencing. All these efforts had the same goal: to create a next-generation video compression technology that would make sharing high-quality video over the internet faster, more reliable, and less expensive. In 2015, Mozilla, Google, Cisco, and others joined with Amazon and Netflix and hardware vendors AMD, ARM, Intel, and NVIDIA to form AOMedia. As AOMedia grew, efforts to create an open video format coalesced around a new codec: AV1. AV1 is based largely on Google's VP9 code and incorporates tools and technologies from Daala, Thor, and VP10.
Mozilla loves AV1 for two reasons: AV1 is royalty-free, so anyone can use it free of charge. Software companies can use it to build video streaming into their applications. Web developers can build their own video players for their sites. The second reason we love AV1 is that it delivers better compression technology than even high-efficiency codecs -- about 30% better, according to a Moscow State University study.
Over the last decade, several companies started building viable alternatives to patented video codecs. Mozilla worked on the Daala Project, Google released VP9, and Cisco created Thor for low-complexity videoconferencing. All these efforts had the same goal: to create a next-generation video compression technology that would make sharing high-quality video over the internet faster, more reliable, and less expensive. In 2015, Mozilla, Google, Cisco, and others joined with Amazon and Netflix and hardware vendors AMD, ARM, Intel, and NVIDIA to form AOMedia. As AOMedia grew, efforts to create an open video format coalesced around a new codec: AV1. AV1 is based largely on Google's VP9 code and incorporates tools and technologies from Daala, Thor, and VP10.
Mozilla loves AV1 for two reasons: AV1 is royalty-free, so anyone can use it free of charge. Software companies can use it to build video streaming into their applications. Web developers can build their own video players for their sites. The second reason we love AV1 is that it delivers better compression technology than even high-efficiency codecs -- about 30% better, according to a Moscow State University study.
What happened to V8? (Score:1)
Re: (Score:1)
vp8 (the video codec usually used in webm containers) was almost as good as h264 (the video codec usually used in mp4 containers.)
This discussion is about the next generation of video codecs.
Re:What happened to V8? (Score:5, Informative)
VP8 hasn't been forgotten so much as its development has been continued.
Re:Xiph's Daala. (Score:5, Informative)
If it helps, here's a recent blog post from Chris Montgomery on AV1's contstrainted directional enhancement filter [mozilla.org].
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The other issue is when will they start taking alpha channels (transparency) seriously. Been promised since vp8.
If they did, it could quickly become the standard in production and post production, which had to be Good thing right?
But they just don't seem to realise that. It's not (very) difficult.
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Sorry but wrong.
It has existed as a concept, and has never worked, not even supported in most codecs. This is the problem.
The test it as 'yeah we don't really care, I guess you could hack it on the side like this.. But we are not going to actually make it work properly or support it officially'
And yet it is essential to the work flow of the people actually making the content.
Very sorry sighted and such a chance to be better than mpeg group efforts.
Re: What happened to V8? (Score:2, Interesting)
So, I provide a link that literally shows how to encode alpha channel in VP8. Which I personally use quite a bit for lower thirds overlays. And all you do is push your head a little further up your ass... I can see why this whole codec adoption issue is such an uphill battle.
Re: What happened to V8? (Score:4, Informative)
So, I point out that ideas were thrown around and nothing become a standard, and it is not generally accepted and implemented throughout the VP codec family, and you repeat your link with the one method of encoding via the one codec that implements the hack and you think *I* have my head up my arse?
Perhaps you should actually read the link your own link points to, from 2012, then you may realize that this hack involved using a supplemental frame of content for Alpha, by substituting it for Y and zeroing U,V, and encoding in the same lossy way as the primary frame (and only in yuva420). I really hope you dont want any well defined alpha edges in your lower thirds..
Here is a good reference for how 'clean' this solution is:
https://lists.ffmpeg.org/pipermail/ffmpeg-user/2014-January/019283.html
I see in 2017 this VP8 hack was pushed in to an adobe export path, the discussion is enlightening as to how nicely official this has always been:
https://github.com/fnordware/AdobeWebM/issues/17
ffmpeg forced you to sample in yuva420p, son you are in subsampled hell, perhaps ok for final pass for the web, not useful for production editing.
and again, it uses the double-frame hack, without specific rate control for alpha - which is just broken. it took them years to even bother to support
the same hack in vp9..
AV1 is seems is playing a similar and foolish/broken game, trying to treat alpha channel as a separate image.
This inevitably leads to artifacts, and incompatible codec implementations.
To be clear, what I was is thought out, first class alpha support, in the official spec, that doesnt just exist as a hack though up in 2012 on a whim and half
implemented in some of the codecs.
Does that not make sense?
AVI supports alpha to about the same level of quality - actually slightly better, as RGBA is supported, it is just not standardised as to how the specify the A
doing in and out, so different applications handle it or not, randomly.
That is why people also dont use AVI for alpha content - quicktime is usually used, unless something else is forced, because it just works (tm) for codecs that claim they support it.
So, perhaps instead of being an insulting douche, you could perhaps consider that *proper* alpha support would be a good thing.
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Snicker (Score:2)
Here's a surprising fact: It costs money to watch video online, even on free sites like YouTube.
Here's a surprising fact: someone else has paid the licensing fee on my behalf, and it cost me very little and I only had to pay it once. Well, twice, I guess; Microsoft and nVidia have probably both delivered me such a decoder.
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Re:Snicker (Score:5, Interesting)
That was an interesting post by the founder of MPEG. He assumes that the rise of AOM will mean the end of video codec advancement because no on will be making money on codecs. He's completely and horribly wrong on that assumption. There is no longer a need to make money on the codec, the major content providers that provide video to the public have a massive incentive to continue to improve codecs because it literally costs them money. Google, Netflix, Apple, Facebook etc all save money if the Codec improves, and those savings can be multiples more than the licensing fees MPEG-LA collects.
The need for MPEG and MPEG-LA is over. HEVC should be a dead standard. The rise of AOM and AVC1 is a blessing to all of humanity. A free codec, developed and supported by the very people broadcasting and producing all the video. The very people with the largest incentive to continue to improve the codec because every byte saved saves them money.
MPEG and MPEG-LA should wander off into the night, they simply aren't needed anymore and have been destroyed by the same patents they sought to exploit.
Re:Snicker (Score:4, Interesting)
What's really sad is that the patent pools are so packed with greed that they'd rather crap their pants and die an ignoble death than offer a better deal. They will not be missed.
Re: (Score:3)
Once more open source proves to be effective for innovation. I'm surprised that Chiariglione still seams to believe that proprietary software is the only model for progress. I think reality has shown us, for quite a while now, that this is not the case. On the contrary. He seems stuck in the past.
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Here's a surprising fact: It costs money to watch video online, even on free sites like YouTube.
Here's a surprising fact: someone else has paid the licensing fee on my behalf, and it cost me very little and I only had to pay it once. Well, twice, I guess; Microsoft and nVidia have probably both delivered me such a decoder.
Oh don't worry, value is being extracted out of you in lieu of a monetary payment. TANSTAAFL.
Waiting for the patent trolls (Score:5, Insightful)
What is of more concern to me is how carefully AV1 has been constructed in terms of its coding tools to avoid patent trolling and patent submarining (e.g. Rambus at JEDEC with DDR). This is a very serious and very technically complex issue, as any company could easily assert patents on AV1 if they feel there is infringement on their claims as pertains to any of the coding tools. There are increasingly limited ways of dealing with spatiotemporal entropy in non-infringing ways that do not involve exponential increases in gates or CPU cycles.
A recent and simple example of this is the MPEG-LA claiming they license patents related to the MPEG-DASH streaming framework. MPEG-DASH is, essentially, an XML schema for a streaming manifest combined with either MPEG-4 Part 12 (the MP4 container originally specified by Apple as the MOV format), or MPEG-2 Transport Streams encapsulating H.264 video. Nobody on the DASH Industry Forum really thought that MPEG-DASH would be subject to this type of activity, yet magically MPEG-LA began waiving it agreement around about two years ago.
As a result, many in the industry have held onto the virtually universally-supported HTTP Live Streaming, which is an M3U playlist with tag extensions and MPEG-2 Transport Stream container for the codecs. Even that standard developed by Apple has never become a fully ratified within the IETF, and nobody knows if the same thing will happen there either.
Incidentally, any time Google has presented VP8 or VP9 at previous conferences and is asked about patents, they avoid answering questions and the audience usually laughs. I've seen it personally, and I think it's the industry's cynicism for the various patent holders and some of their past actions. Where it becomes critical is for silicon suppliers, whose front-loaded costs are now in the neighborhood of nine figures to launch some SoCs, and for content distributors, who invest a tremendous amount of time and money encoding all of the required profiles for streaming to new codecs. Commitment to efficient hardware acceleration by them for the codec is risky, as they could easily be legally enjoined from selling their products if they didn't get their patent licenses in order, and this would also leave content holders scrambling to fall back to already-established codecs.
I will admit I'm cynical here too. While I'd love to see a patent-free open standard, I'm not optimistic that someone will not come out of the woodwork claiming infringement on a key coding tool. I wish Google and the rest of the AV1 participants luck. They'll need it.
Re:Waiting for the patent trolls (Score:5, Informative)
What is of more concern to me is how carefully AV1 has been constructed in terms of its coding tools to avoid patent trolling and patent submarining
I don't think you need to worry. When Google announced VP8, MPEG-LA publicly announced that they were setting up a patent pool for it; they encouraged all the patent holders who VP8 infringed to step forward and add their patents to the pool.
Nobody ever came up with anything, and after over a year, MPEG-LA accepted a small amount of money from Google in exchange for a promise to never sue over VP8. No patents, no royalties, just a one-time payment; that was pretty much unconditional victory for Google and VP8. The news coverage called this a "licensing agreement" but it was more like "here, take a small amount of money and go away forever."
https://techcrunch.com/2013/03/07/google-and-mpeg-la-sign-licensing-agreement-covering-googles-vp8-video-codec-clearing-the-way-for-wider-adoption/ [techcrunch.com]
When VP8 was first announced, many self-appointed experts here on Slashdot declared confidently that it just had to infringe on H.264 patents, as a reading of the standard revealed numerous similarities. I am not a patent expert but I was pretty sure they were mistaken about this... Google spent something like a year after they licensed the technology before they released the open-source VP8, and I assumed that they had paid patent lawyers to go over the standard and make sure it didn't infringe on anything. Also, it looked to me like the original developers of the code had deliberately studied the existing patents and implemented something just different enough not to infringe.
It may be possible that a patent could pop up from seemingly nowhere, some weird patent nobody was paying attention to, and AV1 would be found to infringe upon it. If this scenario is possible for AV1, what makes it impossible for H.265? In fact, I'd argue it might be more likely for H.265, which is a complicated thing to which many companies tried to contribute (so they could get a share of royalties). I would be interested to hear an expert's opinion on whether AV1 is less complex than H.265... I bet that it is. And more complexity would suggest greater danger from overlooked patents.
As for submarine patents [wikipedia.org], again I am not very worried. The USA changed its patent laws between 1995 through 2000 to prevent abuses like submarine patents. Patents are 20 years from the date of filing, so playing games with paperwork extensions can't keep a patent alive forever anymore; and since 2000 patent filings are public, so the secrecy needed for submarine patents is gone.
So unless someone has a suitable patent application, filed before the year 1995, that they have kept alive with paperwork wizardry in the patent office, and nobody knows about it, and they get it granted... unless all of that is true, it shouldn't be possible for a submarine patent to torpedo AV1.
Re:Waiting for the patent trolls (Score:4, Informative)
and since 2000 patent filings are public, so the secrecy needed for submarine patents is gone.
Since 2000 the default has been to publish a patent application around the 18-month mark, but under 35 U.S.C. Section 122(b)(2)(B)(i) [cornell.edu] the inventor can override that by filing a request for nonpublication, certifying that they're not seeking foreign patents.on that same invention. So inventors can still submarine if they're willing to limit themselves to U.S. patents.
Re: (Score:1)
As a result, many in the industry have held onto the virtually universally-supported HTTP Live Streaming, which is an M3U playlist with tag extensions and MPEG-2 Transport Stream container for the codecs. Even that standard developed by Apple has never become a fully ratified within the IETF, and nobody knows if the same thing will happen there either.
HTTP Live Streaming definition now lives in RFC 8216 [ietf.org]. Yes, it is informational, but it's there.
From the law offices of Larry, Moe, and Curly (Score:3, Funny)
Armchair lawyers are hilarious morons.
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I suggest we appoint him to the Armchair Supreme Court.
We have the authority.
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Armchair lawyers are hilarious morons.
Oh boy you're in trouble now. He's going to sue the living fuck out of you.
Re: (Score:1)
LOL!
ROTFL!
Sadly, in the real world you can only sue for actual damages.
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Not necessarily, he might be The Walt Disney Company.
Second thoughts, belay that. He's not quite delusional enough.
AV1 and broadcast TV? (Score:2)
Can anyone explain why all the players in broadcast TV aren't pushing to have the next-generation broadcast TV standards (ATSC and DVB-T and stuff) using AV1 instead of H.265/HEVC as the replacement for MPEG2 and MPEG4/H.264? I would have thought that (like everyone else involved with video) the broadcast TV people would be very attracted to a codec without all the license fees associated with H.265/HEVC. Is there something about H.265/HEVC that makes it better for broadcast TV than AV1? Is it simply that A
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
Can anyone explain why all the players in broadcast TV aren't pushing to have the next-generation broadcast TV standards (ATSC and DVB-T and stuff) using AV1 instead of H.265/HEVC as the replacement for MPEG2 and MPEG4/H.264?
Because the bitstream was codified in the last couple of months.
Maybe future standards will have it, but it was unavailable until 2018.
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As mentioned by others, it's not finalized and tested enough for the new ATSC 3 standard.
Also, remember that ATSC is the same organization that famously rejected the superior COFDM modulation when designing ATSC 1. ATSC has only now conceded that COFDM was the right choice all along.
That poor decision to use 8VSB instead of COFDM is why ATSC 1 suffers from multipath and it's also why multiple transmitters can't share frequencies. Sharing frequencies is something that the competing DVB-T standard has alway
Re: (Score:2)
The skilled workers know what they are doing with the workflow they have.
MPEG-2 patents are expired (Score:2)
But I don't think anyone wants to start at about 16 MBit/s for decent quality video, and 40 MBit/s for typical "high-def" video. (UHD and 4K would be beyond that)
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Why not? There is a reason why MPEG 1 layer 3 still is used today, even 'though there are far better audio codex in existence.
An average consumer only needs 'good enough'. 'Exceptional' and a pain in the a** to use freely (beer) will always lose out. This applies to AV codex, UHD Blu-rays, etc. Content creators and distributors will only pay for licenses if the bandwidth they save, really save them that much more money. And the largest content distributors use their 'patent unencumbered' 'free' codex, wheth
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There is a reason why MPEG 1 layer 3 still is used today, even 'though there are far better audio codex in existence.
The reason is that audio is relatively simple. Hell, uncompressed CD quality audio is only 10 megabytes a minute. Uncompressed video is a huge monster and a lot more complex to handle, thus we're still years away from an actual "good enough (as judged by people who actually work with digital video)" compression codec, though HVEC comes the closest so far.
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An average consumer only needs 'good enough'. That's the point I'm making. I'm not talking about people that actually work with digital video. Those can make an educated decision and take a 'lesser' codec while investing in more storage, for example. Or pay for licensing... ... and used XVid for final compression... HVEC wasn't even developed by then. I don't do it
And, yes, I have recorded, captured and edited video in the past, though that's a bit ago... mostly MJPEG and MPEG-2 stuff in 576i and some 720p
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I'd hardly say it's "well on the way" (Score:4, Interesting)
It's only just reached 1.0 and the encoding time of the codec is mind blowingly slow. It makes encoding HEVC look extremely fast.
I'm praying that AV1 takes off in a big big way, I like the idea of a superior codec, saving me disk space and being open source and free, my inner PC hippie is into that.
I don't know if it does every single feature HEVC or 264 does mind you, it might be crap at 10bit or 12bit or something, I just don't know, but my understanding is, it's fairly good.
None the less, it's not going to be replacing anything for several years. You need to wait multiple generations for smartphones, tablets, laptops, PCs, TVs and god knows what else to have new AV1 capable chips in them. Plus the encoder needs obvious, intense optimisation. Honestly the litmus test is when the piracy teams (or at least a few hardcore anime groups) start using the codec.
When I can replace some of my stuff on my NAS, with something at least 33% smaller and identical or better quality, I'm much more interested.
I do wish them well and I hope these hype articles continue, but patience will be a virtue here.
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In my personal situation, I'm willing to adopt earlier, since I use a proper HTPC as my primary device to watch media. It's just the rippers who need to start adopting it. I'd estimate a bare minimum of 18 months for that too though, considering encoder speed :/
Hardware Acceleration for Consumer Devices? (Score:2)
So, when will there be hardware acceleration to make high res playback viable on consumer devices? When will I be able to play 1080p or better on AV1 to my: Android/IOS phone/tablet, media box, DVD/BD player, TV, etc. Just about any TV or BD player for sale these days can handle a USB drive with H.264 video but H.265 support is still pretty rare. Also, how much computer do you need to smoothly stream 1080p or better on AV1? Assuming the average CPU won't cut it, is acceleration available yet on many gra
summary is dishonest (Score:1)
In the summary it says "H.264 web video works everywhere".
This is in fact quite untrue. H.264 does not work on Linux out-of-the-box.
I run a business on Linux and have even written device drivers for it and embedded it into special hardware, so I'm not some babbling idiot who cannot code or follow install instructions. It is certainly true that I will not download code from sites I do not trust and then allow that code to run on any system on my company network. I don't remember if it was that there was no t
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If you are against binary closed blobs, then I guess windows is a no go for you and your special unamed hardware.
I've had no problem using kodi or vlc to watch x264.
In fact, x264 playback is even in Debian without needing to install extra repos (and unless Debian has changed allot over the years, if Debian feels it's free and safe enough to use, I'm sure Ubuntu and most the other main distros play it just fine.)
https://wiki.debian.org/Multim... [debian.org]
past-time my arse (Score:2)
It's pastime. Does anyone here even English?
Changes of an Era (Score:1)
As history has taught us, this is just one of many technologies that derived from the 80s that is in the process to be possibly fast tracked, and replaced for a loyalty-free variant. What is interesting is it took the mass collaboration of multiple groups to put together a newer, and better codec for overall support. Imagine if other technologies were affected the same as they age.