Intel Releases Open Source Encoder for Next-Gen AV1 Codec
Intel published its own open source CPU-based encoder for the next-generation and royalty-free AV1 codec (a codec is a program for encoding / decoding a digital data stream or signal). Intel is one of the main founding members of the Alliance for Open Media (AOM), the non-profit group behind the development of the AV1 codec.
Intel's new encoder, called Scalable Video Technology AOMedia Video 1 (SVT-AV1), aims to fill the role of a good CPU-based encoding software tool until dedicated AV1 encoders are ready for prime time. The encoder supports the Linux, macOS and Windows operating systems.
A CPU-based encoder requires a beefy system, so it's no surprise the real-time encoding specifications for SVT-AV1 are no joke. SVT-AV1 requires Skylake-generation or newer Xeon processors with at least 112 threads and at least 48GB of RAM for 10-bit 4K video encoding. Outside of video streaming companies, these type of systems are out of reach for most. Consumers that want to encode AV1 videos may want to wait for dedicated AV1 encoding hardware to appear, which make take another year or so.
Here's a recent 42-minute talk (no transcript) about AOMedia Video 1 (AV1). Hardware support for AV1 should begin appearing around 2020.
Related: Alliance for Open Media Announces Release of AOMedia Video Codec 1.0 (AV1) Specification
YouTube and Netflix Upload AV1-Encoded Videos for Testing
Related Stories
The Alliance for Open Media, which includes the likes of Amazon, Apple, ARM, Cisco, Facebook, Google, IBM, Intel, Microsoft, Mozilla, Netflix, and Nvidia, among others, has announced the release of the AOMedia Video Codec 1.0 (AV1) specification. The new open source and royalty-free codec is based on elements of other codecs that were recently in development: Daala, Thor, and VP10.
Tests of the codec have found that it can reduce the bitrate by 10-40% at the same quality when compared to VP9 and H.265/HEVC. The difference is more apparent at higher resolutions such as 4K/2160p.
By delivering 4K UHD video at an average of 30 percent greater compression over competing codecs according to independent member tests, AV1 enables more screens to display the vivid images, deeper colors, brighter highlights, darker shadows, and other enhanced UHD imaging features that consumers have come to expect – all while using less data.
“We expect that the installed base of 4K television sets to reach 300 million by the end of 2019 and therefore there is already latent demand for UHD services over today’s infrastructure. AV1 will be widely supported across the entire content chain, especially including services. We forecast rapid introduction of AV1 content delivery to help the widespread proliferation of UHD streaming,” said Paul Gray, a Research Director at IHS Markit, a global business information provider.
Also at Engadget, Tom's Hardware, and Advanced Television.
YouTube, Netflix Publish First Videos Transcoded Using AV1
YouTube has uploaded about a dozen videos that were transcoded using the AV1 codec, which was introduced earlier this year. The test sequences are expected to give Google as well as developers of browsers, decoders, and encoders an understanding how to better use the new royalty-free codec. Netflix is also testing AV1 codec and offers everyone a video in different resolutions and featuring various color depth.
To date, YouTube has added 14 videos transcoded using the AV1 codec to a special playlist. The list includes various types of content, including a talking-head program, musical clips, action videos, and demo footages from RED and Blackmagic Design. YouTube says that this type of content represents a large share of videos hosted by the service, so it makes a lot of sense for the company to learn how they behave on various devices in terms of performance, power consumption, and overall stability.
At present, AV1 support is available only in those Chrome 70 and Firefox Nightly builds released after September 12th. Meanwhile, the test videos use AV1 for resolutions that are lower than 480p, underscoring the fact that they are meant to test decoders that, for the moment, are going to be anything but optimized. This is on top of the fact that at the moment there are no hardware decoders that support AV1, so everything is being handled in software by the CPU to begin with. Eventually the codec will be used for content in 4K+ ultra-high-def resolutions, along with HDR and wide color gamuts.
Also at 9to5Google:
Users on Chrome 70 and Firefox Nightly builds after September 13th can test it by making sure media.av1.enabled and media.mediasource.experimental.enabled prefs are set.
chrome://flags/#enable-av1-decoder
Once running a supported browser, users can head to YouTube's TestTube experiments list and select "'Prefer AV1 for SD."
Related: VLC 3.0.0 Released, With Better Hardware Decoding and Support for HDR, 360-Degree Video, Chromecast
Alliance for Open Media Announces Release of AOMedia Video Codec 1.0 (AV1) Specification
Realtek Demonstrates RTD2893: A Platform for 8K Ultra HD TVs
Just like with any other major transitions, the shift to 8K Ultra HD TVs will require not only new display panels (and even new display technologies), new cables, and new media, but also new codecs as well as new SoCs. To this end, Realtek demonstrated its first platform for 8K televisions and Ultra HD set-top-boxes/players at Computex.
Realtek's RTD2983 SoC can support decoding 8K resolution videos encoded using the AV1, HEVC, and VP9 codecs. The chip can process all HDR formats, reduce noise, upscale, and perform all the other functions common for processors for televisions and digital media players. The RTD2983 has PCIe and USB 3.0 interfaces, it can receive data via an HDMI 2.1 48 Gbps interface, and transmit pixel data over Vby1 wires. One advantage the RTD2983 has is embedded memory, which eliminates necessity to use external DRAM devices, lowering the BOM costs for finished products.
Vby1 = V-by-One HS.
AOMedia Video 1 (AV1).
See also: Vimeo adds support for the royalty-free AV1 video codec
Related: A New Wave of 8K TVs is Coming
YouTube and Netflix Upload AV1-Encoded Videos for Testing
LG Announces its 2019 OLED TV Lineup, Plus an 8K Monstrosity
Intel Releases Open Source Encoder for AV1 Codec
Google reportedly requires new Android TV devices support AV1 video decoding
While it's clear that AV1 is gaining popularity for online streaming and media consumption, only a handful of streaming services to date encode some of their content in AV1. YouTube streams some videos encoded in AV1 on select Android TV devices, Vimeo started to encode some of the videos on its Staff Picks channel in AV1, and Netflix streams select titles in AV1 if the service's data saving mode is turned on. Google, one of the biggest proponents of AV1, recently announced its plans to use AV1 for "the whole range of Google's video applications and services".
For more widespread AV1 adoption to happen, however, there needs to be more devices with hardware to decode AV1, which is a necessity to ensure power-efficient and speedy video playback. To that end, Google is requiring that all new Android TV devices launching after March 31, 2021, support AV1 video decoding. This requirement is said to apply to all new TV products launching with Android 10 or Android 11 later this year, according to an internal slide reviewed by XDA. This slide is part of a presentation that Google held for its Android TV partners last year. Therefore, we do not know if this deadline is up-to-date, and we did not receive a response from Google when reached for comment. Shortly after the publication of this article, it was brought to our attention that Protocol's Janko Roettgers first broke this news in a newsletter dated October 29, 2020.
There's more evidence behind Google making AV1 support a requirement for all future Android TV devices. The company reportedly already requires AV1 video decoding support for all 4K HDR and 8K Android TV devices that launch with Android 10. Industry insider AndroidTV Guide points out that many recently launched 4K HDR Android TV devices ship with an AV1-compatible SoC, such as the MediaTek T30/T31/T32 or the Realtek RTD2851M. TCL's X915 8K TV, for instance, supports AV1 decoding thanks to its Realtek RTD2851M SoC combined with the RTD2893, making it one of the first TVs to support streaming 8K videos from YouTube. Since Google is already pushing high-end TVs to support AV1, it makes sense that they're soon extending this requirement to all Android TV products, which Google is able to do since it controls the Android TV platform.
"Android TV devices" includes actual TVs along with ARM set-top boxes that plug into TVs and run Android TV.
AOMedia Video 1 (AV1).
Also at Notebookcheck.
Related:
Intel Releases Open Source Encoder for AV1 Codec
YouTube and Netflix Upload AV1-Encoded Videos for Testing
Alliance for Open Media Announces Release of AOMedia Video Codec 1.0 (AV1) Specification
(Score: 2) by richtopia on Wednesday February 06 2019, @03:24AM (1 child)
There is a row for AV1 on the compatibility chart, but no support yet:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intel_Quick_Sync_Video [wikipedia.org]
(Score: 2) by takyon on Wednesday February 06 2019, @03:41AM
Your guess is as good as mine. I'm expecting AMD APUs to include it as late as 2021 since they have lagged behind the desktop CPUs and GPUs.
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(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Wednesday February 06 2019, @03:28AM (15 children)
We've been playing audio visual stuff for decades now. Meaning, of course, that we've played AV on some rather lame hardware. As a rule, if you have decent speakers, and a decent monitor, playback quality is satisfactory, good, or excellent, even with ancient computers. Now, a "CPU-based encoder requires a beefy system"???? This suggests to me that AV1 is just so much bloatware.
Wonder if I can find my old Sony Walkman? No video, but the sound was good in 1972 or thereabouts.
(Score: 4, Informative) by takyon on Wednesday February 06 2019, @03:38AM (4 children)
These early software encoders are for those who really need it, like big companies handling lots of video or needing to test out the codec. They can afford two 28-core Intel CPUs or a 64-core AMD Epyc.
Video compression becomes more computationally complex as we attempt to get lower bitrates for a given quality. However, you will see dedicated decoding and encoding support added to new GPUs, APUs, etc. probably starting in 2020.
Encoding is much more difficult than decoding, which is what you do for playback. Don't mix them up. There is now a fast software decoder in development, dav1d [jbkempf.com].
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(Score: 2) by DannyB on Wednesday February 06 2019, @03:02PM (1 child)
I think TFA said 112 cores please. And 48 GB RAM.
When trying to solve a problem don't ask who suffers from the problem, ask who profits from the problem.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Wednesday February 06 2019, @04:21PM
112 logical cores, aka threads. 2 CPUs * 28 cores * 2 threads per core = 112 threads.
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(Score: 2) by sjames on Thursday February 07 2019, @05:39AM (1 child)
It still says something about the encoding complexity. I can encode h.265 in better than real time with an 8 core Opteron system.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Thursday February 07 2019, @06:06AM
Further optimizations could be made to the encoder. Intel likely slapped its encoder together using code it used for its HEVC encoder (this is info I got from the linked video talk in TFS). But in a world where you can have 16-32 cores for relatively cheap, we've finally found something to do with those cores. 16-core Ryzen is probably coming this year. I think we could see another doubling of cores on the TSMC "5nm" [anandtech.com] node.
https://rethinkresearch.biz/articles/ao-media-looks-ahead-to-av2-as-av1-picks-up-momentum/ [rethinkresearch.biz]
I'm excited to see what AV2 will bring to the table. Some potential features were dropped during AV1 development [wikipedia.org] because they would have made performance even worse than it is now:
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(Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 06 2019, @03:56AM (7 children)
The key word you missed is in bold above. Encoder.
The remainder of your comment refers to a decoder
Those are not the same things.
Video encoders have always needed beefier systems than the corresponding decoder.
(Score: 3, Touché) by Pino P on Wednesday February 06 2019, @06:43AM (6 children)
You'll still need a system beefy enough to run a real-time encoder if you want to record TV, participate in video chat or screen sharing, etc.
(Score: 2) by stretch611 on Wednesday February 06 2019, @08:46AM
But, it depends on the quality of what you are encoding, as well as the compression rate (as previously mentioned.)
10 years ago (roughly) it took a beefy machine to run Handbrake and encode a DVD down to a roughly 750MB file in realtime. My current (2-yr old) laptop can do the same in less than 1/2 hour. You could always encode the DVD down with a less beefy machine even 10 years ago, it just wasn't realtime. I have not tested, but I am guessing that my current laptop can at least encode a 720p broadcast in realtime... not sure about greater quality though. (Remember, twice the vertical and horizontal resolution requires 4x the amount of data that needs to be manipulated.) Also remember, that it depends on if your GPU has encoding hardware as well. It can be done without a hardware encoder, but again, it just takes longer.
As for video chat, heck, smartphones have been doing that for 10 years, and webcams have been out longer. Of course, the big difference is the quality and resolution. I play D&D through Roll20.net... They have built in audio/video streaming through the browser with the WebRTC platform. So video chat in realtime is not an issue at all for modern computers... even in a browser; but you will not be doing it in 4k video. Screen sharing takes up even less because you do not need a very high frame rate for that.
As I did mention 4k video... I doubt many people will be encoding that and streaming it in realtime. At today's compression rates, are their even that many people in the US that have the bandwidth to handle it (even just the download bandwidth, let alone upload which many ISPs still manipulate to be 1/10th the speed of downloading.) (And this is probably a huge factor in why intel is promoting a new codec, for better compression of higher resolution video.)
Now with 5 covid vaccine shots/boosters altering my DNA :P
(Score: 1) by pTamok on Wednesday February 06 2019, @09:19AM (4 children)
You'll still need a system beefy enough to run a real-time encoder if you want to record TV, [participate in video chat or screen sharing], etc.
No you don't. For recording for later viewing, all you need a system capable of storing the bitstream for later processing. Or even a system capable of partially encoding the bitstream, and finishing the encoding later.
A good compromise is to run a fast lossless compression algorithm on the raw bitstream. That allows you to do reasonable compression, and can be played back immediately. You run an intensive lossy compressor on the losslessly compressed bitstream as a background task. All you need it 'a bit' of storage as a buffer. For bonus points, make the intensive encoder able to operate on the output of the fast encoder without needing to decompress it to recompress it.
As for video chat and screen sharing, use existing hardware encoders for other codec algorithms and wait until the hardware encoders for AV1 become available.
(Score: 2) by Pino P on Wednesday February 06 2019, @02:11PM (3 children)
What lossless algorithm works on MPEG-2 or MPEG-4 AVC video or Dolby Digital or AAC audio in broadcasts? I thought one was supposed to turn off, say, web Gzip encoding for these file types because compressing already compressed data doesn't save anything.
So the amount that you can record per day, or "a bit" as you put it, depends on how much you can transcode in a day's CPU time. It might not affect people who DVR only about one or two shows, but multi-viewer households might have a lot more shows scheduled to capture and transcode to SD for playback on offline mobile devices.
That wouldn't allow communication between a user of free software and a user of an Apple device, as I haven't heard of Apple's plans to implement any free codecs other than eventually AV1. Apple has gone all-in on MPEG since 2001, when QuickTime 5.0 introduced Sorenson Video 3 based on an early draft of AVC.
(Score: 1) by pTamok on Wednesday February 06 2019, @05:23PM (2 children)
I think you are missing the point. If you have a 'raw' bitstream, it is not MPEG-2 or MPEG-4 AVC encoded. If you have a bitstream that is already compressed, you are not looking for an encoder, but a transcoder.
If Apple don't want to support open standards, shrug. AFAIK they support WebRTC by supporting the Opus audio codec and H.264 for video [bloggeek.me], and it looks like VP8 has been added to Webkit/Safari. [webkit.org]
Have a nice day.
(Score: 2) by Pino P on Wednesday February 06 2019, @06:33PM
Precisely. Someone doing a lot of HD to SD transcoding would need to use older encoders (x264 or libvpx) until AV1 encoding hardware or more time-efficient AV1 encoding software becomes widespread.
(Score: 3, Informative) by takyon on Wednesday February 06 2019, @09:04PM
Apple is a founding member [aomedia.org] of the Alliance for Open Media. So it's a sure bet that they will support AV1 when they are ready to do so.
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(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Wednesday February 06 2019, @09:09AM
Dude, you know not whereof you speak. Yes, MPEG2 videos work just fine on ancient hardware. And they take up a fuckton more space to store or bandwidth to stream for the same quality. They're not a little bit smaller, they're less than a tenth the size at the same quality. This actually matters since our ISPs still think DSL is broadband.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Wednesday February 06 2019, @03:04PM
Some codes are asymetric. It takes massive power to encode the video into a high quality compact format, which can then be easily and cheaply decoded.
When trying to solve a problem don't ask who suffers from the problem, ask who profits from the problem.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 06 2019, @05:29AM (3 children)
Okay, so its a lot of samn work to do in realtime, but not everything needs to be encoded in real time.
If I throw it on an old PPC to reencode a DVD to a tenth its size, do I care if it takes a few weeks?
(Score: 2) by bob_super on Wednesday February 06 2019, @06:07AM
The broadcasters/carriers who need it done in real time are shelling thousands of dollars for a few channels of h.264 or JPEG2000. Today.
(Score: 2) by Pino P on Wednesday February 06 2019, @02:14PM
Say you borrow one DVD per week, and you have only one machine on which to transcode with no opportunity for parallel speedup by using multiple cores. Then "a few weeks" to transcode each one causes the backlog to pile up.
(Score: 2) by richtopia on Wednesday February 06 2019, @04:52PM
Live streaming is such a major source of content today software encoders are very relevant. Even with H.264, people streaming Twitch will use software encoders instead of hardware encoders because of the higher compression rates. With streaming bandwidth is a major obstacle, so AV1's better compression could provide an incentive to migrate to the AV1 codec.
This use case will be one of the hardest to fulfil: someone streaming to Twich or Youtube probably cannot justify the specs called out in the summary. This use-case also is typically bandwidth limited, and therefore can receive the most benefit from the AV1 codec. The one thing I see missing from the summary/article is the hardware requirements for lower resolutions.
If anyone is interested in streaming software, I would recommend OBS https://obsproject.com/wiki/System-Requirements [obsproject.com] . Their main use-case is gamers but it is cross platform and low latency so it can be used for most applications. I make local recordings and leverage Intel Quick Sync on my IvyBridge processor with minimal performance impact.
(Score: 0, Disagree) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 06 2019, @10:24AM (1 child)
-- https://github.com/OpenVisualCloud/SVT-AV1/blob/master/LICENSE.md [github.com]
Who knows what the hell that means? Probably nobody and thus lawyers will love it as it means they get to fleece people so hard.
(Score: 3, Informative) by takyon on Wednesday February 06 2019, @12:39PM
It just means more patents can be added to the Alliance for Open Media pool, and you don't infringe on them by using the codec.
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