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Comment by Ace17 | Hacker News Reader

(AV1 dev here) Yes, this is true.

This codec is developed by the Alliance for Open Media, whose goal is to provide a patent-free video codec (more acurately, a video codec under a patent-umbrella protection). Let's not reproduce the HEVC fiasco (see "HEVC advance licensing terms" for more info).

AV1 is still in development at this time (the bitstream format changes slightly almost every day). However, the compression performance (VQ) is already very good ; and lots of huge companies are part of the Alliance ( Amazon, Google, Microsoft, Nvidia, Mozilla, ... see http://aomedia.org/about-us/ )

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Of course Apple is nowhere to be seen. Bad enough their refusal to support VP9 is locking Safari and Apple TV users out of 4K Youtube, it's only going to keep getting worse going forward.

There's no reason to use a Mac anymore unless you're targeting iOS. The performance is better, the tools are better, the battery life is longer (for laptops), the input devices are better, and the connectivity is better for Linux development machines. Switch (TM).

The UI experience is however atrocious. Anything is better then the death by a thousand papercuts on Linux.

I use Mac OS, Linux and Windows to roughly the same degree. It's all fine.

I spend most of my time developing (server) software in Mac OS, and I'd rather do it in Linux, since it seems obviously more suited to it. I'm glad I don't have to do it in Windows, since it seems obviously less suited to it.

But it's all minor stuff. Overall it's all fine.

The idea that a Linux laptop even comes close to a Mac one is a pretty laughable statement to make. The driver situation is extremely poor, the trackpads on almost all PC laptops are inferior, the applications are far better on a Mac (i.e. you can't run Photoshop/Office on Linux) and how is connectivity better ?

wifi on macbooks is notoriously awful, and has been for the last 10 years or so.

I've been quite impressed with the 7260AC chipset in the T440 and newer. Places where I used to get 30Mbps down, it'll hold well above 100Mbps, with the same exact 1st gen AC Access Point.

That being said, its worth it to swap a T460 trackpad in to get a decent trackpad. IIRC they're sub-$15.

Yea, Apple seems to be the only major holdout for royalty-free formats in general at this point.

Again we don't know if AV1 is royalty free because it hasn't been tested yet. VP8 infringed on a number of MPEG-LA patents and would've required a license. VP9 could likely be the same.

And H.265 has been the industry standard for a number of years now shipping in hardware from Intel, Nvidia, GoPro, Sony etc.

According to http://aomedia.org/about-us/ , Intel and Nvidia (and ARM, AMD, Cisco, Broadcom, etc.) are all on board with AV1.

Intel, Nvidia, ARM etc have been shipping HEVC hardware since 2015.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_Efficiency_Video_Coding#2...

I'm not sure what that statement is intending to conclude. AV1 is intended to compete not with H.265, but with H.265's eventual theoretical successor.

> Again we don't know if AV1 is royalty free because it hasn't been tested yet. VP8 infringed on a number of MPEG-LA patents and would've required a license. VP9 could likely be the same.

On the contrary, we know that nobody has tried to set up a patent pool for VP9 or otherwise ask for royalties. On the other hand, new patent pools for HEVC keep popping up. You could pay one and then be asked to pay another. https://blog.streamingmedia.com/2017/05/velos-media-hevc-pat...

Well, I want to be the old grumpy guy here: just don't buy their stuff.

Also don't buy a PS4, Xbox, GoPro, Sony/Canon/Panasonic camera etc.

Or watch TV in Europe or Japan.

H.265 has been ahead for a number of years so obviously quite a few products exclusively support it.

Microsoft[1] and Sony[2] devices support VP9, and there is no reason to believe they won't support AV1 as well. GP was obviously talking about consuming video, so GoPro isn't relevant.

[1] https://www.google.com/amp/s/blogs.windows.com/msedgedev/201...

[2] https://www.flatpanelshd.com/news.php?subaction=showfull&id=...

The PS4, XBox and the Sony range of cameras do not support VP9.

Not sure why you brought up Edge and Android TVs.

PS4 Pro supports VP9[1] as does XBox One X[2]. The point is that all of these companies now support VP9 in their consumer video consumption devices and will support free codecs going forward. Apple is the only holdout.

[1] https://www.flatpanelshd.com/review.php?id=1482404506&subact...

[2] http://www.tomshardware.com/news/xbox-scorpio-engine-soc-det...

As someone working in the web live-streaming space I will hold my breath until I see Apple on that list. There's always a party-breaker among the big players when it comes to supporting new tech. And then there we go again transcoding and adding software layers to make it work for everyone.

If it is implemented in Firefox, that means it works on OS X.

Apple is free to continue to devalue their products by refusing to support features, just as its customers are free to spend their money elsewhere.

> And then there we go again transcoding and adding software layers to make it work for everyone.

If that is what you want to do, that will work. If users want to support a platform that limits them to lesser quality, let them. Be explicit about why they are getting lesser quality.

Your software is not part of the Apple ecosystem, Apple is part of your software's ecosystem.

There's only so many times you can answer a client "this won't work on Safari" before adding another layer feels inevitable.

The answer is not "this won't work in Safari", but "Safari is specific, that would be extra XX manhours, is it worth to you?"

It is only so much, that the clients are willing to invest extra into Safari, iPhones and iPads notwithstanding.

So transcode for Safari, and be explicit that they are getting lesser quality simply because Apple refuses to let Safari play better content.

Apple never supported any free codec, be it Vorbis, Opus, VP8 or VP9. I don't see why they would change their attitude with AV1.

Nobody is going to wait for them.

They actually added Opus support for WebRTC, and more recently FLAC support in iOS 11.

If they added the Opus support, then only locked inside Safari for a specific use, where they have to use it.

You cannot open Opus stream in Quicktime, or in Quick Preview in Finder, for example. Or even play web stream in Safari, like you can with AAC.

There's a problem I don't see anyone addressing here, which is the encoding speed. It is especially important for your use case.

I thought that AV1 is going to be the Opus of video codecs, but with the encoding being so compute intensive, how to you plan to tackle the problem?

The claim is that it's more efficient than h264, but I assume that's comparing software decoders? With h264 hardware decoding pretty ubiquitous on current CPUs, it seems like it will continue to have a substantial advantage for the foreseeable future. Is the AV1 team pursuing hardware implementations down the line?

Its more efficient than h265, actually. It doesn't have anything to do with decoders, its the encoders that are more efficient (in bitrate/quality metrics, not frames encoded per second).

AV1 has heavy interest from hardware companies: AMD. ARM, Broadcom, Intel, NVIDIA, and Realtek, among others are already members [0].

http://aomedia.org/about-us/

Who cares if AV1 has heavy "interest".

H.265 hardware decoding has been shipping for at least a year on major platforms. All of those companies you listed ship H.265 hardware today. And then you have companies like Apple and Sony who are H.265 only.

Who cares that Apple and Sony are H.265 only?

You are free to pay extra license fees for H.265 anyway. Your competition will not.

What ? Users aren't paying licensing fees for H.265.

And the competition are all part of H.265 as well e.g. Microsoft, Intel.

There are TWO patent pools for HEVC, MPEG LA and HEVC Advance, plus patent holders that are part of neither and you have to negotiate on your own.

Even if you are patent holder, you still have to pay and then you will receive back your share. It doesn't mean it is free for you.

On the content producer side, while MPEG LA waives fees there, HEVC Advance does not. If you are not fta broadcast/cable/sat tv provider or free-to-user streaming provider, you are going to cash up per title or subscriber/month.

So in competition, I meant yours. If you are providing a non-free video content, and you insist on HEVC, it is going to cost you. Your competition with VP9 or AV1 won't have this cost.

I can pretty much imagine, that those using devices without VP9/AV1 support will be relegated either to software decoding, or will have to pay premium for their hw accelerated stream.

> There are TWO patent pools for HEVC, MPEG LA and HEVC Advance,

Don't forget Velos Media (the third one!).

Ah, thanks for clarifying. Maybe just my bias but when I see 'efficiency' w/r/t media codecs, I presume you're talking about decoder efficiency, because that's much more important for a popular codec IMO.

(Also, down-votes for asking a relevant question. Classy crowd here...)

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