I hope AV1 will get the kind of love that got us the x264 encoder.
EDIT: my timeline was slightly off and reworded is make it clear I understand the difference between spec and implementation.
x264 is a codec. An implementation of H.264 standard.
x264 is loved because it is very optimized and fine-tuned. There are plenty of H.264 implementations that aren't.
We're probably not going to see AV1 implementations on the same level as x264 for at least a few years.
Assuming that VP10 shares a significant base design with VP9 it would not be surprising if some part of VP9 sillicons decoders could be leveraged on customer hardware, while awaiting for more dedicated circuits.
But on the software end, libaom (AOM reference implementation) is indeed a fork of libvpx. But this library is not broadly considered a good implementation, even for VP9. Pehaps the guys behind EVE for VP9 [1] will produce an AV1 implementation based of their codebase.
True, on that note, over at the Doom9 forums, the x265 spokesperson there said that they will consider making a AV1 encoder should there be a market.
Given the massive amount of support gathered for AV1 from web and hardware giants, and how it's a royalty free codec and thus in a great position to be the next generation 'de facto' video standard on the web, I'd wager there is a good market for a third party encoder from excellent developers like those behind x265.
80% of codebase is C. How is that Rust encoder? Seems like a binding to C AV1 encoder.