Will RDNA3 cards have AV1 encoder? RDNA2 ones got the decoder at least. With encoders in place, video calls can start using AV1 too.
In 2019, Twitch predicted roll-out of AV1 support by 2024, but then the pandemic happened: https://www.streamingmedia.com/Articles/ReadArticle.aspx?Art...:
> For head content, it's okay to streaming multiple formats because the viewership is huge, so streaming multiple formats, although increase our cost, it still actually save our traffic cost, so it's still worth while. But for the tail content, it's very different. We can only afford streaming one single format, so our strategy is currently still doing H.264 using hardware, high-density hardware solution, but we're hoping towards 2024, 2025, the AV1 ecosystem is ready, we want to switch to AV1 100%.
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> Jan Ozer: Did you say 2024 and 2025?
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> Yueshi Shen: 2024, this is our projection right now. But on the other hand, so as I said, our AV1 release will be, for the head content will be a lot sooner, we are hoping 2022-2023 we are going to release AV1 for the head content. But for the head content, we will continue to stream dual-format, AV1, H.264. But for the tail content, we are hoping towards five years from now to AV1, whole eco, every five-year-old device supports AV1. Then, we will be switching to AV1 100%.
The initial roll-out will probably just involve transcoding at sub-source quality settings to save bandwidth with no encoding to be done by the streamer.
Right now, platforms have only talked about AV1 for transcoding purposes, so there's not the same urgency to add encoding support on consumer-level GPUs. Even thought it'd be amazing to see AV1 streams and YouTube videos, it's mostly on the server-end to cut costs and make things easier on people with data plans and cellular.
I guess it is quite expensive to implement AV1 encoder.
Edit: I meant no consumer hardware support it.
Oh I did a typo. There still is no consumer-grade product supports AV1 encode.
You're still right that there's no standard, consumer-focused card, but that's "yet" – the product is just launching later this year.
H.263, H.264, VP8, HEVC, and AV1 certainly were all used by various videoconferencing apps before hardware blocks reached consumer devices.
One can assume next gen nvidia gpus(rumored for the end of this year) will have it as well.
Their purpose is to dump the frame into compliant stream in least possible time, so the compliant decoder can decode it back. It doesn't concern itself with using less bits; if it does, it is nice, but not deal breaker.
So if the hardware encoders can produce VP9/HEVC/AV1 at roughly the same bit-budget, it doesn't make sense to use the more complicated one. It makes sense to use the one, where you do have to pay less fees, though.
If you mean AV1 specifically, do you think software encoders won't get anywhere near x264, which can do it in less than one core?
From what I understand, AV1’s encoding complexity is more like H.265 than H.264. It’d be more appropriate to look at the performance of x265 to see what might be possible.
Current video call applications look like crap
>also most twitch streams
Don't they use hardware encoding when possible? And higher bitrate than video calls.
>do you think software encoders won't get anywhere near x264, which can do it in less than one core?
Not at full quality