Why is this being done, when AV1 exists?
It's hard to see HEVC as anything else than a legal liability.
It's hard to see HEVC as anything else than a legal liability.
To play HEVC files.
> when AV1 exists?
In case your files aren't AV1, or in case you don't have the hardware to play AV1.
Not a mystery is it?
Hardware IP people are paying licenser people, with consumers eventually paying hardware IP people.
> "Why use HEVC(pay) when AV1 exists ?"
Because HEVC has hardware support, right now, so it's faster.
> "Why care about AV1 if everyone is paying ?"
People don't much.
Most new hardware supports hardware decode for AV1 too. There were 1-2 generations prior to the current one that had HECV but not AV1, but that sample size will become irrelevant over time.
>People don't much.
Well, clearly people who make decisions do. If you ask an average person on the street if they care about HEVC or AV1, they don't. If you ask Netflix or Google, they do.
And they represent a significant proportion of video consumption devices.
From https://netflixtechblog.com/bringing-av1-streaming-to-netfli...:
"Netflix has also partnered with YouTube to develop an open-source solution for an AV1 decoder on game consoles that utilizes the additional power of GPUs."
But still today you can take an HEVC iPhone or GoPro video and watch it on your PS5 with full hardware encoding. This open source solution doesn't help with that.
On Windows, at least, the end users have to purchase individual HEVC licenses.
I actually think the truth is the exact reverse. HEVC has easy-to-license patent pools. A couple of clicks and done.
The patent situation surrounding AV1 is complex. It claims to be a free format but multiple entities claim patents that cover it. A submarine patent lawsuit seems likely.
The right thing here is use something that doesn't have a default protection racket attached.
No it doesn't.
Frankly, I don't believe this, if only because HEVC has been around for much longer, and if this was going to happen, it already would have.
The patent pool situation is a little messy, as there are two possible pools, but given how ubiquitous the codec is now, most companies seem to be figuring it out.
You can't prove the opposite anyway. Whole "submarine patent" thing is just a speculative fear. You can't quantify it. So it applies to both in case someone has paranoia. But as above, in case of HEVC it's complemented with guaranteed protection racket fees for the likes of MPEG-LA. So HEVC is worse in the end.
This can be said about anything. Sounds like FUD. There hasn't been a successful lawsuit yet, right ?
The Alliance for Open Source Media (the group behind AV1) is the subject of an ongoing investigation by the European Commission[1] who, per the article, appear to be threatening those who distribute software decoding with a fine of 10% of global revenue.
According to this article[2], Sisvel, the patent group claims its licensing for AV1 is
> more convenient than licensing from individual patent holders, which in this case include companies like Philips, GE, NTT, Ericsson, Dolby and Toshiba
So, yes there is FUD around AV1, but as FUD goes, it’s pretty legit considering the players and their “nationality ”.
[1]https://www.reuters.com/technology/exclusive-eu-antitrust-re...
[2]https://www.cnet.com/tech/mobile/patent-group-wants-a-new-to...
Going to add that I don’t have any knowledge of the legitimacy of the patents involved, and think the legitimacy of software patents generally is often questionable.
Why would it come to a lawsuit ? Companies would simply just pay the royalty.
That's how it has been for previous codecs.
It is the default video format of iPhones and the standard for Torrents.
Compared to HEVC, AV1 is still relatively new hence it suffers limited hardware support. Again it is key to note that Intel, AMD, Nvidia, Qualcomm, and most hardware manufacturers already had support for the incumbent HEVC. That means that a hardware accelerated encoder can run HEVC 5x faster than AV1.
And…
A vast majority of devices in the market; phones, TVs, tablets, cameras, browsers, professional-grade applications, etc come with a built-in ability to decode HEVC. Even those coming from the founding fathers of the AV1 codec have added support for HEVC.
Shameful.
That seems high. What resolution and frame rate is the video? And which decoder are you using? dav1d is a highly optimized software decoder so that's the one to try:
https://code.videolan.org/videolan/dav1d/
It's used in Firefox, Chrome, ffmpeg, etc.
That shouldn't be the case. I play AV1 (via dav1d, software) w/o issue on much weaker CPUs than that (a zen1 laptop cpu and a haswell i7). The CPU is mostly idle.
Why would there be legal liability when it's just passing through to the existing hardware decoder?