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Transcode to AV1


MagicDoubleM

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MagicDoubleM

I just want to bring up attention to AV1 as additional target codec for transcoding and comverting video. It's supposed to further reduce bitrates, which can be great in situations with limited bandwidth.

Hardware players start to have support, with the Max version of Amazon's 4k FireTV sticks being a very popular and cheap option.

Hardware Encoding is coming for sure too.

So if/when HEVC gets added for transcoding, AV1 should be kept in mind too.

And for conversations, things might actually be already there, since ffmpeg does have a encoder integrated.

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MagicDoubleM

I thought so too, but depending on settings it's already an interesting alternative to x265 software encoding.

Here is a quick find, which is a bit older, but things usually don't get worse in that regard:

https://medium.com/@ewoutterhoeven/av1-is-ready-for-prime-time-svt-av1-beats-x265-and-libvpx-in-quality-bitrate-and-speed-31c1960703db

I hope the next generation of GPUs will get an hw-encoder (and be available in numbers for retail prices 😂).

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clarkss12

Mecool is already including the AV1 hardware support into their Android boxes, and it works very well when testing that video codec using YouTube.

So, far I have not **seen** any native media that is encoded in that AV1 video codec.  Where would you find that codec other than YouTube test videos?

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MagicDoubleM

I remember Netflix also was very interested, but don't know how far they are with that.

But commercial adoption isn't really a thing yet, even though it would be interesting for everyone who is doing some kind of VOD. I bet you can find a few encodes on "shady" sources, there's always someone there trying these things. 😅

Privately and for use with emby in particular, things are becoming interesting. To a) allow better quality for clients with slow connections (i don't care about cpu, as long as the girl on a trip gets more pixels) and b) to reencode archives to reduce storage needs.

 

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SikSlayer

Both the current Gen AMD and Nvidia cards support AV1 decoding.

YouTube supports AV1.

My LG CX OLED from last year, whose successor is gonna get replaced in mere months, also supports it. 

Better to start working on it now, rather than just pushing it away for later with excuses.

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rbjtech
2 hours ago, SikSlayer said:

Both the current Gen AMD and Nvidia cards support AV1 decoding.

YouTube supports AV1.

My LG CX OLED from last year, whose successor is gonna get replaced in mere months, also supports it. 

Better to start working on it now, rather than just pushing it away for later with excuses.

As does Intel 11th and 12th Gen - Quick Sync supports AV1 Decode.

But for transcoding - you need AV1 Encode - and I'm not aware of any hardware currently supporting this ... so it will be some time yet before this is well supported. 

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19 hours ago, rbjtech said:

But for transcoding - you need AV1 Encode - and I'm not aware of any hardware currently supporting this

Correct.

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SikSlayer
On 11/6/2021 at 2:21 PM, rbjtech said:

As does Intel 11th and 12th Gen - Quick Sync supports AV1 Decode.

But for transcoding - you need AV1 Encode - and I'm not aware of any hardware currently supporting this ... so it will be some time yet before this is well supported. 

Who asked for hardware encode? It was only stated it will come in the future. There's still software encoding, and hardware decoding is here now. Why wait? This is a feature that can save on bandwidth.

As I said, it's better to start working on this stuff now, than scrambling to do it when the competition suddenly comes up with it.

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SikSlayer
On 11/4/2021 at 12:31 PM, MagicDoubleM said:

I remember Netflix also was very interested, but don't know how far they are with that.

But commercial adoption isn't really a thing yet, even though it would be interesting for everyone who is doing some kind of VOD. I bet you can find a few encodes on "shady" sources, there's always someone there trying these things. 😅

Privately and for use with emby in particular, things are becoming interesting. To a) allow better quality for clients with slow connections (i don't care about cpu, as long as the girl on a trip gets more pixels) and b) to reencode archives to reduce storage needs.

 

https://www.theverge.com/2021/11/10/22775150/netflix-av1-codec-tv-streaming-ps4-pro

 I see the cycle repeats. First it was H.264, and then HEVC. And now I'm seeing the same thing with AV1. We still don't even have a HEVC HW transcoding as an option. Folks were asking for YEARS about HEVC, and now the replacement codec is here, fully open source, getting support, and all I'm seeing is the same excuses... AGAIN.

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MagicDoubleM
On 11/11/2021 at 4:06 PM, SikSlayer said:

https://www.theverge.com/2021/11/10/22775150/netflix-av1-codec-tv-streaming-ps4-pro

 I see the cycle repeats. First it was H.264, and then HEVC. And now I'm seeing the same thing with AV1. We still don't even have a HEVC HW transcoding as an option. Folks were asking for YEARS about HEVC, and now the replacement codec is here, fully open source, getting support, and all I'm seeing is the same excuses... AGAIN.

I wouldn't be so negative. The "excuses" were valid for a long time. For example hardware transcoding to hevc via Nvidia GPUs wasn't that feature rich until lately it became more interesting with support for b-frames. It just wouldn't have made a massive difference before, but it would have needed some greater work than just switching some parameters in the ffmpeg-call.

10bit/HDR-encoding also wasn't on the radar until, well, the rise of HDR content.

It's similar with AV1, for practical use it's too early right now, but keeping an eye on it makes sense, especially when HEVC gets implemented, since that makes a lot of sense now.

Edited by MagicDoubleM
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  • 7 months later...
MagicDoubleM

Intel's arc-series GPUs will do AV1 encoding, this will become interesting I think.

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rbjtech

It will be interesting to see if Intel release an sdk or work with ffmpeg on this .. unless the hardware gets software support - then it will be of limited use.

 

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RanmaCanada

It's still not worth it as AV1 is still in a niche and by the time enough devices use it, there will be a new codec for everyone to jump to.  Apple is not supporting it yet, Qualcomm is not supporting it yet, and the only home boxes that support it are the 4k max, the Z10 Pro, and some other chinese devices that do not support legit services, so no one will buy them.   Also with it only being available on ARC gpus (maybe on Ryzen 4 APU's), that also makes it extremely niche.  It's better to wait for the entire back end to fight it out before the devs attempt to commit to something that is still extremely half baked.  We still don't know if Nvidia will be adding it to Lovelace either.  Hardware encode support is required as the amount of CPU power needed is a literal magnitude over HEVC.  Unless of course you want to be running an EPYC processor for your Emby server.

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rbjtech

Agree - it's still far too early to take sides, but AV1 has a lot more going for it than HEVC.  Just because Apple doesn't support something doesn't mean much now, they haven't innovated for years.  It's the 'streamers' that will dictate the next major codec - youtube, prime, google, netflix, disney+ etc - they have already started to use it and it's gaining traction - Primarily  because it's royalty free.

Most recent hardware seems to have AV1 decode support - so it's just the AV1 encode that needs to catch up.  I suspect Nvdia 4000 will have AV1 encode - I think they would be crazy not to have it given Intel do and AMD (RDNA3) appear to be almost confirmed.

At the end of the day - it's also ffmpeg that largely dictates the emby codec 'strategy' - so if it supports AV1 well, then emby will have the option to follow.  If they don't - and remain using  h264 then they will be left behind ..  

Edited by rbjtech
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MagicDoubleM
On 7/18/2022 at 10:16 AM, rbjtech said:

It will be interesting to see if Intel release an sdk or work with ffmpeg on this .. unless the hardware gets software support - then it will be of limited use.

 

Intel themselves already lists "Handbrake" as tool with support for their "Advanced Xe Media Engine", so I guess SDKs will come and ffmpeg-support too.

Also, AV1 is just another option, not a path to commit to. If emby gets an upgrade to support HEVC for live-transcoding, then AV1 should be kept in mind too. Taking sides isn't necessary and wouldn't be smart, because of course, there will be lots of devices without AV1-hw-decoders, but there will be a growing amount of them in the coming future. And why not support that too?

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sydlexius
17 hours ago, SikSlayer said:

The Nvidia RTX 40 series has TWO AV1 encoders...

Compare Current and Previous GeForce Series of Graphics Cards | NVIDIA

This is not true across the board.  The announced 4090 and 4080s will have 2 NVENC Gen8 Encoders and 2 NVDEC Gen 5 modules...It's not clear what the rest of the range might offer (looking forward to seeing what the upcoming equivalent of the L2000 might offer!)

Edited by sydlexius
corrected NVDEC generation
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rbjtech
3 hours ago, sydlexius said:

This is not true across the board.  The announced 4090 and 4080s will have 2 NVENC Gen8 Encoders and 2 NVDEC Gen 5 modules...It's not clear what the rest of the range might offer (looking forward to seeing what the upcoming equivalent of the L2000 might offer!)

Where is the info that is has 2 NVDEC and 2 NVENC ?   Other than some no-name website that says it has 'dual' encoders, I cannot find anything official. ?

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sydlexius
1 hour ago, rbjtech said:

Where is the info that is has 2 NVDEC and 2 NVENC ?   Other than some no-name website that says it has 'dual' encoders, I cannot find anything official. ?

https://www.nvidia.com/en-us/geforce/news/rtx-40-series-graphics-cards-announcements/ Mentions the dual NVENC.

My mistake about NVDEC.  Both product pages only make mention of NVDEC 5th gen (4090 and 4080, click on Specs then Full Specs).  Since this topic is about transcoding to AV1, the capabilities of the decoder are of second-order importance (IMO).

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rbjtech
10 hours ago, sydlexius said:

https://www.nvidia.com/en-us/geforce/news/rtx-40-series-graphics-cards-announcements/ Mentions the dual NVENC.

My mistake about NVDEC.  Both product pages only make mention of NVDEC 5th gen (4090 and 4080, click on Specs then Full Specs).  Since this topic is about transcoding to AV1, the capabilities of the decoder are of second-order importance (IMO).

Ah-ha - I hadn't seen that before in the release details - thanks - that's useful to know.

So two AV1 encoders -  I wonder if those work in parallel to double the throughput?  Intel are claiming a 40% speed improvement with their deep link technology - I wonder if Nvidia's is better than this considering it's on the same silicon...

For the encoding engine only - it's still far too expensive imo - considering for AV1 encoding, Intel have the ARC gpu card at a fraction of the price.

Interesting times ..

Edited by rbjtech
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