Transcode to AV1

[bandit8623 213]

https://videocardz.com/newz/sparkle-introduces-arc-a310-a380-low-profile-gpus

[Flest 8]

https://www.nvidia.com/en-us/geforce/news/nvidia-app-beta-update-av1-performance-tuning/

future of emby? )))

 

Edited June 5, 2024 by Flest

[TDriver 53]

Is there any information about AV1 support in Emby?

[softworkz 5066]

52 minutes ago, TDriver said:

Is there any information about AV1 support in Emby?

Yes, in this conversation, pages 1-3.

[TDriver 53]

Mhmm, it's a shame, it doesn't seem to have been implemented in Emby yet. At least I don't have this option. When can we expect it to be implemented?

Only H246 and HEVC.

Edited September 4, 2024 by TDriver

[Luke 42077]

Hi, yes I think just like hevc it would start by being tied into the conversation feature. Thanks.

[ebr 16169]

3 hours ago, TDriver said:

Mhmm, it's a shame, it doesn't seem to have been implemented in Emby yet. At least I don't have this option. When can we expect it to be implemented?

Only H246 and HEVC.

Hi.  Important to understand that is conversions, not transcoding - two very different things.

This thread is about transcoding.  Conversions would be much easier to get done.

[softworkz 5066]

Only the very latest Nvidia GPUs support AV1 encoding and similar applies to Intel. 

From support requests, we have a pretty good picture of the GPUs that are used with Emby Server, and those latest models which can do AV1 encoding are used by far less than 1%. 
That's why it's not "a shame" but rather very reasonable that we are focusing on work from which a wide range of Emby users will benefit rather than niche cases.

Of course this will change over time and conversions to AV1 is surely something that will be added in the future.

Edited September 6, 2024 by softworkz

[TDriver 53]

15 hours ago, ebr said:

Hi.  Important to understand that is conversions, not transcoding - two very different things.

This thread is about transcoding.  Conversions would be much easier to get done.

Thank you very much ebr. In fact I totally confused it. Best regards

[risho 1]

I would love to see progress made on this. All future hardware does/will support it and all major web streaming platforms are implementing it. AV1 is the future and for good reason. Even without gpu support svt -av1 is plenty performant and you can scale the cpu requirements up and down to run on middle of the road hardware.  If it needs to be done with conversion first that seems reasonable.

[Happy2Play 9780]

And next everyone will want to add H266 into the mix.   But the latest and greatest will always be replaced with something new.

Quote

AV1 is generationally, one newer then H.265. H.266 would be on-par with AV1 as a codec generation (AV1 is basically VP10; VP9 was roughly the same generation as H.265).

 

[risho 1]

h266 will be heavily patent encumbered and proprietary. av1 is patent free and open source which is why it has taken off the way it has. 

[rbjtech 5284]

7 hours ago, risho said:

h266 will be heavily patent encumbered and proprietary. av1 is patent free and open source which is why it has taken off the way it has. 

Personally, I still don't think it has.

Yes it has a good hardware support for AV1 decode - most devices in the last 2 years have it for example - but it has extremly limited h/w encode support.    CPU encode is simply not fast enough for general use.   h/w encode support on par with h265 (for speed) is a must for it to succeed.    I believe the next gen of Intels CPU's will natively support this - and that is when it should really take off as a 'general' alternative codec to h264/avc or h265/hevc. 

[softworkz 5066]

These things need to be viewed from a much wider angle, especially with regards to timeline. Just look at how long it took for H.264 to become such a widely used codec like it is now. Many patents have expired already and a few remaining ones will expire in the following years, but these are for encoding. For basic decoding, all patents have expired already - for H.264.

For H.265, there are still active patents, even for decoding, that's why Chrome had refused to support it for a long time. They made a turn recently - but well, just sort of: they support HEVC decoding through hardware only. This allows them to get away for free because the GPU vendors are paying the patent fees for their video codec implementations.
After the H.265 patents (needed for decoding) have expired, we'll most likely see Chrome(ium) to implement software decoding of H.265 as well, but there are still a few years to go.

Side note: Microsoft have different goals - they want to support H.265 video playback even without hardware support (software decoding) on Windows, but they're using a trick: They require users to install the "HEVC Video Codec Extension" from the MS Store (sometimes free, sometimes for a small fee, I don't get the logic behind this, tbh). This way, they don't need to pay license fees for all Windows installations but only for those who really need it - which they can count by the number of installations of the store item.

Now, when we look at the timeline: H.264 was introduced in 2003, H.265 in 2013 and H.266 in 2020. It will still take a few years until H.265 decoding will be patent-free. For H.266 it will take many more years, so there's no point in spending any thought on it right now.

AV1 is claiming to be free from patent restrictions, but it's still at a very early stage. These things take time until it's all working flawlessly and in a power-efficient way, and until it's really widely supported. Most YouTube videos I watch are being played using the VP9 video streams, even though AV1 streams would be available. My system isn't really outdated (maybe like 2 years behind the latest stuff), and so there must be other reasons for why they're making the decision to use VP9 instead of AV1.

AV1 is definitely an interesting codec option, but it still has a few years to go until hardware acceleration for AV1 will have fully arrived in the mainstream (i.e. be available on average and low-cost devices, including the whole range of NAS devices).

[DylanParham 14]

Not sure about how much development resource or interest is available for AV1 conversion support, but I have two different devices that support hardware AV1 encoding now and I guess this would help shrink my data footprint if I could start converting some of my larger media sets. Thank you very much for everything you guys do. Very happy with Emby as always.

[PetesEmbyServer 22]

My hardware fully supports AV1, its a great codec, but I'm probably in the 1%.

I would be very happy with HEVC transcoding (encoding) for now. It is widely supported at this point.

It makes a huge difference over rural internet connections.

 

[Max076 3]

I would also like to vote for this, AV1 is a hugely efficient codec that would benefit 4k content and rural / bad / mobile connections a lot!

AV1's adoption has been far faster than h265 ever was, they first spent years optimising for ARM decode, and then the hardware encoders started coming out. I myself also use Emby with an AV1-encoding capable card. 

I get that yes, not everyone could use it, but I feel like just having the option available to us in the settings would be nice! That way the people who want to experiment can, while other users just keep going as is  

[colakot 0]

I also want to vote for AV1 transcoding support. My CPU is an AMD 7840HS, and now more and more CPU integrated GPUs and discrete GPUs are starting to support AV1 encoding. AV1 encoding can significantly reduce playback data usage in mobile network environments. As we all know, mobile data is very expensive, so I hope AV1 transcoding support will be available soon. Thank you. Of course, HEVC transcoding support is already available now, which is much appreciated. Please adapt it to Android as soon as possible.

[Victor_root 1]

Hi ! i want vote for av1 transcoding !

H.264 is getting really old, and with the hardware we have today on both server and client sides, it’s time for Emby to support transcoding to AV1, or at least HEVC/H.265.
Jellyfin already handles this without issues, so I’m confident Emby can implement it as well.
This would be a real improvement for video quality and bandwidth efficiency.

[bandit8623 213]

4 minutes ago, Victor_root said:

Hi ! i want vote for av1 transcoding !

H.264 is getting really old, and with the hardware we have today on both server and client sides, it’s time for Emby to support transcoding to AV1, or at least HEVC/H.265.
Jellyfin already handles this without issues, so I’m confident Emby can implement it as well.
This would be a real improvement for video quality and bandwidth efficiency.

maybe @Luke  with new ffmpeg coming out it should support?  We can hope

[Luke 42077]

1 hour ago, bandit8623 said:

maybe @Luke  with new ffmpeg coming out it should support?  We can hope

Yes potentially.