1y ago

YouTube moves to AV1 by default to the dismay of some Android users

www.androidpolice.com

Arif Dikici, who is a part of the Android Video and Image Codecs team at Google, recently announced on LinkedIn that Android will now use an AV1 decoder known as “libdav1d,” which was created by the team behind VLC.

16 comments

Because they can't use hardware decoding.
Which is fair, but AV1 isn't new any more, and it's pretty universally recognized as better.
- Hardware decoding is the whole point. Hardware support is notorious for lagging greatly behind software. Desktop support is not great either right now. It makes you wonder what Google's reason is, they have to be aware that must people won't be able to use it properly.
  
  I know hardware decoding is the point. But you can't just wait until every phone on the planet supports it.
  Their reason is that it's a massively better format.
This is not a very helpful article summary.
One of the key benefits of the codec is that it helps maintain video quality during compression and decoding, so many users are excited about the potential for higher quality AV1 video. However, not everyone is happy with the change — particularly those with older devices and midrange phones. It's mostly newer higher-end phones that have hardware decoding support for AV1, so those with midrange devices and older flagships may have to rely on software decoding now that YouTube has opted in to the libdav1d decoder. Many of these Android users have expressed concern over how the change will impact their battery life if it means a move away from hardware-accelerated decoding.
- This is not a very helpful article summary.
  Sorry it wasn't meant to be. I just thought it was funny that they're taking advantage of VideoLAN's library (which is presumably open source) rather than their own.
  
  AV1 is based on VP9. Google made VP9 and it's open source and royalty free.
  Google just joined the Alliance for Open Media and gave their VP9 as a starter for AV1 instead of making some other successor called VP10 or something on their own.
  During development of AV1 Google contributed a lot to libaom, the reference implementation in C++, but since this codebase grew together with the codec it is not the most clean design. Also the reference implementation benefits from being clear more than being fast.
  Therefore, instead, these days the later projects rav1e (encoder in rust, started by Xiph Foundation) and dav1d (decoder in C, started by the VideoLAN non-profit) are the fastest, because they started from a green field approach when the wire-format for AV1 was mostly fixed and they focused on speed.
  I think overall Google's stance on the Alliance for Open Media makes sense. As part of the new media streaming techno bubble they (as well as Amazon, Facebook, even Microsoft) have an interest in getting an interoperable royalty free codec into the market, and spread it as far as possible, to avoid the rent seeking behaviour of the old guard, Moving Picture Experts Group (MPEG) from Hollywood and similar groups. For every device that wants support for H265 the OEM has to pay a license of around 1 dollar currently.
How can I test if my phone uses hardware decoding for AV1?
- Let me save you some time, it doesn't. I have no idea what Google is thinking, very few phones have it right now.
  
  My Pixel does. 🤷🏼‍♂️
One one hand av1 has some great advantages and this will force some lagging OEMs to add hardware support
On the other hand snake ass google already split encoding into premium qualities, so they're just gonna set the "free" bitrate so low it may as well be H264.
AV1 has been quite disappointing compared to HEVC. Encoding and decoding is super heavy and hardware acceleration is very lacking.
Are they still using Mp3 for audio or have they switched to something more modern for that too?
- They've been using opus for probably around a decade at this point, and in fact YouTube was a pretty early adopter of it and had a large role in popularizing it
f 22 ftw.

16 comments