"Set for a year-end release, AV2 is not only an upgrade to the widely adopted AV1 but also a foundational piece of AOMedia’s future tech stack.
AV2, a generation leap in open video coding and the answer to the world’s growing streaming demands, delivers significantly better compression performance than AV1. AV2 provides enhanced support for AR/VR applications, split-screen delivery of multiple programs, improved handling of screen content, and an ability to operate over a wider visual quality range. AV2 marks a milestone on the path to an open, innovative future of media experiences."
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All these naysaysers in the comments here… It’s obvious you have to keep the development pipeline moving. Just because we have one free codec at the stage of hardware support now does not mean the world can stop. There are always multiple codecs out there at various stages of adoption, that’s just normal.
The main thing I want is small file size for the quality. Netflix, YouTube, and me agree on that.
Most of my stuff is AV1 today even though the two TVs I typically watch it on do not support it. Most of the time, what I am watching is high-bitrate H.264 that was transcoded from the low-bitrate AV1.
I will probably move to AV2 shortly after it is available. At least, I will be an early adopter. The smaller the files the better. And, in the future when quality has gone up everywhere, my originals will play native and look great.
I want to agree with you and I do to a large extend. I like new codecs and having more opensourcy coded is better than using a codec that has many patents. long term patents(current situation) slows technological progress.
what I don’t agree with you is some details.
first, Netflix youtube and so on need low bitrate and they (specially google/youtube) don’t care that much about quality. google youtube video are really bit starved for their resolutions. netflix is a bit better.
second, many people when they discuss codecs they are referring to a different use case for them. they are talking about archiving. as in, the best quality codec at a same size. so they compare original (raw video, no lossy codec used) with encoded ones. their conclusion is that av1 is great for size reduction, but cant beat h264 for fidelity at any size. I think that h264 has a placebo or transparent profile but av1 doesn’t.
so when I download a fi…I mean a linux ISO from torrents, I usually go for newest codec. but recently I don’t go for the smallest size because it takes away from details in the picture.
but if I want to archive a movie (that I like a lot, which is rare) I get the bigger h264 (or if uhd blueray h265).
third: a lot of people’s idea of codec quality is formed based on downloading or streaming other people’s encoded videos and they themself don’t compare the quality (as they don’t have time or a good raw video to compare).
4th: I have heard av1 has issues with film grain, as in it removes them. film grain is an artifact of physical films (non-digital) that unfortunately many directors try (or used to) to duplicate because they grew up watching movies on films and think that movies should be like so they add them in in post production. even though it is literally a defect and even human eyes doesn’t duplicate it so it is not even natural. but this still is a bug of av1 (if I read correctly) because codec should go for high fidelity and not high smoothness.
AV1 has issues with film grain. There are things you can do. Let me admit however that one movie that I have not encoded as AV1 is a restored version of the original Star Wars. And film grain is a contributor to that.
Another thing about film grain though is that it is often artificially added after as you say. With AV1, you can often get amazing compression that removes the grain as a side-effect and then just add it back yourself. To each their own how they feel about this approach.
I also agree that H.264 can be more transparent. However, that is at massive file sizes. Others may have the space for that but I do not… Perhaps I do mot have the eyes for it either. I am not extracting and comparing single frames. To me, the AV1 files that I have look better at the size that I am archiving than they would using any other codec.
I use the fact that massive bit rate H.264 looks great to my advantage as that is what my AV1 is being transcoded into when I watch it most of the time.
Some content compresses better than others. Sometimes I get massive size reductions with AV1 at what looks like great quality to me. Other times, it struggles to beat H.265 or even H.264 at similar quality. It is pretty rare that I do not choose AV1 though.
I often use Netflix VMAF to get an idea of target compression. It is not perfect though. You have to verify visually. Saves time trialing different parameters though.
I should say that the audio codec is another big factor. I typically pair AV1 with Opus audio and the size reductions there are amazing even at quality levels that are transparent to me.
If AV2 offers better quality at the same size, or similar quality at smaller sizes, I will likely switch to it long before having hardware that can play it natively.
oh dont get me wrong. as I said I agree with most of your original (and now second post).
my gripe with grain was not about av1 per se. it was with movie makers that add it just because they think it is how movies should be
this is retarded to me: “Reasons to Keep Film Grain On: Artistic Effect: Film grain can add a nostalgic or artistic quality to video and photography, evoking a classic film look” because the reason is just “nostalgic” that the director has, as in if he was born after digital era, he would have an issue with it and not add it (usually).
about h264 and transparency, the issue is not that h264 can get that but at high bitrate, the issue is that av1 (as I read) can’t get it at any bitrate.
but overall I agree with you.
I even recently was shocked to see how much faster av1 encoding has gotten. I would have thought it was still orders of magnitude, but with some setting (like x265 slow setting) av1 is has the same encoding speed.
Very cool! I’ve only just recently gotten to experience the joys of AV1 for my own game recordings (Linux is way ahead of Windows here), and dang is it nice. 10 minute flashback recordings of 4K HDR@60 for only 2.5GB, and the results look fantastic. Can just drag and drop it over to YouTube as well, it’s fully supported over there.
Glad to see things moving, I’ll be eager to check this out in a few years once it has wider support!
We only just got hardware support for AV1 and they are already coming out with a new codec?
I can’t wait to possibly buy a card a decade from now with AV2 hardware decoding. Ain’t happening until after 2035 that’s for sure.
If we’re lucky some firmware upgrade or driver can make AV1 hardware decoding capable cards able to do AV2 as well, but I seriously doubt it - GPU manufacturers want to sell new cards all the time after all.We will probably have decoding in 5 years. Encoding may take longer.
AV1 was mid. Extremely slow encoding and minor performance gains over H265. And no good encoders on release.
H266 was miles ahead but that is propriatary like 265. So win some lose some.
Compression and efficiency is often a trade-off. H266 is also much slower than AV1, under same conditions. Hopefully there will come more AV1 hw encoders to speed things up… but at least the AV1 decoders are already relatively common.
Also, the gap between h265 and AV1 is higher than between AV1 and h266. So I’d argue it’s the other way around. AV1 is reported to be capable of ~30-50% bitrate savings over h.265 at the cost of speed. H266 differences with AV1 are minor, it’s reported to get a similar range, but more balanced towards the 50% side and at the cost of even lower speed. I’d say once AV1 encoding hardware is more common and the higher presets for AV1 become viable it’d be a good balance for most cases.
The thing is that h26x has a consortium of corporations behind with connections and an interest to ensure they can cash in on their investment, so they get a lot of traction to get hw out.
AV1 only has gains at very low quality settings. For high quality, h265 is much better. At least with the codecs available in ffmpeg, from my tests.
