zlacker

>>Charle+(OP)
Wow. To me, the big news here is that ~30% of devices now support AV1 hardware decoding. The article lists a bunch of examples of devices that have gained it in the past few years. I had no idea it was getting that popular -- fantastic news!

So now that h.264, h.265, and AV1 seem to be the three major codecs with hardware support, I wonder what will be the next one?

>>crazyg+C6
> To me, the big news here is that ~30% of devices now support AV1 hardware decoding

Where did it say that?

> AV1 powers approximately 30% of all Netflix viewing

Is admittedly a bit non-specific, it could be interpreted as 30% of users or 30% of hours-of-video-streamed, which are very different metrics. If 5% of your users are using AV1, but that 5% watches far above the average, you can have a minority userbase with an outsized representation in hours viewed.

I'm not saying that's the case, just giving an example of how it doesn't necessarily translate to 30% of devices using Netflix supporting AV1.

Also, the blog post identifies that there is an effective/efficient software decoder, which allows people without hardware acceleration to still view AV1 media in some cases (the case they defined was Android based phones). So that kinda complicates what "X% of devices support AV1 playback," as it doesn't necessarily mean they have hardware decoding.

>>0manrh+zh
That was one of the best decisions of AOMedia.

AV1 was specifically designed to be friendly for a hardware decoder and that decision makes it friendly to software decoding. This happened because AOMedia got hardware manufacturers on the board pretty early on and took their feedback seriously.

VP8/9 took a long time to get decent hardware decoding and part of the reason for that was because the stream was more complex than the AV1 stream.

>>cogman+NG1
All I read about is that it's less hardware friendly than H.264 and HEVC, and they were all complaining about it. AV2 should be better in this regard.

Where did you read that it was designed to make creating an hardware decoder easier?

>>galad8+Br2
It was a presentation on AV1 before it was released. I'll see if I can find it but I'm not holding my breath. It's mostly coming from my own recollection.

Ok, I don't think I'll find it. I think I'm mostly just regurgitating what I remember watching at one of the research symposiums. IDK which one it was unfortunately [1]

[1] https://www.youtube.com/@allianceforopenmedia2446/videos

>>cogman+7B2
I've heard that same anecdote before, that hardware decoding was front of mind. Doesn't mean that you (we) are right, but at least if you're hallucinating it's not just you.