
AV1 Released - FullyFunctional
https://aomedia.org/av1-features/get-started/
======
jbk
So, in case people wonder what is happening, wrt to the timeline of the AV1
codec, here is some info.

This is final version of the bitstream and the specification of the codec. It
will not change anymore (until AV1.1 or AV2).

There are not much features changes since the "release" that was announced
before NAB (early April), but now everything should be clean and checked
(checking that the spec actually matches the reference decoder, decoder model,
profiles, ...), and a few bugfixes went in already.

Now, in a couple of weeks, you should have MP4 and MKV mappings finalized
(yes, that means the files you've seen so far are invalid). And then it will
be available to everyone (if you can encode it, of course).

~~~
becauseiam
> if you can encode it, of course

And here lies a really big issue I have with modern codec standardisation and
development - it will be unfortunately many years to come until we see
sufficient optimisations to make at a minimum realtime encode and decode of
AV1 feasible. Ten years ago when Moore's law was actually a thing this can-
kicking may have been acceptable but now I sincerely believe codec development
needs to be more iterative, and to consider hardware optimisations (in
particular, having even a HDL variant as part of reference codec) from the
initial outset.

VVC I suspect will repeat history in many ways, by virtue of how these codec
standards bodies operate.

------
niftich
Direct link to 1.0.0 spec (PDF):
[https://github.com/AOMediaCodec/av1-spec/releases/download/v...](https://github.com/AOMediaCodec/av1-spec/releases/download/v1.0.0/av1-spec-v1.0.0.pdf)

Unofficial working copy (HTML):
[https://aomediacodec.github.io/av1-spec/](https://aomediacodec.github.io/av1-spec/)

Source (of spec):
[https://github.com/AOMediaCodec/av1-spec/tree/v1.0.0](https://github.com/AOMediaCodec/av1-spec/tree/v1.0.0)

AV1 is a video codec developed by a consortium of companies, broadly
descending from Google's VP9 while incorporating significant enhancements from
Cisco and Xiph.Org. The participant companies are numerous and include big
chipmakers and content delivery networks, banding together to perpetuate a
royalty-free video codec that mounts a competition against MPEG's efforts,
whose rules don't exclude techniques that are patented.

This is news because previous for previous codecs in this bloodline, like VP8
and VP9, the bitstream has never been frozen [1][2]. This wishiwashiness
didn't preclude hardware implementations, and certainly not software
implementations, but was very much a departure of the orthodox, old-hat
practice in the standard-speccing space. With AV1, they're trying an approach
that competes more directly with the MPEG specs, by having a bitstream that's
not a moving target and is more formal than just a document embarrassingly
marked as draft [2].

[1] [http://blog.webmproject.org/2010/06/future-of-
vp8-bitstream....](http://blog.webmproject.org/2010/06/future-of-
vp8-bitstream.html) [2] [https://www.webmproject.org/vp9/#draft-vp9-bitstream-
and-dec...](https://www.webmproject.org/vp9/#draft-vp9-bitstream-and-decoding-
process-specification)

~~~
quikee
No. VP8 and VP9 bitstreams are frozen and stayed frozen when they decided to
freeze it (they made that sure with automatic tests in libvpx that calculated
the bitstream checksum) otherwise old VP8/VP9 files would stop playing. The
difference is only with the approach as with VP8 and VP9 the "reference"
decoder is the specification, which is not what many people like for various
reasons (for example there were some errors in the implementation, which
needed to be implemented by everyone because of that).

The first link you posted about VP8 just writes that they'll create an
experimental branch (back in 2010) where incompatible bitstream changes can go
in. Guess what eventually happened with those changes? VP9

The second link is the link to the unfinished VP9 specification, however with
VP9 they still had that "reference" decoder code is the specification
approach. As VP9 started to gain traction, the demand for the specification
became greater, so they post-hoc started writing one but as you can see, they
never finished it. Still this doesn't mean the bitstream isn't frozen.

------
owyn
Since this is just a link to a source tree and I wondered myself what it was,
I'll add that AV1 is an open, royalty-free video codec:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AV1](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AV1)

Opus is the audio equivalent.

~~~
sctb
We've updated the link from
[https://aomedia.googlesource.com/aom/+/v1.0.0](https://aomedia.googlesource.com/aom/+/v1.0.0)
to the official page, but we're happy to update it again if someone can
suggest better.

~~~
jbk
Why is it marked as dupe?

~~~
dang
I just did that, because it looks like this story had significant discussion
recently:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16697415](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16697415).
(And
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16796127](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16796127)
also.)

Sorry, I didn't see these comments or I'd have said so sooner!

~~~
FullyFunctional
It's not a dupe. The previous release was a marketing fluff. Now people can
actually start encoding video without having to worry about having to do
everything over. That is a big deal. The previous announcement was a complete
non-event.

Incidentally, Bunny's NeTV2 [1] might be a convenient platform for a hardware
accelerated codec.

[1]
[https://www.crowdsupply.com/alphamax/netv2](https://www.crowdsupply.com/alphamax/netv2)

------
Scaevolus
AV1 has lightfield encoding support, which should allow for impressive mobile
VR content once hardware decoders are available! Annex D of the spec has more
information:
[https://github.com/AOMediaCodec/av1-spec/blob/master/annex.d...](https://github.com/AOMediaCodec/av1-spec/blob/master/annex.d.large.scale.tile.md)

The general technique was described back in 2000:
[https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/838165/](https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/838165/)

------
deno
The title should be: “AV1 Released (for real this time)”

Previous discussion:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16796127](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16796127)

~~~
jbk
Previous discussion is not the same as this one. This is the actual release.

------
lysp
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17399250](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17399250)

~~~
FullyFunctional
Which for some reasons isn't marked a dupe.... sigh

------
floatboth
How slow is libaom right now?

------
Scramblejams
Any hardware vendors announced timelines on hardware codec support yet?

