Introduction

It’s not often you see so many logos of tech giants on one page backing the same technology. In my experience, every enterprise has developed a case of NIH and come up with their standards. No surprise then that there’s an XKCD describing this phenomenon!

But when the AV1 1.0.0 spec was finalized in 2018, with the backing of so many giants, the world knew AV1 would be a serious piece of tech. With the spec finalized, the race was on to get AV1 integrated into your favorite software & hardware for encoding, decoding, and viewing media. By the end of 2018, AV1 adoption was moving at a healthy pace and completed significant milestones necessary to mainstream adoption. Some of these were:

Browser support (Firefox, Chrome, Vivaldi) Streaming support (see AV1 launch playlist on YouTube) Encoder support in FFmpeg Open-source encoder (rav1e) Open-source decoder (dav1d) Video player support (VLC) MediaInfo support for viewing AV1 Passionate early adopter community (see https://www.reddit.com/r/AV1/)

In 2019, the main goals for AV1 were to get usable encoding times, SoC support for hardware decoding, and continued adoption. Here are the major highlights of 2019 for AV1.

Encoders

Decoders

OS Adoption

Windows 10 support for AVIF - By the time 2019 rolled around, AV1 decoding was already possible on Windows through the use of AV1 Video Extension in the Window Store. With the Windows 10 May 2019 update, Windows also gained support for AVIF image format. Android Q/10 gets AV1 support - Google also announced support for native AV1 decoding in Android 10. With this announcement, Apple is the only OS manufacturer missing from the AV1 support party. Hopefully, 2020 will be the year Safari users can watch videos in something other than H.264 on YouTube!

Streaming adoption

The compression benefit offered by AV1 makes it a perfect platform for the streaming services to adopt. With the shift to cord-cutting, video traffic is expected to be the majority of internet traffic. Therefore, streaming services are looking to save every bit they can while delivering video so that they can reach areas with spotty or low-speed internet connections. In 2019, we saw YouTube, Facebook, Netflix, and Vimeo experimenting with AV1 video, which means AV1 is well on its way to becoming the dominant streaming platform. Here are talks on how YouTube, Facebook & Netflix are currently encoding and serving AV1.

Partnerships

2019 was a year in which companies in the AOMedia consortium needed to get serious about their AV1 adoption plans and boy they did! We saw the emergence of alliances that will bring about serious competition in this space. Here’s who got together:

Intel SVT-AV1 + Netflix - Intel, Netflix to Deliver AV1 Scalable Codec to Power Next-Gen Compression Tech for Visual Workloads

- Intel, Netflix to Deliver AV1 Scalable Codec to Power Next-Gen Compression Tech for Visual Workloads Mozilla & Xiph’s Rav1e + Vimeo - AV1: Setting a new standard for video codecs

- AV1: Setting a new standard for video codecs YouTube + ?? - It’s unclear what encoder YouTube is using. Hopefully, 2020 will shed more light on this topic.

Conference Talks & Presentations

AV1 was on the roster for most of the video focused conference with a talk or two. Here are some of the best talks I found that will give you more insight into the goings-on in the ecosystem.

Predictions for 2020

AV1 decoding will start showing up in more devices Sneak Peek: As I’m writing this after CES 2020, it is confirmed that 2020 TVs from Samsung and LG will support hardware decode of AV1 videos. We might see a new Fire TV or Roku product with support for AV1 decoding Netflix might start testing AV1 decoding on Desktop and supported consumer devices

Let’s hope for an exciting 2020!

AV1 resources

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