Let’s start this month’s roundup with the release of two of our favorite encoders - rav1e and SVT-AV1!

rav1e

rav1e finally has a new weekly pre-release with the following updates:

Improvements

More API documentation

Better error reporting

Nicer error messages in the cli application

Explicit validation of the encoder configuration

The input Frame type can be expressed

Added cargo-fuzz support and documented its usage

Better rate-control support

Two-pass rate-control support

Additional speedups over all the speed levels on x86_64

Changes

Tiles are now expressed in linear units (before were log2-units)

The for color config enum variants now use the AV1 spec names

The C-API is now part of the main repo, use cargo-c to build it

send_frame can consume bare Frames

Speed preset overhaul and rebalance

Fixes

Invalid encoder settings, that would trigger panics on execution, are now caught on validation phase.

Desync caused by a discrepancy of what would be the tile dimension and the loop restoration filter dimension when using certain tile sizes.

The updated binaries and source code can be downloaded from the below link. - https://github.com/xiph/rav1e/releases/tag/20190926

SVT-AV1

On the same day as the rav1e release above, SVT-AV1 also announced version 0.7.0. Here are the release notes:

Encoder

Enhanced MRP Reference Frames

Intra Inter Compound

QP Modulation support

MFMV Support

MD Staging design [Up to 4 MD stages and 3 prediction classes: Intra / Inter / Compound]

Compound Motion prediction

10-bit Mode Decision support for Intra

Thread safe resource allocation

Added AVX512 Optimizations

Added AVX2 Optimizations

Decoder

Screen Content Tools

Temporal MV scan support

Inter support

Screen Content Tools support

Post Processing Filters support

Compound Mode (InterInter & InterIntra) Tool support

Decoder Film Grain support

Build and Testing

Improve CI

Improve build scripts

Improve cmake lists

Improve Unit Test Coverage

API update

Bug fixes

dav1d is now the default AV1 decoder in ffmpeg

Credit to https://www.reddit.com/user/DominicHillsun/ and https://www.reddit.com/u/MrSmilingWolf/ for posting about this in this reddit thread

Commit dc0806dd25882f41f6085c8356712f95fded56c7 by James Almer on 15 Sep, 2019 made dav1d the preferred AV1 decoder in FFmpeg. Details @ https://git.ffmpeg.org/gitweb/ffmpeg.git/commit/dc0806dd25882f41f6085c8356712f95fded56c7

Broadcom BCM7218X STB SoC Comes with AV1 Hardware Decoding, WiFi 6

Broadcom BCM7218X announced the worlds first single-chip SOC with AV1 decoding support. BCM7218X is targeted for set-top box applications. The SoC supports all the HDR formats (HDR/HDR10+, HLG, Dolby Vision) as well as HDMI 2.1 output. Here is the full set of features:

Features

HDMI 2.1 output

OpenGL® ES 3.1 and Vulkan® 1.1 capable graphics engine

Verimatrix VideoMark

NexGuard Watermark

Single USB 2.0 DRD port

Single eMMC interface

Advanced audio decoding (dual-language)

Advanced motion-adaptive de-interlacing

Multiple audio/video output options are provided: HDMI 2.1-compliant output with HDCP 2.3 I2S digital output for use with external video/audio DACs

HDR output support on the primary compositor only (CMP0, routed across HDMI)

SDR-to-HDR conversion on the primary display path

HDR-to-SDR conversion on the primary display path

HDR-to-SDR conversion on other display paths (HDR10/10+ and HLG)

HDR standards: HDR10/10+ (all paths) HLG (all paths) Dolby Vision (single layer on the main path of the primary display) Prime (on the main path of the primary display)



Hardware decode of AV1 on Youtube

It looks like the Broadcom SoC for STB applications will be joined by a Realtek SoC soon. We saw a demonstration of the Realtek RTD1319 / RTD1311 SoC decoding Youtube AV1 stream in hardware. The video can be seen below.

Weekly build of libaom AV1 FFmpeg docker image

To enable experimentation with the latest builds of libaom AV1, I’ve started publishing a weekly build of libaom AV1 in the form of a docker image. The details on how to get and deploy this docker image can be found below.

https://www.singhkays.com/blog/docker-image-av1-ffmpeg-libaom/

Paint.NET adds AVIF decoding support

The popular image editing software for Windows, Paint.NET added AVIF decoding support in the latest 4.2.2 beta build 7186. To enable this you need Windows 10 v1809+ and Microsoft’s AV1 Codec (download: https://www.microsoft.com/p/av1-video-extension-beta/9mvzqvxjbq9v)

Find more detail below https://forums.getpaint.net/topic/115055-paintnet-422-beta-build-7186/

AV1 resources

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