Google sparks controversy after confirming AV1 will become the new default

Arif Dikici, who is a part of the Android Video and Image Codecs team at Google, recently announced on LinkedIn that Android will now use an AV1 decoder known as “libdav1d,” which was created by the team behind VLC.

  • lemmyvore@feddit.nlEnglish
    54·
    7 months ago

    …massively better for whom? I mean I understand if they start using it and offering it to devices that support it. But if they push something that needs software decoding when there are other formats that have hardware support it’s going to be a shit fest.

    Right now AVC (H264) has hardware 4k support and HEVC (H265) has hardware 2k, while AV1 only has 1080p software. What’s the point of offering AV1 4k?

    • conciselyverbose@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
      20·
      7 months ago

      Massively better quality per byte.

      You know, the sole purpose of a lossy video codec?

      But the licensing is also far better for end consumers.

      • lemmyvore@feddit.nlEnglish
        52·
        7 months ago

        None of that is going to benefit you if your phone barfs its guts trying to decode it. Until you get a phone with hardware support it’s going to be purely theoretical. And if Google forces you to decode 720p AV1 in software when you have a perfectly good AVC and HEVC hardware decoder just sitting there is going to be downright stupid.