Facebook, one of several major online video players putting its weight behind AV1, a new royalty-free codec, has posted test results showing that AV1’s bitrate efficiencies are exceeding expectations.

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As a backdrop, AV1 is being billed as a codec that is 30% more efficient than current-gen codecs, such as HEVC and VP9. The Alliance for Open Media, the group behind AV1 with members that include Facebook, Google, Netflix and Amazon and was founded in 2015, released the 1.0 version of the codec last month.

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In a blog post, Facebook software engineer Yu Liu said the results are 50%-plus when Facebook tested AV1 using about 400 of the most-viewed public videos (primarily with SD and HD files) on the social media platform versus performance on “standard reference software encoders.”

“Our test examined AV1's performance vs. practical open source video encoders that can be deployed to a practical production system, rather than merely testing efficiency vs. standard reference software encoders (i.e., H.264/AVC Joint Model or JM),” Liu noted. “By structuring the test this way, we were able to show how the codec will perform in a true production environment compared with current widely used alternatives, such as x264 and libvpx-vp9.”

In those tests, AV1 surged past its stated goal of 30% better compression versus VP9, and achieves gains of up to 50.3%, 46.2% and 34.0%, compared to x264 main profile, x264 high profile and libvpx-vp9, respectively, he added.

Though the tests focused on SD and HD, Liu said the conclusion is that that AV1 will deliver “even higher efficiency gains with UHD/4K and 8K content.”

As for next steps, he said Facebook will “gradually” serve up AV1 content on the web for popular Facebook videos as Chrome and Firefox browsers implement support.

AV1: Origins and the Road Ahead

Facebook released those results Wednesday just as a large panel consisting of AOMedia members gathered at the NAB Show in Las Vegas to shed more light on the origins and plans for AV1.

As for those origins, Gabe Frost, AOMedia’s executive director and principal engineering manager for Microsoft’s operating systems group, said the conversation got started more than three years ago when it was doing some work around codecs that led to conversation with Google about another royalty-free codec, VP9.

He said Microsoft was struggling with the notion of pouring R&D into products that used video codecs and stymied by the speed of adoption.

“We felt we had to create a new way of going forward…and a new business model,” he said.

Matt Frost, AOMedia’s founding board member and head of strategy and partnerships at Google, agreed that there was a need for a royalty-free, next-gen codec that could scale across web technologies, with the codec itself serving as the foundation for companies to innovate on top of and apply to products that compete in the market.

A royalty-free approach brings a level of certainty to business models and enables companies to go “all-in” and build the ecosystem, noted Zach Hamm, an AOMedia founding board member, and director of media and display strategy and planning at chipmaker Intel Corp. (initial AV1 implementations of AV1 will be done in software; support on chips and other hardware is probably two years out).

“I’d say free is a really great price,” Mark Watson, another AOMedia founding board member and director of streaming standards at Netflix, said.

Netflix, which offers 4K content and is interested in more efficient codecs to help it lower streaming costs and deliver higher-quality streams in parts of the world with more limited bandwidth connectivity, expects to start delivering AV1 streams on web browsers later this year, Watson said.

Google’s Frost also acknowledged that codecs that use royalty-based models will be paying attention to AV1. “Are they going to be affected by this? Yes they are,” Google’s Frost said.

It’s still not clear what the other codec-facing patent pools think of AV1. “We haven’t heard much from them…so it’s hard to get into their minds,” David Rudin, AOMedia founding board member, and president, Joint Development Foundation LLC and assistant general counsel at Microsoft, said.

In the meantime, Frost said Google is optimizing its encoding technology for VP1 today as well as for software decoders for Chrome and Firefox to help with video playback for the likes of Netflix, Amazon and Facebook.

Software-based implementations will give AV1 a rolling start, though time will tell how that limits capabilities like refresh rates and resolution. “Hardware will be a key enabler” for AV1, Intel’ Hamm said, predicting that hardware rollouts will arrive within 18 to 24 months, starting on the decoder side.

Also in the early going AV1 will focus on OTT streaming applications and won’t be aggressively pushing for adoption in the broadcast TV sector, Google’s Frost said.

At the same time, there has been interest from broadcasters and discussions are happening, he said. Notably, ATSC 3.0, the next-gen broadcast transmission standard, does aim to support OTT-like capabilities, so there could be some potential alignments with AV1 further down the road. 

With giants such as Netflix, Amazon, Facebook, Google and Microsoft in its corner, the Alliance for Open Media (AOMedia) has released the 1.0 version of AV1, a next-gen, royalty-free codec that claims to have a 30% bit-rate efficiency edge over current-gen technologies like VP9 and HEVC.

The consortium is releasing AV1 in the hopes that it will deliver improved bandwidth efficiencies amid the move to video formats with more pixels (like 4K and 8K), better pixels (High Dynamic Range and Wide Color Gamut), as well as the emergence of 360-degree video, virtual reality (VR), augmented reality (AR) apps and services that need to be smooth and are poised to ratchet up bit rate requirements on TV screens, laptops, tablets and smartphones. 

Though AV1, which is also claimed to have a 65% bandwidth savings over AVC/H.264, could eventually find itself a home inside set-top boxes and, perhaps even further out broadcast TV signals, it’s expected to initially find adoption on web browsers and other types of OTT streaming devices.

“Video is changing the way the internet is evolving,” Gabe Frost, the executive director and a founding board member of AOMedia and a principal engineering manager for Microsoft’s operating systems group, said in an interview. 

Another chief aim for AV1 and its royalty-free model is to eliminate some of the pricing uncertainty that has enveloped codecs like HEVC, which has been saddled by multiple patent pools and little in the way of uniformity on rates.

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The current codec market is “gummed up” due to the cost uncertainty, Frost said, and has likewise caused friction between technology innovators that those that want to charge for patented technologies that can help them. 

AOMedia, launched in 2015, was formed with the core idea that the underlying video codec technology had become a commodity, and that a royalty-free model represented the best path forward. 

“We all use it; it all gets baked into silicon,” Frost said.

The plan with AV1 then focused on how a new approach, despite being royalty-free, could still “create a viable business model to move the industry forward, with some certainty around the costs of producing these codecs,” he explained.

While that idea was spawned by early meetings with Microsoft and Google, it later expanded to include several other in the ecosystem, including chipmakers, distributors, web services companies and video equipment makers, that would be willing to provide their intellectual property under the royalty-free model.

Examples of founding members of AOMedia include Amazon, Apple, ARM, Cisco Systems, Facebook, Google, IBM, Intel, Microsoft, Mozilla, Netflix and Nvidia. Promoter members include Adobe, CableLabs, Bitmovin, Hulu, Vidyo, and Broadcom, among others.

Frost said every member company of AOMedia signs an agreement that licenses the essential technology that’s used in the final AV1 codec on a royalty-free basis. And those that implement it likewise sign a cross-patent license agreement that says they’re free to use AV1 at no cost, but that if they hold any essential patents, those are licensed to other AOMedia members on a royalty-free basis.

“We wanted to make sure we had a licensing infrastructure set up where we could create a durable, royalty-free ecosystem,” Frost said, noting that companies with patents used for codecs such as HEVC and H.264 are free to license those same patents under other terms, such as those that are governed by AV1.

The hope is that the model will accelerate the adoption cycle of AV1 and spark advancements across software, silicon, devices and connectivity and push the market forward for all stakeholders.

“Royalty-free doesn’t mean that people aren’t making money off the technology,” Frost said.

As for near-term expectations, Frost said desktop browsers will start to support AV1 later this year, and see it start to show up on devices such as gaming consoles towards the end of 2018 or into 2019. 

In a presentation about today’s release, AOMedia noted that AV1 would be “coming to a screen near you,” with examples that included Twitch, Facebook, Android, Amazon Prime Video, Chromebook, Chrome, Google Play, Netflix, Windows, Xbox One, Daydream (Google’s VR platform), Skype, and YouTube.

“It will be 2020 when we see it available on all new silicon that comes out,” Frost predicted.

Michelle Abraham, senior analyst, media and communications at S&P Global Market Intelligence, said the buy-in among a wide number of companies and players gives AV1 a “good opportunity” to make waves in the video codec market.

She sees its greatest opportunity coming from video streaming and OTT, but doesn’t expect to see it widely used by broadcasters, who typically go with technologies that are tied to international standards bodies.

There’s also a question about whether the latency requirements of broadcasters will be suited to AV1, at least in its initial release.

AV1 will be getting some play at next month’s NAB show in Las Vegas, including demos on April 10 from 2 p.m. to 3 p.m. at the South Upper Hall Destination NXT Stage.

A panel is also slated for April 11 starting at 3:20 p.m. at the North Hall (N257) that will feature Microsoft’s Gabe Frost, Google’s Matt Frost, Intel’s Zach Hamm, Bitmovin’s Stefan Lederer, Microsoft’s David Rudin, and Netflix’s Mark Watson.