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.

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/

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