Enter AV1
• Alliance for Open Media codec
• Alliance formed by Google, Cisco, Mozilla, Amazon, Netflix,
Microsoft and Intel
• Goal was open source, royalty free codec
• First introduced in a live setting by cloud
encoding/player/analytics vendor www.Bitmovin.com at
NAB
• Also won best of NAB award
• Very early days of codec
• Unfair fight timewise – very long encode cycles
• Did meet data rate requirements
• Other basic parameters like GOP size
• More technology demonstration than competition
Workflow
• Bitmovin encoded • Parameters used
• Sent WebM/DASH formatted • quality = good
• cpu-used = 0
files to me
• threads = 0
• I decoded into Y4M • lag-in-frames =
• Measured PSNR quality with 25
Moscow University VQMT • kf-max-dist = 60
Tool • kf-min-dist = 60
• undershoot-pct =
• Why no VMAF? 5
• Hybrik didn’t have decoder • overshoot-pct = 5
• Y4M files too big to send • bitrate = 500
Meridian 4K
Sintel 4K
TOSN – 4K
4K Overall
1080p Overall
720p Overall
AV1 vs. x265 – Max Quality
• Re-encode x265 using Slow preset
• Saw before, this was max quality
• Substitute New test clip for TOSN
• All tests at 1080p
• Measure with PSNR and MS SSIM
PSNR Overall
MS SSIM Overall
What’s that Say About AV1?
• Bitstream scheduled to be frozen by end of 2017
• Other results
• Google – AV1 is 35% more efficient than VP9
• Netflix – AV1 is 20% more effective than VP9
• We’re seeing less. Why?
Bitmovin Blog Post (bit.ly/AV1_BM)
• AV1 codebase is VP9/10
• There are 77 additional experimental coding tools
that are under consideration.
• 8 are enabled by default (and by Bitmovin)
• Bitmovin is only AV1 system in production
• More conservative than other experimental systems
• Each user compiles their own version with selected
experiments enabled
• Don’t know how many coding tools included by Netflix
and Google
• Bottom line: results not necessarily inconsistent and will
almost certainly improve at a rapid rate over time
Why So Different from Other Evals?
• Another report concluded “the H.265/MPEG-HEVC
reference software implementation provides significant
average bit-rate savings of 38.4% and 32.8% compared
to AOM/AV1 and H.264/MPEG-AVC, respectively”
• Our results
• Used commercially available HEVC encoder (not reference
encoder)
• Used a much more recent version of AV1 with more experiments
compiled into the code
• Used a version compiled by the company using it (Bitmovin), not
the researcher
• Used encoding parameters for VP9/AV1 (as well as x265/MC) that
were approved by the vendors (not those compiled by the
researcher)