YouTube Begins Rolling Out AV1 Support In Beta

[phoronix]

Phoronix: YouTube Begins Rolling Out AV1 Support In Beta

YouTube has begun transcoding videos into the new royalty-free AV1 video codec...

http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=YouTube-AV1-Beta

[geearf]

Why is it only in MP4 and not webm/matroska?

[andreano]

The WebM spec is not finished yet, whereas the MP4 spec was just finished, IIRC just the day before YouTube started using it.

As for why the MP4 spec was finished first, probably because Netflix wants to use it with DRM, and all DRM schemes (except Google's Widevine) assume we live in an MPEG world. MPEG Common Encryption is the umbrella standard. It helps little that Widevine supports WebM when content providers must support every DRM scheme to cover all platforms and devices.

It was at least Netflix who wanted VP9 in mp4.

[Imroy]

I wonder what encoder they're using. libaomedia-av1 or Rav1e?

[wswartzendruber]

Why is it only in MP4 and not webm/matroska?

I think this has to do with MPEG-DASH, which supports arbitrary codecs. That specification defines using either MP4 or M2TS, and YouTube seemingly uses MP4.

[Snoop05]

What else do i need to make it work?

https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Snoop05/snoop05.github.io/master/Capture.PNG

[Snoop05]

For some reason i cant post attachment, nor links. I wanted to show screesnshot with all conditions fullfileld yet no AV1 playback.

[Imroy]

Well Youtube-dl seems to work okay.

$ youtube-dl -F 'https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sUTismgsGpk' | grep av01
394          mp4        256x144    144p  209k , av01.0.05M.08, 24fps, video only, 4.04MiB
396          mp4        640x360    360p  894k , av01.0.05M.08, 24fps, video only, 15.11MiB
397          mp4        854x480    480p 1519k , av01.0.05M.08, 24fps, video only, 25.27MiB

It complained about formats though, probably the WebM issue that andreano mentioned.

$ youtube-dl -f 397+251 'https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sUTismgsGpk' 
...
WARNING: Requested formats are incompatible for merge and will be merged into mkv.

The video played with mpv and VLC (on Debian Sid here). It's great to see the birth of a new codec!

[lu_tze]

It complained about formats though, probably the WebM issue that andreano mentioned.

$ youtube-dl -f 397+251 'https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sUTismgsGpk'
...
WARNING: Requested formats are incompatible for merge and will be merged into mkv.

The video played with mpv and VLC (on Debian Sid here). It's great to see the birth of a new codec!

Try 397+140, that will save into .mp4.

[geearf]

The WebM spec is not finished yet, whereas the MP4 spec was just finished, IIRC just the day before YouTube started using it.

As for why the MP4 spec was finished first, probably because Netflix wants to use it with DRM, and all DRM solutions assume we live in an MPEG world.

Do the containers require specific work per new codec? I imagined they wouldn't but I guess I was wrong.
I didn't know DRM stuff only worked with MP4, that's interesting, though it's a bit strange to use a codec made to not be part of the MPEG world with a container coming from there

I think this has to do with MPEG-DASH, which supports arbitrary codecs. That specification defines using either MP4 or M2TS, and YouTube seemingly uses MP4.

Now I am confused.
Wiki states

DASH is audio/video codec agnostic.

and Mozilla has a test page for AV1 and DASH: https://demo.bitmovin.com/public/firefox/av1/

MPEG-DASH also has a patent pool, so I don't get why it should be mixed with AV1. On that note, is there something FOSS coming out to replace it? Because it seems a really good concept, one that could also be useful for processing power I guess.