uvg266 Rolls Out More AVX2 Optimizations For Open-Source VVC/H.266 Encoding

[phoronix]

Phoronix: uvg266 Rolls Out More AVX2 Optimizations For Open-Source VVC/H.266 Encoding

Version 0.8 of uvg266 as one of the leading Versatile Video Codec (VVC) / H.266 open-source video encoders is now available...

https://www.phoronix.com/news/uvg266-0.8-Released

[pomac]

The changelog states that they had to disable some optimizations? Reading too quick? =)

[JEBjames]

Michael

How R you doing today. Typo

"experimental support for inta-block copy (IBC)," that should be "intra"

[Michael]

Michael

How R you doing today. Typo

"experimental support for inta-block copy (IBC)," that should be "intra"

Whoops, thanks as always!

[geerge]

Down with this sort of thing.

[OneTimeShot]

Would be amusing if patent holders started taking down vvc projects. Boot is on other foot now. Taste of your own medicine MPEG-LA

[SteamPunker]

Why are open-source developers wasting their efforts on implementing a patent-encumbered codec that requires royalties to use?

If you are going to develop something that is open-source, then go for an open and royalty-free standard. Same as with the open-source h.264 project (what was its name again?). Pointless. If they want to collect royalties for the codecs, then pay developers to write commercial implementations. Don't count on the open-source community to give you freebees. (And open-source developers: don't give them those freebees! Your hard-earned work is much more deserving than that.)

[sophisticles]

Why are open-source developers wasting their efforts on implementing a patent-encumbered codec that requires royalties to use?

If you are going to develop something that is open-source, then go for an open and royalty-free standard. Same as with the open-source h.264 project (what was its name again?). Pointless. If they want to collect royalties for the codecs, then pay developers to write commercial implementations. Don't count on the open-source community to give you freebees. (And open-source developers: don't give them those freebees! Your hard-earned work is much more deserving than that.)

You're thinking about x264.

As for why, the answer(s) are sort of nuanced. Software patents are not enforceable in all countries. Also, for h264, iirc, the royalties are not required for noncommercial use.

There is currently an open and royalty free standard, AV1, but it's very CPU intensive.

But the biggest reason is quality. MSU recently did a test of large number of encoders and every single VVC/H266 implementation beat every H264, H265, VP9 and AV1 encoder by significant margins, in some cases requiring half the bit-rate to achieve the same MS-SSIM score.

http://www.compression.ru/video/codec_comparison/2022/main_report.html

[SteamPunker]

• "free only for non-commercial use" is not Free (as in Freedom)
• Fair point about AV1 not being the same generation as h.266, but even then, focus should be about helping improve AV2, which I believe is already under development. At the very least, open-source efforts should not be wasted on encouraging adoption of h.266, unless somehow miraculously it is declared as a truly royalty-free standard.
• AV1 being CPU-intensive is the reason why we should push more for hardware-accelerated support for it. That's why I was so livid to learn that the Raspberry Pi 5 only has hardware acceleration for h.265 and not AV1. WHY, EBEN?

[geerge]

• AV1 being CPU-intensive is the reason why we should push more for hardware-accelerated support for it. That's why I was so livid to learn that the Raspberry Pi 5 only has hardware acceleration for h.265 and not AV1. WHY, EBEN?

That takes time. We were fortunate how quickly AV1 hardware decode made its way into the big stuff. Raspberry pi is playing in the old tech paddling pool on older nodes, it doesn't make business sense to backport av1 decode even if it would make consumer sense. h.265 was released 5 years before av1 so hardware decode made it into what was at the time bleeding edge, when av1 may not even have been a twinkle in the eye.