AVX2 Tuning Paying Off Big Time For Dav1d 10b/12b Video Decode

[Danny3]

Artistic preference. Some people complain that higher than 24 FPS video looks too sharp; the soap opera effect. In order to accommodate both high frame rates and artistic integrity video would have to be done at at least 120 FPS and either kept there or "downrated". 120 is the lowest common denominator of 24 and 60. 24 being Hollywood Standard and 60 being Display Standard.

Agreed !
Unfortunately people who complain about higher quality are plain idiots !
I've seen in the past how they complained so much about 3D (dimmer image, headaches, etc.) that filmmakers and TV manufacturers dropped it completely.
I've seen people in my country complaining about dubbed movies (because they want to hear the original voices, kids are not able to learn english anymore, etc) without understanding that you can have separate audio tracks on a movie, which means dubbing is an addition, not a replacement.

The same about HFR, they don't understand that it's important to have the source with the highest quality possible as in framerate, so 60 or 120 FPS and you can downgrade it on your end to 24 FPS or whatever you want.

But if a movie is not filmed in 60 or 120 FPS those extra frames from 24 are lost forever.

As a side note, I watched Gemini Man in 4K HDR at 60 FPS.

It was wonderful, the best HFR movie I have ever seen, so natural, so realistic.

I heard that it was filmed in native 120 FPS and it was amazing (as people who have seen it in cinmas said), but I could not find anywhere that version.

[nils_]

I've seen people in my country complaining about dubbed movies (because they want to hear the original voices, kids are not able to learn english anymore, etc) without understanding that you can have separate audio tracks on a movie, which means dubbing is an addition, not a replacement.

I've sometimes seen cases (with paid streaming) where there is only one audio track, probably for copyright reasons. Oftentimes even the title is localized, and often there are hard-coded subtitles (which also isn't necessary since you can include many sub tracks) for third/made-up languages - it often feels less than immersive to me. It's almost never possible to get the full original as shown in the country of Origin and there is no good reason for that to be the case if I'm willing to pay.

Otherwise I'm with you, I prefer the best possible version that my devices and internet connection can support. For a long time you didn't even get HD (never mind UHD) content on Linux devices even though you paid full price.

[skeevy420]

I've sometimes seen cases (with paid streaming) where there is only one audio track, probably for copyright reasons. Oftentimes even the title is localized, and often there are hard-coded subtitles (which also isn't necessary since you can include many sub tracks) for third/made-up languages - it often feels less than immersive to me. It's almost never possible to get the full original as shown in the country of Origin and there is no good reason for that to be the case if I'm willing to pay.

Otherwise I'm with you, I prefer the best possible version that my devices and internet connection can support. For a long time you didn't even get HD (never mind UHD) content on Linux devices even though you paid full price.

Sort of related, I don't like it when streams only offer 5.1 or better audio. I have a 2.0 TV and I want to hear what people are saying dammit. I always have subtitles on because it's either that or I have to keep turning the volume up and down to hear voices from the stereo channels. I'm surprised that Pipewire, PulseAudio, Windows, etc don't have a built in method that moves the rear (and side) channels to the front, splits the center channel in two, and cuts the LFE channel out. Convert X.1 to 2.0 on the fly.

[Linuxxx]

Sort of related, I don't like it when streams only offer 5.1 or better audio. I have a 2.0 TV and I want to hear what people are saying dammit. I always have subtitles on because it's either that or I have to keep turning the volume up and down to hear voices from the stereo channels. I'm surprised that Pipewire, PulseAudio, Windows, etc don't have a built in method that moves the rear (and side) channels to the front, splits the center channel in two, and cuts the LFE channel out. Convert X.1 to 2.0 on the fly.

mpv to the rescue yet again:

ao=pulse
audio-device=auto
audio-channels=stereo
ad-lavc-downmix=yes
af=lavfi=loudnorm

Problem solved!

[linuxgeex]

x265 is encoder, subj is decoder. if you meant h265, it's abandoned. youtube users could be sticking to h264 instead

Sorry for not being more verbose / clear.

I used "and/or" to contrast the concepts, not to suggest that browsers are supporting h265, or that x265 is a decoder.

If you'd like me to speak specifically to the browser playback performance, AV1's true competition is VP9 for most streaming sites today. AV1 will face another 3-4 years before a majority of people have an accelerated playback device. I believe that today most media players, laptops, and tablets, have accelerated VP9 playback.

Re: average home users making a choice, I used x265 to speak to the understandable feeling that av1 (especially its encoder) is/has been too slow to be workable.

With AV1 now having Main10 decode support with intrinsics on x86-64, we're likely to see more home users wanting to work with it... that was my point... and I feel that point will stand regardless of how slow av1 encoding remains.

PS. sadly your other comment appears to have been blocked so I was unable to respond to it or even read it... https://www.phoronix.com/forums/node/1257107

[linuxgeex]

For my Ivy Bridge I use h264ify to make youtube switch delivery codec from av1 to h264.

I did the same when I was still on my IVB i5-3210M laptop, and it really did make the battery life drastically better!

With my i5-6200U replacement (the other was stolen in a break-in, grr) I found that the accelerated decoding didn't actually make much of a difference to playback performance or battery life... but using mpv by installing youtube-dl and dragging the URL from the browser to mpv... now that made a night-and-day difference.

[linuxgeex]

If you talk about x265 you are talking about the encoding side. Have no up to date numbers that compare x265 vs AV1 encoder. But the AV1 encoder did get quite a lot faster since AV1 got released.

Yes if you download and compile the latest sources, libaom-av1 at preset 4 is actually competitive in all metrics with x265 preset veryslow, and of course better file size. So I've stopped using x265 for personal archive storage.

PS, thanks and I responded to the other half of your message via pal666's response.

[coder]

I don't give a fuck that the the CPU can decode the 100-600 FPS when the video is still 24 FPS !

It's good to have some headroom, though. If it's using a significant fraction of your CPU, then the fans are going to spin up and the machine will be churning out noticably more heat.

Also, the faster it can decode, the older & lower-end machines AV1 can play on. Michael only tested >= 4-core CPUs, but what about a Haswell-era dual-core?

And, as mentioned in other posts, the less CPU it uses, the longer a laptop's batteries would last.

P.S. are you asking why Youtube caps/converts videos to 24 fps? If not, does anyone know what their max framerate is?

[coder]

video would have to be done at at least 120 FPS and either kept there or "downrated". 120 is the lowest common denominator of 24 and 60. 24 being Hollywood Standard and 60 being Display Standard.

I don't follow what you're even saying, here. Video clips can each have different framrates. We don't need all videos to be converted to a single framerate.

[coder]

Oftentimes even the title is localized, and often there are hard-coded subtitles (which also isn't necessary since you can include many sub tracks) for third/made-up languages - it often feels less than immersive to me. It's almost never possible to get the full original as shown in the country of Origin and there is no good reason for that to be the case if I'm willing to pay.

Back when I bought DVDs, I suspected the reason was to prevent Japanese from buying US releases of their stuff, which were normally much cheaper than their own domestic releases. So, it could've been negotiated as part of the US licensing agreement.

In the age of streaming, there are other ways to geographically restrict content (unless someone is really determined to bypass them). However, the use of hard-subs could frustrate would-be pirates from doing a screen capture of the stream.

For a long time you didn't even get HD (never mind UHD) content on Linux devices even though you paid full price.

For the past few years, I've had good luck with browser-based streaming in Chromium.