Sunday, October 11th 2020
AMD RDNA2 Graphics Architecture Features AV1 Decode Hardware-Acceleration
AMD's RDNA2 graphics architecture features hardware-accelerated decoding of the AV1 video format, according to a Microsoft blog announcing the format's integration with Windows 10. The blog mentions the three latest graphics architectures among those that support accelerated decoding of the format—Intel Gen12 Iris Xe, NVIDIA RTX 30-series "Ampere," and AMD RX 6000-series "RDNA2." The AV1 format is being actively promoted by major hardware vendors to online streaming content providers, as it offers 50% better compression than the prevalent H.264 (translating into that much bandwidth savings), and 20% better compression than VP9. You don't need these GPUs to use AV1, anyone can use it with Windows 10 (version 1909 or later), by installing the AV1 Video Extension from the Microsoft Store. The codec will use software (CPU) decode in the absence of hardware acceleration.
Source:
Microsoft Tech Community
42 Comments on AMD RDNA2 Graphics Architecture Features AV1 Decode Hardware-Acceleration
Coming soon to next gen chromecast and rokus etc, in about 5 years...
Atm the gains are only for big powerhouses like Google (for Youtube), Netflix etc. where they can just brute-force encode with their server-farms.
I hope it's not a meme decoder like VP9, which recently got disabled in the latest Radeon drivers.
My current Andriod box does H264,H265.
High Efficiency Video Coding
Uncompressed 1080 10-bit
Resolution 1920x1080
Frame rate
30
Video length
10 minutes
Total space: 130.36 GB
Format
H.264 1080
Resolution 1920x1080
Frame rate
30
Video length
10 minutes
Total space: 7.23 GB Worth it ?
Not realtime rendered, but shows what might be possible at those bitrates at some point down the line with a real time hardware encoder.
And it's till more expensive than AV1, which is why it will be superseded eventually.
It's also in some chips from Broadcom, Qualcomm and Realtek, so it'll be here sooner rather than later.
www.cnx-software.com/2019/10/20/amlogic-s905x4-s908x-s805x2-av1-1080p-4k-8k-media-processors/
As pointed out by others, Netflix and Google are moving to AV1 as their future standard compression algorithm, so everything they'll be streaming in the future, will be in AV1 from their servers to you. Right now, several different standards are in use, as older content hasn't always been re-encoded to newer codecs and new content is using HEVC or something similar, as it's the most efficient, but also widely supported standard out there. A lot of content is also available in multiple codecs, as the player is requesting the content it can play. It's not as if Netflix and YouTube would be transcoding content on the fly, as it would be too slow to do. Please see the link below for an example of how Netflix encodes their shows in multiple formats for different devices.
That said, weirdly enough the Netflix Windows app seems to using AVC1 (H.264) whereas going through Chrome I get VP9 encoded content. If you want to check the tech specs on a PC, hit Ctrl+Alt+Shift+Q while playing a video.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technical_details_of_Netflix
I mean, I also find it pathetic how little control end users have, but you have to look at this from all angles.
Edit: Seems like the browser resolution thing is a Netflix limitation to prevent people from bypassing the software DRM... Even so, I don't understand why Chrome then uses a more efficient codec than their own app.
It should also be pointed out that there's something of a quality setting in Netflix that you can change on their website:
www.digitaltrends.com/home-theater/getting-hd-netflix/
Browser limitation are just the industry being afraid someone will "steal" their content.