YouTube moves to AV1 by default to the dismay of some Android users

AnActOfCreation@programming.dev to Technology@lemmy.world – 183 points –
androidpolice.com

Arif Dikici, who is a part of the Android Video and Image Codecs team at Google, recently announced on LinkedIn that Android will now use an AV1 decoder known as “libdav1d,” which was created by the team behind VLC.

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How can I test if my phone uses hardware decoding for AV1?

apps like https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.parseus.codecinfo (https://apt.izzysoft.de/fdroid/index/apk/com.parseus.codecinfo) show whether or not you've got it, on my samsung galaxy note 20 ultra I've got software only :(

According to this, my OnePlus Open has hardware av1 decoding. That's pretty cool.

Nice, I was pretty sure my Pixel 7 already had hardware AV1 decoding and this app seems to confirm it.

Pixel 6 & newer, newer MediaTek devices, anything with the Snapdragon 8 gen 2 or newer. It took Qualcomm a while because many companies (including Apple) were holding out for VVC, which to this day isn't in a great state. iPhone 15 Pro & newer support AV1 hwdec

Let me save you some time, it doesn't. I have no idea what Google is thinking, very few phones have it right now.

My Pixel does. 🤷🏼‍♂️

They've delivered the VLC software decoder over-the-air to all devices with Android 12 which enables them to do 720p. Some Android 11 devices may have come with an older software decoder and may be able to do 1080p. Either way, software-decoding AV1 is gonna suck even with the new decoder.

Hardware support is present starting with Exynos 2xxx, Snapdragon 8 gen 2, and Dimensity 1xxx, 8xxx and 9xxx.

Here's a gsmarena filter, you can further refine it to restrict to recent years, by brand etc.:

https://gsmarena.com/search.php3?sAvailabilities=1&sChipset=125,116,118,84,126,117,108,128,129,112,130,131,110,113,98,99,121,69

Not sure what your point is. You confidently, perhaps prematurely, suggested that OP's phone didn't have hardware AV1 decoding. Do you know what kind of phone they have? Your filter also ignores Tensor as a chipset. All Pixels since 6 have AV1 hardware decoding. So, basically, what you're suggesting is that anyone with a phone over 3 years old doesn't have AV1 hardware decode, and considering that the specification was only finalized in early 2019, you seem pretty grumpy about it for some reason. Just because it's being set as default doesn't mean support is being removed, just deprecating them as a fallback. Why grumpy?