Mishaal Rahman: Google confirms that Android is switching to VideoLAN's libdav1d decoder for AV1 video playback!

FragmentedChicken@lemdro.id to Android@lemdro.id – 127 points –
Mishaal Rahman (@MishaalRahman@androiddev.social)
androiddev.social
9

As an average user... Should I be excited?

On my phone the difference is literally the video being unwatchably slow with Google's AV1 decoder and perfectly fine with VLC's

I legit can't tell a difference lol, but I'm excited anyway

Maybe you just have a faster phone than me or your phone has hardware decoding for AV1

If you have an older or low to some midrange phone, then you might get better performance watching some videos.

It seems more concerning that YT is apparently forcing AV1 when there's no hardware decoder for it (if I'm reading that thread right). Seems like that will make people think their battery is starting to go — better software decoder or not.

AV1 hardware decoders are available in recent phones.

Only in some of the most recent and high-end. I think Apple just added one to the iphone within the last year. Qualcomm wasn't much quicker. There's a lot of perfectly good phones out there that don't have AV1 hardware decoders.