YouTube Embraces AV1... But it Might Kill Your Battery

[Nimoy007]

Summary

With increased >FHD content becoming more common, YouTube will be shifting to the AV1 codec and away from H264. This could be a problem for viewers with older devices that don't have baked in hardware acceleration for AV1, leading to an increase in processing power required for viewing and increased battery drain.

 

Quotes

Quote

 

• Google has rolled out support for a new AV1 decoder to many Android devices, but apps have to specifically declare that they want to use the new feature.
•  YouTube has opted to use the new decoder by default, and some users are concerned about battery ramifications due to lack of hardware acceleration support.

 

My thoughts

This could be a major issue for folks with older devices and may become a benchmark variable to watch for in phone reviews that include battery life tests. On the other hand, this is nothing new. YouTube hasn't been kind on older devices in the past, which is unsurprising given the demands video streaming puts on a device. Consumers should consider their streaming habits when buying especially dated used phones, tablets, streaming boxes and smart TVs.

 

Sources

https://www.androidpolice.com/youtube-google-av1-codec-android-video/

[whispous]

I'm interested to see some example devices and dates that don't support AV1.

 

I would assume it's been standard on all new chipsets for one or two years, which would leave a vast majority unsupported?

[Kisai]

4 minutes ago, whispous said:

I'm interested to see some example devices and dates that don't support AV1.

 

I would assume it's been standard on all new chipsets for one or two years, which would leave a vast majority unsupported?

Almost no devices support AV1 before Android 14. Pretty much any device made before 2022, will not.

https://www.gizmochina.com/2021/01/12/samsung-exynos-2100-announced-today-with-significant-upgrades-and-a-built-in-5g-modem/

https://www.kimovil.com/en/list-smartphones-by-processor-group/exynos-2100

 

So Galaxy 21+ or later using it(non-US models), and not the snapdragon 888(which is the US/CANADA model.) 

 

https://www.qualcomm.com/products/mobile/snapdragon/smartphones/snapdragon-8-series-mobile-platforms/snapdragon-888-5g-mobile-platform , does not.

 

The  Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 supports AV1, which was released in November 2022, and is two generations newer than the 888. 

 

 

https://www.broadcom.com/products/broadband/set-top-box/bcm7218x

This is a STB chipset, not a phone chipset, so most likely will be seen in ISP's cheap STB's and some smartTV's

 

Basically, the answer is going to be "if you want this feature, do your homework."

 

[TetraSky]

36 minutes ago, Kisai said:

Almost no devices support AV1 before Android 14. Pretty much any device made before 2022, will not.

While they may not support hardware AV1 decoding, as long as they have Android 12 or higher, they should have native software decoding for AV1, no? At least that's what I'm getting from the article.

 

[Nimoy007]

2 minutes ago, TetraSky said:

They should have native software decoding for AV1, no?

That's the problem. Software decode is intensive.

[SorryBella]

55 minutes ago, Kisai said:

The  Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 supports AV1

Talk about close shave.

https://www.qualcomm.com/products/mobile/snapdragon/smartphones/snapdragon-8-series-mobile-platforms/snapdragon-8-gen-2-mobile-platform

[Jurrunio]

It's not just phones and tablets, PCs don't have hardware AV1 decoding before Nvidia 30 series, AMD Navi 2X (RX 6000 series) and Intel 11th gen. Desktops wouldn't be bothered much but laptops will face the same problem.

[da na]

Anything HEVC is stupid hard on hw that lacks decoding acceleration. Hope h.254/5 will still be an option, but very understandable why YouTube would go this direction.

[Electronics Wizardy]

1 hour ago, da na said:

Anything HEVC is stupid hard on hw that lacks decoding acceleration. Hope h.254/5 will still be an option, but very understandable why YouTube would go this direction.

I don't think HEVC is used much or at all on yourtube. Licensing issues mostly. 

 

Youtube seems to mostly use VP9 for lower view videos, and AV1 for higer view count videos these days. Some h.264 is out there, but pretty rare it seems. 

 

AV1 isn't that hard on CPU decoding. Still worse than hardware, but a 1st gen i3 mobile can decode av1 at 1080p30, so its not that big of CPU hog.

[porina]

8 hours ago, Jurrunio said:

It's not just phones and tablets, PCs don't have hardware AV1 decoding before Nvidia 30 series, AMD Navi 2X (RX 6000 series) and Intel 11th gen. Desktops wouldn't be bothered much but laptops will face the same problem.

Nvidia Ampere:

Desktop: Sep 2020

Laptop: Jan 2021

 

AMD RDNA2:

Desktop dGPU: Nov 2020

Laptop dGPU: Mar 2021

APU: Jan 2022

 

Intel:

Desktop iGPU: Mar 2021 (11th gen Rocket Lake)

Laptop iGPU: Sep 2020 (11th gen Tiger Lake)

Desktop dGPU: Mar 2022 (Arc) - I'm ignoring the OEM only card they made just before Arc.

 

Basically earliest hardware AV1 decode support was late 2020, about 3.5 years ago. Amongst the early implementations are Intel iGPUs, which will make up a good chunk of PCs out there. If you were to expand it to all product categories, we're pretty much covered with new releases for over 2 years, with a good proportion going back further.

[leadeater]

12 hours ago, Nimoy007 said:

YouTube has opted to use the new decoder by default, and some users are concerned about battery ramifications due to lack of hardware acceleration support.

Just because it is the default doesn't necessarily mean there isn't another codec source available. Already lots of videos are VP9 and H264 and which is played is picked via device hardware support.

 

Devices that don't have AV1 won't necessarily be playing AV1 source and software decoding.

[Doobeedoo]

Good though, need to move on both sw and hw wise. YT compression sucks so bad anything with detail, a lot of changes and fast movements. So bad. Also lack of 120fps even, come on.

[wanderingfool2]

5 hours ago, porina said:

Basically earliest hardware AV1 decode support was late 2020, about 3.5 years ago. Amongst the early implementations are Intel iGPUs, which will make up a good chunk of PCs out there.

Except for the "gamers", the majority of people I know keep their computers until software support is gone or it just starts getting too slow for everyday use.

 

Even myself, my rig doesn't have AV1 support...because why would I upgrade?  I would say there is a large amount of people with older systems

[porina]

1 hour ago, wanderingfool2 said:

Except for the "gamers", the majority of people I know keep their computers until software support is gone or it just starts getting too slow for everyday use.

I agree but that doesn't matter. AV1 being default is a long way from AV1 being mandatory.

 

What I wrote was expanding the post I replied to. Give a bit more context as to which systems might support AV1 hardware decode. Probably vast majority of the last two years, and a good proportion going back 3.5 years.

 

There will always be older systems that don't support the latest thing. That doesn't negate the need to add new things otherwise nothing would ever change. We had similar arguments with ray tracing in games and we've already passed the 50% RT capable mark on Steam Hardware Survey. Ball park 5 years from nothing to majority of Steam gamers. We're probably going to have similar arguments about AI. It takes time but it has to start somewhere.

 

Edit: we also have the impending doom of Windows 10. Once that happens that could jump things up a bit.

[StDragon]

Is it the content creators or YT that plans on re-transcoding these to AV1? Because of the limited hardware decode user base, would make sense to relegate AV1 to 4k and higher first. The vast majority of people don't watch 4k let alone support AV1 when watching YT from a mobile device.

[porina]

26 minutes ago, StDragon said:

Is the content creators or YT that plans on re-transcoding these to AV1?

Probably YT will do the work for now. There is no change to the recommended upload settings for creators. Still H.264.

https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/1722171

 

[Kisai]

I'm 100% confident that youtube decides to re-transcode from source videos depending on access times.

 

Like someone who uploads a 100GB of videos a week in HEVC, will get that initial transcode to VP9 unless they're like LTT or MrBeast, but if that video goes viral, it might get pushed into an AV1 to save on bandwidth.

 

[bcredeur97]

21 hours ago, Kisai said:

Almost no devices support AV1 before Android 14. Pretty much any device made before 2022, will not.

https://www.gizmochina.com/2021/01/12/samsung-exynos-2100-announced-today-with-significant-upgrades-and-a-built-in-5g-modem/

https://www.kimovil.com/en/list-smartphones-by-processor-group/exynos-2100

 

So Galaxy 21+ or later using it(non-US models), and not the snapdragon 888(which is the US/CANADA model.) 

 

https://www.qualcomm.com/products/mobile/snapdragon/smartphones/snapdragon-8-series-mobile-platforms/snapdragon-888-5g-mobile-platform , does not.

 

The  Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 supports AV1, which was released in November 2022, and is two generations newer than the 888. 

 

 

https://www.broadcom.com/products/broadband/set-top-box/bcm7218x

This is a STB chipset, not a phone chipset, so most likely will be seen in ISP's cheap STB's and some smartTV's

 

Basically, the answer is going to be "if you want this feature, do your homework."

 

I'm ok if they have it on by default to save the bandwidth of the platform. But they need to have a toggle for non-AV1. 

or heck -- how about a device detection engine? Does the device not support AV1? Then maybe don't turn it on lol

[StDragon]

6 hours ago, Kisai said:

Like someone who uploads a 100GB of videos a week in HEVC, will get that initial transcode to VP9 unless they're like LTT or MrBeast, but if that video goes viral, it might get pushed into an AV1 to save on bandwidth.

YT caches popular content locally with CDNs, no? Are they really hurting for bandwidth? If devices struggle to playback AV1 in software (dropped frames), the experience would probably be worse than if they streamed it over a simi-congested network at peak viewing times.

[Mark Kaine]

9 hours ago, StDragon said:

Is it the content creators or YT that plans on re-transcoding these to AV1? Because of the limited hardware decode user base, would make sense to relegate AV1 to 4k and higher first. The vast majority of people don't watch 4k let alone support AV1 when watching YT from a mobile device.

no? it doesn't really matter what u upload as long yt accepts it they will encode it however they see fit.  so if your sub 100k subs the worst way possible 

 

 

[atxcyclist]

7 hours ago, bcredeur97 said:

I'm ok if they have it on by default to save the bandwidth of the platform. But they need to have a toggle for non-AV1. 

or heck -- how about a device detection engine? Does the device not support AV1? Then maybe don't turn it on lol

Hopefully there will be a toggle, most laptops don’t support AV1 and will get their batteries roasted if they cannot use more common decoding as an option.

[leadeater]

7 hours ago, StDragon said:

YT caches popular content locally with CDNs, no? Are they really hurting for bandwidth? If devices struggle to playback AV1 in software (dropped frames), the experience would probably be worse than if they streamed it over a simi-congested network at peak viewing times.

They are cached at CDNs yea, each quality/resolution setting is it's own file (YT doesn't real time transcode) and each quality/resolution setting may actually have more than 1 file, one for VP9 and another H264 which is the current possible (not all videos have both at the same playback setting).

 

Some videos do have a 1080p/720p VP9 and H264 and for lower may only be H264 if an older video. The YouTube player does know what hardware decode support a device has and will select based on that (you can't manually choose).

 

So when YouTube rolls out AV1 it'll be only for 4k or 4k and 1080p premium, maybe 1080p standard. They will still have VP9 as well and will rely on device detection. Probably in a year or so 4k will be AV1 only for new videos and then a year later 1080p premium.

 

YouTube has migrated between codecs more than once, none of those other times did the world end  

[Nimoy007]

On 4/20/2024 at 6:50 AM, leadeater said:

Just because it is the default doesn't necessarily mean there isn't another codec source available.

...for now

[StDragon]

8 hours ago, leadeater said:

So when YouTube rolls out AV1 it'll be only for 4k or 4k and 1080p premium, maybe 1080p standard. They will still have VP9 as well and will rely on device detection. Probably in a year or so 4k will be AV1 only for new videos and then a year later 1080p premium.

If so, this is a rational way of migrating to a new codec.

 

At the moment, only the Apple M3 and iPhone 15 Pro support hardware AV1 playback. I'm sure some Android phones that support too, but at the moment all AV1 hardware decode is a premium optional feature.

[leadeater]

30 minutes ago, Nimoy007 said:

...for now

For now and then not later is actually fine, if we are worried about phone battery life then by the time everyone is actually trying to play 4k on their phone only I doubt they have their current device. I would guess YouTube doesn't auto select 4k on phones  but since I don't watch YouTube on my phone I wouldn't know. Outside of Apple it's actually more likely Windows laptops will have AV1 support. Intel supported it far sooner and a lot more people replace Windows laptops sooner compared to Apple.

 

There will be people negatively effected but that was the case last time codecs were migrated too, nothing is going to catch on fire.

 

Demanding zero people effected (negatively) is simply unrealistic and also unfair.