In a world where the dominant video coding format is 21 years old, one savior has emerged to elevate your favorite streamers’ content. Aimed to replace the incumbent H.264 for video encoding — the process of compressing raw video files to allow them to be transmitted on the internet — the Alliance for Open Media’s (AOM) AV1 video encoder is coming to Twitch to improve the quality of streams and allow more viewers to experience high-resolution live content.
First released in 2018 by Google, Microsoft, Intel, and other AOM founders, AV1 works by predicting the motion of similar groups of pixels, combining them and reducing less important details. Through prediction, transformation, and filtering, AV1 can compress video to maintain quality while cutting bitrate nearly in half.
AV1 is useful for streamers because it allows streamers to use the same bitrate with higher quality or a lower bitrate with the same quality. Higher bitrates are preferred because they offer more data to represent each frame of a video. According to Insider Gaming, AV1 offers a 30% decrease in file size at the same bitrate compared with H.264. Meanwhile, AV1 benefits viewers because to stream video smoothly, the viewer’s internet speed must be equal to or higher than the stream’s bitrate. Because AV1 allows for lower bitrates with high-quality video, viewers with low-speed internet can still enjoy high-resolution video.
Unlike x264, which is a software encoder using the aging H.264 standard, AV1 primarily utilizes the GPU to encode video. Although early AV1 implementation utilized the CPU, GPU encoding will likely take over as the new standard, as dedicated encoding hardware allows GPUs to encode video more quickly than CPUs.
A key feature that will allow AV1 to be adopted quickly is that it is open-source and royalty-free. This means that platforms do not need to pay to use the codec, which in theory eliminates a significant barrier to adoption. However, in practice, AOM is making it difficult to compete with AV1 due to cross licensing agreements that force other companies to license their patents to AOM in exchange for the royalty-free use. Consequently, AV1 was investigated by the European Union for anti-competitive practices amid allegations of patent infringement against the new encoding standard. Hardware manufacturers might be slower to adopt AV1 if there are concerns about patent issues, as they could face significant costs if sued for patent infringement.
However, several big players have already offered hardware and software support for AV1. This includes both AV1 encoding and decoding — the ability to watch AV1 content. YouTube adopted AV1 in 2018, with Netflix following in 2020. Twitch adopted AV1 in 2022, but only for its most popular hand-picked streamers. In terms of hardware support, AV1 decoding is supported by AMD’s 6000- and 7000-series GPUs, NVIDIA’s 30- and 40-series GPUs, and all Intel ARC GPUs. AV1 encoding, meanwhile, which is crucial for streamers, is only supported by AMD’s 7000 series, NVIDIA’s 40 series, and Intel’s ARC.
Another issue with AV1 is its hardware requirements. Because AV1 is very computationally intensive, some modern components are unable to support it. Thus, it will take several years for AV1 to be supported by every CPU and GPU.
In coming years, AV1 is expected to replace H.264, HEVC, and AOM’s own VP9 encoder. NVENC, NVIDIA’s popular hardware video encoder, now supports AV1 in the aforementioned GPUs. Compared with the previous encoders, AV1 is more efficient than all four. And aside from VP9, it is the only royalty-free option. The combination of its bitrate efficiency and free usage options will allow AV1 to take over as the predominant video encoder. It offers extraordinary benefits to streamers and viewers, and its technology does not only apply to livestreams. However, thanks to its demanding hardware requirements and patent infringement questions, it may not fully replace the incumbents for a few more years.
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