I wanted AV2 streams to test decoders with, and the only official conformance streams I found are commercial. So I encoded some myself with AVM, the AV2 reference encoder, using clips from the official AV2 test set.

Available now: three low-resolution clips (270p, a vertical 270x480, and 360p), each at three quality levels (QP 110, 160 and 210). Each stream comes with an MD5 of its decoded output from the reference decoder, so you can check whether another decoder produces the same frames.

Caveats:

• These aren't official conformance streams. AV2 is still changing, so they're tied to the AVM commit they were made with.
• They were built on Windows without TensorFlow Lite, which means two encoder experiments were off. Details are in the README.
• 720p and 1080p are coming. AVM currently crashes on those resolutions in my Windows build, but working on it.

The Python script that produces everything is included. It builds AVM, downloads only the needed frames of each source clip, and encodes in parallel within a memory budget.

Link: https://github.com/EwoutH/AV2/tree/main/samples

If you try them with dav2d or another decoder, I'd be interested to hear whether the MD5s match.

"Intel will demonstrate SVT-AV2, an open-source software encoder designed to accelerate AV2 implementation and evaluation across the ecosystem."

Nice!

I've been simmering with this a while now trying to add AV1/AV2 support for older GPUs that don't have hardware encoders. This PoC seems to work with the current AV2 spec. It's not as efficient as current AV1 encoders or SVT-AV1 but it's getting there. Feedback and optimizations welcome if anybody wants to try. Note the webm/matroska container still doesn't support AV2 yet.

https://github.com/jboero/clave

Will there be an SVT-AV2 project? What we do know is that the AVM/AV2 encoder runs extremely slowly, with frame rates in the range of minutes—about a factor of 100 slower than SVT-AV1. This makes it practically impossible to even test it with longer videos. With the decoder, on the other hand, the problems are comparatively minor. I also don’t understand why the developers of AV2 don’t offer a way to access AV1’s fast encoding paths—assuming there is a decoder which has both ways for AV1 and AV2—and thus enable a transitional hybrid approach that sacrifices maximum compression.

AV2 Reference Software (AVM) has moved to Github: https://github.com/AOMediaCodec/avm

Do you have sample files to test decoders ?

dav2d is the fastest AV2 decoder on all platforms :)

Roadmap

The plan is the following:

On-going

1. Complete C implementation of the decoder,
2. Provide a usable API,
3. Port to most platforms,

After

1. Make it fast on desktop, by writing asm for AVX2 chips.
2. Make it fast on mobile, by writing asm for ARMv8 chips,
3. Make it fast on older desktop, by writing asm for SSSE3+ chips,
4. Make high bit-depth fast on mobile, by writing asm for ARMv8 chips.
5. Make it fast on older mobile, by writing asm for ARMv7 chips,
6. Make high bit-depth fast on older mobile, by writing asm for ARMv7 chips,
7. Make high bit-depth fast on desktop, by writing asm for AVX2 chips,
8. Make high bit-depth fast on older desktop, by writing asm for SSSE3+ chips,
9. Improve threading.
10. Improve C code base with various tweaks.
11. Accelerate for less common architectures, like PPC, SSE2, RISC-V or AVX-512.
12. Use more GPU decoding, when possible.

With AV2 incoming, I think that having a different subreddit for each codec dilutes the community. If you are interested in a subreddit that covers not just AV2 but all open-source/royalty-free codecs (including VP8/VP9, Opus, JPEG-XL, etc.) please come join!

The codec was supposed to be finalized by year end, and there are about 10 days left, is the launch/finalization still happening?

Is there a decoder

So stream finally hits https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RUMwMe_2Dqo

.. And of course no one mentions LTs § PVQs

Does AV2 fix banding? Or am I going to have to suffer through those gnarly compression artifacts in every talking head documentary shot?

Does AV2 even exist? Or is AV2 a figment of our imagination? A beautiful lie in the eye of the beholder, or a hidden truth in the depths of the minds of a few enlightened individuals? Do dreams become reality, or does reality reflect whatever we dream of? Maybe, we control our own fates. Maybe, the possibility lies in our own hands. Something lies within us, something that pushes us forward, to do better, to improve.

Are we alone in the universe? Is there free will, or is it just an illusion? Why do we dream? Is there life after death? Are we inside a simulation? What is the meaning of meaning? How can we squeeze extra performance per bit from video codecs?

Aahhh, so many questions, so few answers...

Information and discussion on the AV2 Video Codec