Support AV1 Video Encoding and Decoding

SOLUTION was SO easy!
Found out, that DaVinci Resolve supports AV1 since version 18 back in mid 2023!
Installed it for FREE and it works like charm - just dragged an 1.5 GB AV1 MKV into Resolve, got my clip preview, hit space and it played back flawlessly. So, Adobe, I'll do this project with the FREE version of DaVinci Resolve.

@MyerPjYou may look on their website: They're at least as big in PRO movie blockbusters as Adobe which finally destroys your thin PRO argument 😉

Fact just seems to be that Adobe is once more behind which still makes me very sad as I 'grew up' with Adobe.
But back in the days the performance of Adobe products also was much better - they didn't manage to use the ressources of a modern PC system till now. Exported that Handbrake-transcoded AE-cropped video on Friday. While handbrake used ALL 16 cores max for transcoding (with still letting the Windows system stay absolutely smooth and responsive whilst having 99% CPU utilization), The Media Encoder export of the cropped file took very long with 10 to 12,5% GPU utilization (Mercury Playback Engine on RTX 4060 Ti 16 GB) and nearly no CPU utilization (around 23-28% for the whole Win system).

But that's another topic which this forum is full of for years now (best one: InDesign with 1 CPU and no GPU support on PC systems). Neverending and so sad. But please don't reply on that because as I said there are enough threads here about all those performance issues and that's off-topic here as this one is regarding AV1 support (maybe incl. MKV which DaVinci Resolve both does since 2023-06 as I now know).

@MyerPj  "The rewraped clip doesn't work in media player and in PP. You can extract the audio only. So, transcoding would be the only option currently."

^^That's exactly what I wrote...
And that's DAYS of transcoding for this particular project.

Regarding the plugin: it's an original Microsoft plugin which gets installed as soon as you need it. They have a modular approach - but support AV1 with this.

And your PRO tool statement is very thin as Adobe also actively advertises CC for social media content. That's commonly more smartphone than ARRI and screencasts are very social (video content rules on all major platforms and that will also be a big topic on Linkedin in 2025). So: very thin argument. Especially because it's not PP but CC which means PP, AE, ME(!!), Adobe Express (for Social Media) and so on 😉

Thanks for sending that. Yes, it behaves like the webm's I do have. 

It's still a delievery format and PP is primarily a pro edit tool, and focuses on Pro formats like ProRes and DNx, Cineform.

FWIW: Media Player in Windows 11 23H2, does not play your file. You must have downloaded some codec pack and you don't remember

that. I never download those.

The rewraped clip doesn't work in media player and in PP. You can extract the audio only. So, transcoding would be the only option currently.

Maybe they will add it one day? This thead has 80 upvotes, which is what will prompt management to consider a feature. Users that want this feature should upvote the thread, that's the big number to the left of the thread title looking from a desktop browser.

@MyerPjschrieb
Can you send a file or two to google drive or somewhere similar, so I could try it. I've got webm's but no av1s.

You tell me workarounds regarding AV1 and haven't any by yourself? Ok. 😉
Because of terms of data privacy I just recorded you a small new test clip - please download soon as WeTransfer doesn't store for long:
https://we.tl/t-7j8kZbFGYV

It's only 24s long but that should be good for testing.
As you said by yourself, you can easily wrap the clip to MP4 in no time.
But that was it then.

I'd just need some cropping and scaling, cutting stat and end points, adding a bunch of clips in a row and export. The absolutely most basic stuff which demands nothing from human and hardware.

The clip runs perfectly smooth with Windows 10 video player (no need for vlc or alike). NVIDIA supprts AV1 in hardware since the RTX 30 series: https://www.nvidia.com/en-us/geforce/news/gfecnt/202009/rtx-30-series-av1-decoding/ which is 4 years (!!) back now (GeForce RTX 3090 official launch: 24. Sep. 2020).

Can you send a file or two to google drive or somewhere similar, so I could try it. I've got webm's but no av1s.

Hey @Christian.Z 

We haven't used UserVoice for quite a while. The procedure now is to post to this forum, using an Idea, Bug or Discussion 'Conversation Type'. This post has "Idea" as its type, and I believe that is correct since it advocates for a new feature. Then users upvote the thread to show their interest, as of today, it has 80 upvotes. Not bad...

Please submit a Bug report / Feature request at the Adobe User Voice: https://adobe-video.uservoice.com/

"Lousy to edit" is based on the structure of the files themselves. As seen by each of us from our own view of what we need to get done.

I work for/with/teach pro colorists, who are a heck of a lot more knowledgeable in general on formats/codecs/quality-across-generations stuff than most editors.

If original media is a raw form, or ProRes, or a high-Q camera's long-GOP like some of the big Sonys, that's ok. They'll work original media. Although I know, proxies or "optimised media" in Resolve do get often invoked for that latter.

But for most of the colorists I am around, still ... any significant drone/mirrorless long-GOP media incoming on a job ... gets immediately t-coded to ProRes for grading. Period. Even if supposedly 10-bit/422. Because it's a mess to handle grading. On "heavy iron".

It isn't going to lose squat in data during the t-code, and will perform during the grade vastly better.

The deliverable is yes, often in a highly compressed format.

So ... it depends on your perception of your needs and what is "good enough". And will vary for everyone.

@MyerPj

OP poster here. I wouldn't exactly dismiss AV1 as another "lousy to edit" codec. It's simply not being supported nor hardware accelerated. It is a "relatively" new technology that has a lot of great benefits to the way we create and consume content.

Transcoding to any other codec (aside from proxies) degrades the quality of your footage for the sake of better editing performance because you're compressing footage again and it's a one-way street (you can't go back).

My personal editing philosophy....no editor should have to do that unless there is no other option or they have a tool like Topaz Video AI to enhance and eliminate compression artefacts when transcoding.

We want to make amazing stuff, but also make our lives easier without compromising on quality.

There is a reason we have hardware acceleration support for H.264 and HEVC/H.265. The entire editing process becomes so much more bearable and streamlined that it's almost like editing ProRes footage when scrolling/navigating the timeline. And with the new upcoming v25 update to Premiere Pro, we now have even more hardware acceleration support for those codecs (buttery smooth editing for 10-bit 4:2:0 footage may not seem like much, but it's something!). No need for transcoding!

As long as AV1 not only gains support but also hardware acceleration, in my opinion that changes the game when it comes to editing performance and the quality of your deliverables. I mean, who doesn't want better looking videos with smaller file sizes? Saves money on storage!

If DaVinci Resolve can do it, then so can Premiere Pro. And it just might be one of those things that makes Adobe appear even more worth the investment.

But yeah, those are my two cents.

@MyerPjI absolutely agree with you in terms of 'real' editing.
But I just have to get a ton of screen captures in shape which is far below real editing.
And for that it's much more work transcoding everything than I could benefit.

And Proxy also doesn't work because CC can't do AV1. If it would work just for Proxy that would absolutely fit.