Support AV1 Video Encoding and Decoding

Agreed. Great post. Thanks for taking the time to include more details. I hope they listen to us.

Love your post! Well stated.

@Fergus H Thank you so much for your response! Here are my two cents on the significance of adding AV1 encoding and decoding support.

From a content delivery perspective, encoding/exporting to AV1 manages to achieve better visual quality at a smaller file size than the typical H.264 format. This makes sharing and broadcasting content easier and more efficient without compromising too much on quality. The result is less blocky artifacts and blurred details due to heavy compression and much clearer visual fidelity overall while also saving on storage.

In terms of data metrics, the image quality of a video exported to AV1 at half the bitrate of the same video exported to H.264 is about equivalent for roughly half the file size (and at times even improved image quality due to AV1's compression method). HEVC/H.265 is able to achieve similar results, however, it isn't supported everywhere...whereas AV1 is open source so it's much easier for Adobe to adopt into their ecosystem.

In real world usage, YouTube currently has the ability to broadcast video content in AV1 when the long-time standard has been Google's VP9 codec, which isn't as efficient as AV1. The benefit of AV1 for a video hosting platform such as YouTube is essentially lower bandwith video streaming. It saves resources and is cost-effective for not just enterprises, but also for the consumers streaming at home or on their mobile devices through their internet connection. However, it would work only if the video itself was rendered to AV1; otherwise, it defaults to VP9 on YouTube.

From a video broadcasting perspective, because of the lower bitrate/bandwidth needed to achieve great visual clarity without blocky artifacts during live-streaming, AV1 excels in this regard. To achieve this, broadcasters (whether they be enterprise companies or simply content creators) use a program that can support AV1 encoding, such as OBS Studio. They also use it for recording video as well, which is what I tend to use it for.

I mention live-streaming and broadcasting because in order to be able to edit those streams, video editors need an editing program that can support AV1 decoding, especially if it's hardware-accelerated. Otherwise, they would have to transcode to a different codec using something like Shutter Encoder in order to be able to import into their NLE of choice. That takes time and editors have deadlines to make.

That is why I would love for Adobe to include both AV1 video encoding and hardware-accelerated decoding support for Premiere Pro. It is simply a much better codec overall for both video acquisition and content delivery.

The bare minimum of 8-bit 4:2:0 color for AV1 would be okay with me, but it would be even more appreciated if it were to also support 10-bit 4:2:2 color for AV1 as well.

Thank you so much again for hearing us out! I'm excited and looking forward to more updates!

@Lateralus99  "What notes? Can you link me? Are they finally adding av1 support?

To be clear, there is not AV1 support in Premiere Pro v25.2. 

Regards,

Fergus

What notes? Can you link me? Are they finally adding av1 support?

I would like AV1 support for the size and quality benefits. This would be for long term storage. It saves on hard drive space. I want to be able to convert my videos to av1 and export them.

@Raphael297215156mgc  Thanks for the extra info!

I suspect what you might have been seeing is the availability of hardware acceleration for H.264 and HEVC varies, based upon the bit depth and chroma subsampling of the media and whether it is also supported in the editing software. I'm not as familar with AV1 in this regard ('though I've just asked my colleages at NVIDIA for more info) but perhaps it's simpler. 

While it doesn't cover AV1, as a Resolve user, you might find this article interesting: https://www.pugetsystems.com/labs/articles/what-h-264-and-h-265-hardware-decoding-is-supported-in-davinci-resolve-studio-2122. 

Regards,

Fergus

That is a very useful post, Raphael. Enough details to be informative, succinctly stated.

@Fergus H 

I appreciate the attention, sir! What i meant by smoother is in comparison with H265 and H264 on Davinci Resolve (since it's not possible to test on Premiere). I record using OBS, MP4, around 45k bitrate for h264, 35k for h265 and 20k for AV1. Whenever I try to edit any of those recordings with compatible software is really noticeable that AV1 make the software more responsive. For example:

Editing 2h long stream -> need to go from minute 10 to minute 90 -> With AV1 is basically instant. Otherwise takes a few seconds to load. 

I'm using a RTX 4080, R7 5800X, 32GB RAM and 7gbps nvme ssd.

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