Support AV1 Video Encoding and Decoding

[Eccentric Locust]

AV1 has been becoming a more and more popular codec for not just streamers, but also content creators and filmmakers. Video hosting platforms, such as YouTube, are now implementing AV1 as a way to easily stream video content to audiences at lower bandwidths. Filmmakers, and especially content creators, are asking for AV1 for creating high quality content without too much compromise for file sizes and ease of use when viewing.

Having the benefit of AV1 video will help with preserving the best image quality at a much smaller and efficient file size than codecs like H.264. HEVC/H.265 is supported in Premiere Pro and it's a very nice codec. In fact, both HEVC and AV1 perform very similarly. However, it would be wonderful to have the flexibility of additional codecs that are gaining traction in modern media.

HEVC isn't supported everywhere, largely due to their licensing slowing down adoption. Meanwhile, AV1 is open source, so it would be easier to adopt without the concern for licensing; thus, making it more popular with platforms than HEVC.

Competing video editing platforms have also supported AV1 encoding and decoding for some time and I have been wanting Adobe to look into it for a while.

Overall, I highly recommend Adobe include AV1 encoding and decoding support for Premiere Pro. I strongly believe it will heavily encourage more people to create the best content with a codec that is extremely efficient as it is excellent at preserving image quality.

[Frame3812311971qe]

I could probably join, but I can't find the benefit of widespread AV1 support. This is a very slow codec that requires the latest hardware solutions. While there is no translation function, no voice cloning, and many advanced things needed to create content, codec support without an alpha channel does not seem so urgent. For the rest, there is webm with VP9.

[MyerPj]

Indeed, AV1 is more processor intensive than even h.264/5. Exactly what we don't need.

[kalamazandy]

Mismatching audio, for sure, can't be used for doing an audio mix...sort of. Adobe could handle it several ways. The most obvious would be to highlight mismatching audio so the user knows that they would be able to understand Some information from the proxy, but shouldn't go adjusting different settings of individual channels for the audio. There are some easy one also like if the original has no audio, but your proxy has audio channels. Ignore them automatically, or at Least do a check for data. Yeah, there's an audio stream, and it's completely silent, so go ahead and ignore it. Maybe just warn me if the original has no audio, but my proxy does? And Still let me use it if I want to. Maybe someone decided to create a proxy of the original video and include the lav mic audio in it or something just to use as a stand-in for something else. That could be a good idea, maybe that works for them. I just wouldn't do something like that because "that's not the way people work with premiere." I get Canon footage all the time with 4 channel audio and only 1 is being used. So my proxy Has to have matching audio. Again, those 3 channels are garbage because they are silent. Adobe Could have a method of flagging silent tracks and allow mismatches for them. In fact, I would Prefer to let it spend the time to check for audio signal on ingest and automatically remove them (as an option). If someone mistakenly recorded a mic to stereo audio and it's only on one channel, it would be great if I had the option of just eliminating the right channel and treating left channel where there actually was signal as mono. I have to change that manually in Premiere AND leave the original alone, OR run it through ffmpeg to change the stream of the original, which I don't have time to do 99% of the time and wouldn't trust someone that does have the time to do that kind of task. 

Again, this should just be optional. I'm sure some people Do want to keep the original audio format even when it isn't used, or if the video file was S&Q so has no audio stream at all then they have some process that requires their proxy file to Also have no audio streams. I don't know why that is useful, but it very well could be for someone, and the software should support that workflow. 

[Raphael297215156mgc]

Is just not true that AV1 is heavier in the processor. Is about the chip used. On Nvidia RTX 4000 series AV1 is way faster and lighter on the hardware than H264 and H265. 

[kalamazandy]

That's a great point. If the argument against it is that it requires specialized hardware then why in the world would Adobe support Mercury Transport monitors, for example? 
They choose things with balance between what their mass users use and what their professional users use. Sometimes the mass users ends up being what the professional users use as well. AV1 is likely something that social media content creators would use, and large studio editors will likely not. And that's ok. It's kind of like normal users wanting adaptive cruise control, and an indy car driver yelling at everyone telling them how dumb they are for wanting that in their vehicles because they wouldn't use that. Recognize there are multiple groups of users, request what you want, and help the regular requests along in a way that would potentially benefit you in the long run If you would like to. 
I don't have a 4000 series yet, so this doesn't benefit me Now, but it could in the future. Plus, if someone were to give me a slew of files, I'd love to not have to jump through hoops to use them whenever possible.

[R Neil Haugen]

The argument for lower priority is rather supported by the hardware information in the above comments.

As the above comment makes clear, full AV1 support is only in a few of the most expensive GPUs. Which would currently be used by only a tiny fraction of the user base.

But in time, that will trickle down to more computers, and then ... it will become more useful to more users ... meaning time to move it up the priority list.

That's how prioritization works. Done it myself in my own biz for years. And often, even I don't like the priority decisions I have to make.

[Raphael297215156mgc]

Sir, makes absolutely no sense to wait for more GPUs with AV1 encoder to show up, think with me, how will AV1 be used if the software does not support it? There are a lot a cheap GPUs with AV1 support, we are talking about the RTX 4000 series (including RTX 4060, which is cheap), the AMD RX 7000 and intel Ark. Plenty of options on basically every price range. 

All creators i know use GPUs with AV1 support, they just don't use AV1 because adobe, one of the CREATORS of AV1, does not support it on Premiere. 

Would make a lot of sense if Premiere received the support before the GPUs and that would make people upgrade, the other way around makes absolutely no sense. 

It's been tree years since AV1 encoding is available on all price ranges. That is simply not acceptable. 

[kalamazandy]

Priority based on user frequency alone would cause Adobe to completely lose professionals. How many people actually use ProRes 4444? That's a very specialized format that a Vast majority of Adobe users will not, and Should not use. But it's important to have for those professionals who rely on it. 
If we always wait until we see a demand for something before pulling the trigger on doing it then we would have very few innovations. The masses didn't want a motorized vehicle, they just wanted a faster horse. 
Adobe probably supported H264 well before hardware really handled it. That's why so many people say things like "No, you need prores for proxies because h264 will grind your timeline to a halt." And there are still quite a few people who still say that, just because that's what it was and they haven't tested it since. It may be true if they are working on a machine that's more than 10 years old, but on anything that is capable of reasonably editing 4k+, it is doubtful that they don't have hardware encoding/decoding specific to h264. 

[MyerPj]

@Raphael297215156mgc thank you for your reply, you said: "Is just not true that AV1 is heavier in the processor. "

And here's what Google AI Overview said, with the search: 'av1 vs h.264'

It's also known for its advanced prediction and encoding methods, and its ability to produce excellent quality at low bitrates. However, AV1 requires more computing resources than H.265 and H.264. (emphasis mine)

I'm going to spend the rest of the day, weighing what google said, and what you say and, gee, which one do I go with... you know, when you say something exact opposite of reality. Indeed, does Truth matter anymore?

[Raphael297215156mgc]

@MyerPj 

If you ignore the last three years of technological evolution, yes, you're right, the fact is that AV1 encoder on Nvidia, Intel and AMD GPUs of the last three years run a lot smoother than H264 and H265, for example I can record 4k 120fps using AV1, or 1440p 240fps. Both are impossible using H264 and H265 on previous generations of encoders. 

Using your logic 4k is bad resolution because 2010 computers had a hard time running it. 

[R Neil Haugen]

You could play H.264 prior to hardware stuff availability, but it wasn't ... pleasurable, to put it mildly. Even now, most colorists t-code nearly all long-GOP before importing to grade. (I work for/with/teach pro colorists btw.)

Adobe has very sophisticated metrics as to user use of things, and they base their priority decisions on a mix of that hard data and yes, "professional considerations".

It's when some mix of actual user usage,  and the considerations established for their anticipated path forward conjoin, that something jumps up the priorities listing.

[Raphael297215156mgc]

I'm very sorry to put it like this, but I now understand why Adobe has so many anti-consumer practices and yet prospers. Why would they care? Even after every possible offense to the consumer, people still find excuses for Adobe's absolute incompetence.

Whenever you wonder why prices keep going up and the services just get worse, well, that's why.

[kalamazandy]

Google also suggests you use Glue to keep cheese from sliding off pizza. Google is a Terrible source of information. It is a great resource to Find good sources of information. If you ask it certain questions it will also give as solutions to some problems because enough people provided that as an answer in various places and google forgot to program in sarcasm detection.
Also of the times I am stumped at things and search for them, more often than not, the first results tell you that you can't do the thing. Keep searching, keep searching, dig around a bit, and I find the answer which IS in fact possible. I have found an incredibly high frequency with Mac users responding saying you can't do something compared to others, furthering my opinion that many people think they know mac well, but that is because they don't do anything that can't be done on their phone.
Anyway, I wouldn't go around quoting as search engine being more reputable than a person. The person at least has some level of intelligence. Google's Ai is a LLM, so is both incredibly smart and incredibly stupid and it doesn't know the difference.

[abuse removed  by moderator]

[MyerPj]

@kalamazandy , that's a 100% red-herring on your part. 😐

Stick to the topic, were they wrong in this case?

[Raphael297215156mgc]

@MyerPj As I said, yes, Google is wrong. AV1 was heavier on older and not specialized hardware. Today, in 2024, the AV1 encoder is WAY FASTER than H264 and H265. This applies to both recording and exporting.

If you like Google so much, look for tests on YouTube. Look for the channel Eposvox, specifically the video where he talks about AV1 on the RTX 4000 Series. In Davinci Studio, using AV1, you can export and record up to 2x faster. That's my experience.

Again, your argument makes absolutely no sense. AV1 was once very heavy indeed, but that's no longer the case.

[R Neil Haugen]

Bluntly ... you don't like a decision. Fine, we all get ticked at the choices made. OK? I have posted a few epic rants here myself.

But you are conflating your preferences with all other users.

Wrong move.

Of the several million daily users, the majority are either happy with the change, or don't care.

Even 1,000 unhappy users, would still be only a tiny sub-fraction of the total daily users.

Personally I'm very aware of this because on several things important to me, the general user base goes several different directions. My wish ain't ever happening.

Yep, i don't like it, but as an adult I accept that everyone works differently, and I am only one (sadly to me!) rather unique user.

That's Life.

[MyerPj]

@Raphael297215156mgc 

Gotcha, so you need 'specialized hardware' for it to work reasonably.

Since you know where the info is on Google, do like I did and find a short bit that would be interesting for the thread. Otherwise, you're just relying on... you.

[Raphael297215156mgc]

@MyerPj Why would anyone use non-specialized hardware to encode/decode these days? Oh, yes, everyone does that because Adobe forces us. Why not use a GPU? Specialized hardware is equivalent to a GPU that costs less than $200. Seriously, are you reading what you're writing?

Again, should we stop rendering in 4K because 2010 PCs and TVs can't handle it? Is that your logic?

Even hardware made for data centers has supported AV1 for years now. Just look at the latest chips by AMD, Nvidia, and Intel. It's been YEARS, not months. Even the latest CPUs from Intel have AV1 encoder.

[MyerPj]

Cheers man.

This thread has gained 85 upvotes in about a year, (it's not overwhelming). Let's hope it keeps going up, and then Adobe may be interested in adding it.

[R Neil Haugen]

And understand, none of us are at all against adding any codec.

I do think you may feel it's more important to more users than it is. That is all.

[Arttek_314]

Friends, is av1 support available in premiere pro 2025? Or do I have to switch to another application?

[MyerPj]

This thread has 6 pages, take a look, even just the recent comments.

[Arttek_314]

Baktım, anladığım kadarıyla eklenmemiş? Bunun teknik bir nedeni var mı, yoksa Adobe bu kadar inatçı olmaz mıydı? Aslında teknik bir sebep varsa bunu kullanıcılarına açıklamaları gerektiğini düşünüyorum.

[Arttek_314]

I looked, as far as I understand it hasn't been added? Is there a technical reason for this, or would Adobe not be so stubborn? Actually, if there is a technical reason, I think they should explain it to their users.

[MyerPj]

Currently there is no AV1 support. As users we don't know if/when it will be added.