Support AV1 Video Encoding and Decoding

Report · Oct 04, 2023

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.

Report · Oct 07, 2024

@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).

Report · Oct 07, 2024

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.

Report · Oct 08, 2024

@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 😉

Report · Oct 08, 2024

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).

Report · Oct 08, 2024

For me, Resolve introduced a completely different set of issues. For one, its free version neither has a software H.264 or HEVC encoder at all nor can one be added in (unless one pays for the Studio version), and since it does not have a GPU hardware encoder at all the Windows version must rely solely on whatever encoder Windows itself natively has access to (which may be none at all and therefore cannot export to H.264 or HEVC on its own on such a system), depending on the system's software configuration.

Secondly, Resolve (at least in its free version) does not support several older but still commonly used video and audio codecs at all, and therefore such media must be converted to another format using external third-party software before it can be imported into Resolve.

Report · Oct 08, 2024

Edit:RJL beat me, has a couple solid comments. So mine is now "in addition".

Well, jeepers ... I work for/with/teach pro colorists, have been "in" that crowd over a decade, use Resolve daily, and teach it. So I think I can add some perspective to your comments.

Resolve began as a $250,000 per-seat grading app, right? And it was really about the best digital grading option in the early days, but Holy Antman, expensive. But the company still didn't make a good profit. Then after BlackMagic bought the failing company, they dropped the price, first to like $9500, then a year later or so to $300.

Why? Resolve is a total loss leader "product" for BM. Their company profit is based on selling hardware ... and I highly doubt they make nearly enough from selling licenses of Resolve, to pay the server space for downloading it.

For example, I've enough BM kit I've bought that I'm both running the Studio version, and have extra licenses sitting in a drawer. Good kit ... love my BM cameras, on my second Atem mini pro switcher ... those are pretty 'cheap', but last only 3 years or so before dying. Decklink & other stuff.

As far as Resolve being "heavy" in Hollywood, it's probably used as a grading app only by more houses than any other app. Next would be Baselight probably, then Scratch. So it's the standard app especially in the US for major TV and many long-form grading jobs. In Europe, Baselight is a lot more used than here, especially for nearly all long-form work.

For editing? No, Resolve is not heavily used as an editing app ... yet. Personally, I can edit in Resolve, at need to test something ... but it's a lot clunkier than Pr or Avid for that matter for many parts of editing still. Better than when I started working with it back around 15, but still ... not "here" yet, really.

Among other things, the available keyboard shorts for edit work are far less than Pr or Avid have.

And as far as codec support, that varies by app. Premiere has ProRes Raw, which ... do not EVER expect ProRes RAW to be supported in Resolve. Their staffers are very testy about even being asked about it.

Resolve has better support for a couple other codecs/log-forms, as of Premiere 24.x. But Premiere 25.x, shipping in a week from now, adds a ton of things including a lot of Sony, Canon, and Fuji log forms.

All pro video post apps have holes in them. Ain't none of them perfect.

So as a practical guy, use what gets your work out the door to your clients best for you. And don't waste emotional time on huge companies ... any huge company.

Just get work done. That's what tools are for. I don't care which brand of hammer I use, I only care how the blame thing works.

Report · Oct 08, 2024

Ha, ha... I didn't realize @EXECdesign, that you were looking to 'destroy' my 'thin PRO argument', I was simply trying to help you. So, now you go another way, which as RjL and RNH just destroyed you BMR argument, is that how we should do it? Is that how we should respond, with the 'destroy' word? ...I guess that's what I've learned from you. ha, ha... 🙂

Report · Oct 08, 2024

@MyerPjdidn't mean it any bad.

I just didn't like the fact that you made PP/AE out to be so pro that a codec like AV1 isn't worthy of it. Of course they are pro programs - but then I expect them to support me as a pro user in as many situations as possible and at a professional level. It's exactly as @R Neil Haugen says: "All pro video post apps have holes in them. Ain't none of them perfect."

I didn't mean to say that Resolve is better. I just don't understand why this simple task took me quite a while with Adobe without being able to achieve a result, while with Resolve it works with a mouse push. Pro programs are supposed to be intuitive and save the user time. In this case I was disappointed with Adobe (as I am with many of the sometimes massive performance problems across most applications - I'm actually only really happy with LrC at the moment - it's been running really well for a while, followed by PS which got a bit annoying in terms of UI lately).

So maybe as a non-native speaker I chose the wrong word with 'destroy' - no bad intention.
Just too much trouble with Adobe programs over the last few years regarding performance and features so I'm a bit frustrated about that. Was just that "once again" experience while others can do...

Report · Oct 08, 2024

Thanks man, no problem, I'm glad you found a way to work with your files. 81 upvotes for this thread is not bad, it may be that Adobe will look into it, but mostly it's a delivery format, and not really for editing.

Cheers! 🙂

Report · Oct 08, 2024

Nvidia has hardware acceleration for AV1 starting with the 30xx series, and increased resolution on the newer and higher end cards. Intel also has hardware acceleration starting with Arc. I just wanted to throw that out there, that hardware acceleration exists for both encoding and decoding. It's just not in camera hardware yet, and the software to utilize the hardware acceleration is behind, which is where this request comes in.

Report · Oct 08, 2024

Actually, the RTX 30 series supports only hardware decoding for AV1. The RTX 40 series introduced AV1 hardware encoding.

AMD's RX 6000 series (except for the RX 6400 and RX 6500 XT) introduced that company's hardware AV1 decoding support. AMD's AV1 hardware encoding support is only available in the discrete RX 7000 series GPUs plus the enthusiast-level mobile Phoenix APUs.

Report · Oct 09, 2024

Shoot, you're right. For some reason I thought I had hardware encoded that on my computer at some point, but I may have confused that with another experiment. I am currently using H.265 10 bit 422 for our proxies so that we are able to access them remotely easier. We are already shooting ProRes422, so only using it to lighten things up a bit. But I'm definitely interested in AV1 for the future since H.265 only works well encoded packaged as an mov at the moment since that allows for encoding with audio streams that match things like Red camera and canon's default 4 channel on the C series cameras. I wish Premiere would just let you ignore the mismatch and warn you every time or something, but I've only found one workaround and it is apparently not Mac compatible.
AV1 could be a great potential for transparent proxies. Currently we have to use ProRes4444 which is larger than an image sequence, or I think CineForm has a version that works with alpha as well. I can't remember. It is handy to package image sequences as a video format, but not so much if the video is larger than the images. That's more of an AfterEffects thing, but I do occasionally use them in Premiere from 3D animation software. It's easier keeping track of a single file though. And if someone has to offline the sequence and find it again, AfterEffects is kind of dumb and sometimes changes the framerate because it's as if you have completely changed footage rather than just Finding the missing footage. So if your footage was 24fps but your machine's default is 30fps then it may change it to 30.

Report · Oct 09, 2024

Hey, totally agree on wishing they wrote the code so we could tell the proxy creating process to ignore "mismatched" audio channels. But ah well ...

Report · Oct 09, 2024

@kalamazandy

Regarding interperting the Frame Rate of an Image Sequence in After Effects, no still image format contains temporal information. As such, all software that habdles time based media relies on the user to set the frame rate for Image Sequences.

I find it helpful to include the frame rate in the name of the folder containing the Image Sequence.

If the After Effects preferences get reset and the user does not use 30fps, Settings > Import > Sequence Footage is one of the first things users should adjust. Or if needed, File > Interpret Footage can be used to change the frame rate of an Image Sequence after it's been imported.

Report · Oct 09, 2024

@R Neil Haugen

It would be interesting to be able to ignore audio being different in a proxy file, but if the audio channels don't match then it isn't really a proxy but rather the same sound in a different configuration. I call these pseudo-proxies. They work for things like logging footage and transciptions, but not as placeholders for doing an audio mix.

Without matching audio channels, the audio from the Full Resolution source would have to remain online or the Sequence would have to account for both the Full Resolution audio streams and the additional pseudo-proxy streams in the different audio tracks. With enough users requesting it, maybe we'll see some way of handling the difference in a future version of Premiere Pro.

Report · Oct 09, 2024

That's a nicely detailed response, Warren.

What a lot of users use proxies for is simply the video section, and "we" don't tend to think about the audio of the proxy file also being part of the proxy process.

It seems logical, from a user standpoint, that when video playback is the culprit of bad playback, you would just replace the video with the 'new' proxy video image.

But for a dev, that might not be so logical, I do see your point ... huh.

Because yes, creating proxies for offline editing would need audio also. Yea, this would take "switching" options.

Report · Oct 09, 2024

I want to offer my perspective here. I'm a content creator—not a professional video editor, just an ordinary person who decided to create a YouTube channel about games.

What I want to emphasize is that AV1 is not solely about saving space. That might be the case for professionals using advanced cameras, but for those of us who want to record gameplay, AV1 is a genuine game-changer.

Report · Oct 09, 2024

The AV1 encoder is WAY faster than H265 and H264; there is simply no comparison. For example, I can record 4K, 240fps footage with AV1, which is impossible with H265. And if I don't want to capture every frame of the game recording, AV1 4K60fps is also lighter on the hardware, so I get more performance in my games.

What I'm trying to say is, I love Premiere and have been learning to use it, but I was wasting so much time converting everything that DaVinci Resolve became a better solution for me.

And I haven't even talked about the exporting speed. With AV1, I get 200fps+ when exporting 1440p60fps videos, while with H265, that number drops to 90-100fps.

AV1 is a game-changer, and Adobe is among the companies that created AV1. I can't understand why this feature is not coming to Premiere.

Report · Oct 09, 2024

This priorities thing is something most users struggle with. But we always need to remember two things:

There are several million daily users of Premiere.
Everyone works differently. All several million of us.

For you, AV1 is important. Fir me, vastly upgraded color correction tools is the top interest. And all users have their own, unique, list of prioritized changes they want.

The devs have to sort through what things affect the most users. So it means, for instance, that at NAB the sympathize with my requests. They understand how useful the items would be.

But have to tell me that maybe a tiny percentage of their user base would also actually use those new tools.

So, realistically, my 'druthers ain't gonna be near enough to the top of the priorities list to get scheduled.

AV1 is one of many, many formats in potential use. At the moment they are clearly pouring massive effort into expanded log and raw camera capture formats in the new 25.x series shipping next week.

Probably they're busy with that at the moment. Maybe later we'll get AV1.

At least, it's not like BlackMagic's reaction to requests for ProRes RAW .... which is very testy, and roughly equates to expect a cold, cold day down "there" first.

Report · Oct 10, 2024

Still no av1 codec for PP? 2024...

Report · Oct 10, 2024

Read the above comments.

Report · Oct 10, 2024

Excuse me, but I believe it is not a matter of priorities. It is hard to imagine that Adobe lacks the resources or funding to hire a temporary team to implement AV1 in Premiere, even if it is just for importing videos. This appears to be an executive decision based on reasons that are not publicly known. However, it is disappointing that an open-source encoder/decoder, developed in collaboration with Adobe, has not been made available four years after its release.

Report · Oct 10, 2024

Everything is done by priority in something this big and complex. Everything. And they don't hire temp outside teams to write crucial internal code that could fry the whole thing.

AV1 is simply not that heavily used, across the user base, as you might think it is. Would I like it being included? Of course, no question there.

But I also understand they have a ton of users all with different workflows, and work to the larger interests/needs. Get to smaller things as time becomes available.

I'm very familiar with that, as in my own business for many years, we also had to prioritize things. And not always to my liking even as the owner. But business decisions need be based on hard data.

Report · Oct 12, 2024

AV1 is not a priority because it's not very used at the moment.

It took years for H265 to be supported, because while the end result offered much better results than H264, it wasn't used in terms of production.

And it still really isn't as much as one would think, but smartphones manufacturers started using it so they had no choice but to implement it, given in the news industry using footage made with phones is very common.

DaVinci does implement AV1 because being at the forefront of 'new sh*t' is kind of their shtick in terms of its NLE capabilities. But we all know the ProRes Raw fiasco, which really should make any editor weary about it.

And ProRes RAW is one of the most friendly formats out there to speed up production, and it's a really problem DaVinci doesn't support it, especially for it's 'real' function.

Report · Oct 15, 2024

Hello Adobe, its nearly 2025. Even my iPhone supports AV1 nowadays. Every Recording Program on Windows Supports AV1, so why is not implemented in Premiere Pro? Makes 0 sense to me.