LAS VEGAS – Even as one promising new video codec, High Efficiency Video Coding (HEVC), starts gaining widespread adoption by video service and content providers, an even more advanced next-gen codec, Audio Video Interleaved (AVI), is lining up to take its place sometime next decade.
AVI is an open, royalty-free video codec designed to be 30% to 40% more efficient than such existing codecs as HEVC and VP9, another royalty-free codec created by Google in 2013. While some industry executives view AVI as am emerging rival to HEVC, which now enjoys mainstream support, others view it as a future replacement as video delivery technology continues to evolve.
Speaking at the annual National Association of Broadcasters show here last week, Matt Frost, head of strategy and partnerships for Chrome Media at Google, said AVI will initially start showing up in several popular web browsers, including Google Chrome and Mozilla’s Firefox. "We will see AVI in browsers in a matter of months," he said.
Frost said AVI will also make its debut soon in some web content, most notably on Google cousin YouTube, Netflix and Facebook. In fact, there are already a few videos in the AV1 format available on YouTube, mostly for testing purposes. "YouTube will be streaming AVI probably in significant volumes," he predicted.
Representing the Alliance for Open Media (AOMedia), the industry group of heavyweights which are backing AVI, Frost said hardware integration of the new codec will likely follow sometime in 2020 as silicon vendors start developing the critical chipsets to support it, paving the way for wide-scale adoption of it. He noted that it typically takes two to three years for chipmakers to come up with the right silicon for a new technology.
Frost said AOMedia, which released the initial 1.0 version of VP1 earlier this month, is seeking to optimize the new codec to make hardware adoption as easy and smooth as possible. He said he expects AVI’s development path to mirror the one taken by VP9, which initially made its way onto such popular web browsers as Chrome and Firefox before getting adopted by web content giants like YouTube and Netflix.
Frost explained that the recent release of AVI 1.0 is the first step in this process. “We have the code; it’s frozen,” he said.
Industry analyst Dan Rayburn, who held the fireside chat with Frost, said he views AVI as a next-gen successor to HEVC, rather than a competing codec. "To me, AVI is the codec after HEVC," he noted.
Frost agreed with that assessment, arguing that AVI is "not competitive" with HEVC. He acknowledged that it’s a “pain” for industry players to make the switch to a new codec, and that it’s costly to support multiple formats.
However, he argued that AVI will compensate for these drawbacks by delivering substantially greater bit-rate efficiencies than current codecs. He pointed out YouTube’s adoption of VP1 has already led to faster start times and smoother streaming for videos on the site and, in some cases, has enabled YouTube to boost the resolution that consumers receive on their video devices. “And to do all of that while saving money,” he said.
Frost also stressed that the APIs and tools for VP9 and AVI share some helpful qualities, which could help ease the painful transition path for those adopting the new codec. In addition, he boasted about AVI's bandwidth-saving potential, noting that Netflix showed off 720p streaming at a mere 207 kbps at the AV1 launch party.
As with any new codec or other video technology, one major question looming over AVI is whether it will end up becoming the target of lawsuits from other intellectual property holders. Frost said one of AOMedia's key goals has been to avoid such nasty legal battles with other patent holders and patent pools. As a result, AVI will only make use of patents derived from AOMedia members, which include Microsoft, Amazon, Netflix and Facebook along with Google.
Frost also emphasized that AOMedia has done its due diligence and put “a lot of rigor” into the intellectual review of AVI. He noted that the organization conducted a deep level of review internally, as well as another level of review with dedicated outside counsel.
But, just in case any legal snafus should ensue, AOMedia and its members have established a fund to defend AV1 against any possible lawsuits over alleged patent infringements.
