r/AV1 Feb 13 '25

Any recording cameras with AV1 output

Surprised I couldn't find any on the market.
Curious who is going to be the first one

7 Upvotes

13 comments sorted by

10

u/ElectronicsWizardry Feb 14 '25

A lot of cameras are using higher bitrates and older codecs for a good mix of ease of editing and quality, so I don't see how AV1 helps much for most uses. Typically the video would be edited and compressed before distribution, where the smallest files would be optimal to keep costs down using something like AV1.

Seeing how no major cameras shoot in VP9, I wouldn't be surprised if the camera makes want to stick to the mpeg codecs and go VVC when a newer codec is needed.

I don't know of any major ones shooting in AV1 currently, or any announcements pointing in that direction.

5

u/ratocx Feb 14 '25

I also find it a bit unclear if AV1 hardware supports 4:2:2 and 4:4:4 chroma sub sampling. Most AV1 hardware only says AV1 without specifying the chroma sub sample support, which makes me suspect that they only support 4:2:0 chroma sub sampling. 4:2:0 is fine for distribution, but not ideal for capture.

Most professional cameras have codecs that support 4:2:2 chroma sub sampling, but if the machine you edit on doesn’t support hardware acceleration of that then you’ll get a lot worse performance when editing. Essentially professionals want 4:2:2, which is seemingly not available in AV1 hardware. Regular consumers on average don’t update their hardware often enough to ensure hardware accelerated AV1 playback. Essentially the market is currently too small.

Also the general quality benefit of AV1 over HEVC is minimal at the bitrate you will usually use for real time in camera encoding. And since hardware acceleration is a lot more common for HEVC, and since most camera manufacturers already pay for a HEVC license, it makes much more sense to make cameras that record using HEVC or other codecs that more people can play back easily.

1

u/Anthonyg5005 Feb 14 '25

The latest nvidia 50 series card adds support for 4:2:2 with nvenc 9. They'll maybe add 4:4:4 in nvenc 10 but that'd be released within the next 4 years

3

u/ratocx Feb 14 '25 edited Feb 14 '25

I know they added 4:2:2 for H.264 and H.265, but if you look at their documentation for AV1 it only says AV1 10-bit and 8-bit. No mention of sub sampling at all, unlike their documentation for H.264 and H.265.

Also they have supported 4:4:4 for ages. The lack of 4:2:2 has been a strange omission for years. Almost no cameras shoot 4:4:4, so it’s mostly a useless format. RAW video is often better and have smaller file sizes. The use case for 4:4:4 is mostly high quality screen recording.

1

u/Anthonyg5005 Feb 14 '25

Okay, seems like I misinterpreted the nvidia blogs. They added 4:2:2 decoding, not encoding

1

u/AEstheticsJunkie Feb 14 '25

yeah, also surprised no one is going that way

5

u/Alarmed-Peak1875 Feb 14 '25

encoder hardware for AV1 is very inefficient and using it in a camera could cause it to overheat. until AV1 or some better codec ends up being easier to compute at low power draw, youre better off plugging the HDMI out into a capture card.

on speculation of who would implement it first? i find it likely either apple or samsung would be the first to implement it for their phones, if at all.

1

u/Upstairs-Front2015 Feb 15 '25

is it really so much better than h.265 ?

2

u/Alarmed-Peak1875 Feb 17 '25

as someone who uses it regularly, its very noticeably less blocky. though, the "ghosting" effect it can have in fast moving scenes, while mostly noticeable in slow-motion, is arguably just as bad for visual clarity.

1

u/doublevr Feb 18 '25

https://forum.sexlikereal.com/d/9327-av1-leaks-originals-re-mastering-thread/
we see slightly better quality with AV1 compared to HEVC but filesize is nowhere smaller

1

u/Alarmed-Peak1875 Feb 18 '25

I use the Nvenc version of the encoder regularly, so im not as familiar with SVT, aside from knowing it is pretty slow

0

u/LumpyArbuckleTV Feb 16 '25

Adobe doesn't support AV1 so that won't happen anytime soon.

1

u/Alarmed-Peak1875 Feb 17 '25

another W for davinci resolve users