When a video codec wins an Emmy

Here's the Emmy that C-Cube Microsystems won back in 1995 for the MPEG-2 (actually unconstrained MPEG-1) encoder chip set used in the roll-out of DirecTV.

https://www.w6rz.net/DCP_1235.JPG

The original DirecTV encoder was MPEG-1 at 704x480 using eight CL4000 chips. Then in 1995 when the MPEG-2 capable CL4010 was finished, the encoders were upgraded to MPEG-2 (frame only encoding). Then upgraded again to a 12 chip AFF (Adaptive Field/Frame) encoder when the firmware was completed.

https://www.w6rz.net/videorisc.png

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charcircuit 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

>Through the mid-2010s, video codecs were an invisible tax on the web, built on a closed licensing system

Youtube has used vp8 since 2010. Openly licensed video codes were in use through the mid-2010s.

	▲	rickdeckard 23 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		Well, VP8 was only released as an open codec in 2010, and subject of patent lawsuits until late 2014. In 2010 the majority of (YouTube and other) videos were still served as H.264, because no major browser supported it back then and the majority of video playback devices were already smartphones (without vp8 decoding capabilities) iOS for example didn't support VP8 until iOS12 in 2019, Firefox and MS IE only added it in 2011. Even Google only added VP8 to Chrome in September 2010. So the statement is correct IMO

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tosh 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Technology and Engineering Emmy Awards

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technology_and_Engineering_Emm...

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ChrisArchitect 5 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

AV1 powers approximately 30% of Netflix viewing

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46155135

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bibimsz 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

when is C going to win a Pulitzer?

	▲	looperhacks 2 hours ago \| parent [-]
		> In 1990, both Ritchie and Thompson received the IEEE Richard W. Hamming Medal from the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), "for the origination of the UNIX operating system and the C programming language". > In 1997, both Ritchie and Thompson were made Fellows of the Computer History Museum, "for co-creation of the UNIX operating system, and for development of the C programming language." > On April 21, 1999, Thompson and Ritchie jointly received the National Medal of Technology of 1998 from President Bill Clinton for co-inventing the UNIX operating system and the C programming language https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dennis_Ritchie#Awards I think that's also good ;) Ritchie and Thompson also received a Turing Award; not for the C-language, but for UNIX and OS development in general.

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shmerl 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

> AV1 is also the foundation for the image format AVIF, which is deployed across browsers and provides excellent compression for still and animated images

I wish adoption was better. When will Wikipedia support AVIF?

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gsich 2 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Hopefully never. Abusing Intra-frames from video codecs is an abomination. Use JPEG-XL.

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bjoli 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

What does it bring over jpegxl?

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shmerl 4 hours ago | parent [-]

Way wider browser adoption, potential to evolve together with AV#, since it's using a container format, so it shouldn't be limited to AV1 base. I.e. sites just need to adopt AVIF, and I expect then seamless ability to start using AV2 (and on) there without sites needing another wave of adding a new mime type and etc. which seems to be a huge hurdle.

Same as let's say Webm can contain AV1, AV2 etc.

	▲	lawrencejgd an hour ago \| parent [-]
		It doesn't matter that AVIF uses the same container for AV1 or AV2 based encoding, if the browsers don't have the right decoder for it then they can't decode it. An example of this is MP4: Browsers can decode videos encoded with H264 in MP4 containers, but not H265 even if it uses the same container, because one thing is the container and another thing is the codec, they're related but they aren't the same.

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brcmthrowaway 5 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

I'm confused - why aren't video codecs winner take all?

Who still uses paten encumbered codecs and why?

	▲	notatoad 5 hours ago \| parent \| next [-]
		video decoding on a general-purpose cpu is difficult, so most devices that can play video include some sort of hardware video decoding chip. if you want your video to play well, you need to deliver it in a format that can be decoded by that chip, on all the devices that you want to serve. so it takes a long time to transition to a new codec - new devices need to ship with support for your new codec, and then you have to wait until old devices get lifecycled out before you can fully drop support for old codecs.
	▲	DoctorOW 5 hours ago \| parent \| prev \| next [-]
		Backwards compatibility. If you host a lot of compressed video content, you probably didn't store the uncompressed versions so any new encoding is a loss of fidelity. Even if you were willing to take that gamble, you have to wait until all your users are on a modern enough browser to use the new codec. Frankly, the winner that takes all is H.264 because it's already everywhere.
	▲	MallocVoidstar 5 hours ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		AV1 is still worse in practice than H.265 for high-fidelity (high bitrate) encoding. It's being improved, but even at high bitrates it has a tendency to blur.