blog/archive/2022/04/04.rss

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   4                 <title>Petter Reinholdtsen - Entries from April 2022</title>
   5                 <description>Entries from April 2022</description>
   6                 <link>https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/</link>
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   9         <item>
  10                 <title>Playing and encoding AV1 in Debian Bullseye</title>
  11                 <link>https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Playing_and_encoding_AV1_in_Debian_Bullseye.html</link>
  12                 <guid isPermaLink="true">https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Playing_and_encoding_AV1_in_Debian_Bullseye.html</guid>
  13                 <pubDate>Sat, 16 Apr 2022 08:40:00 +0200</pubDate>
  14                 <description>&lt;p&gt;Inspired by the recent news of
  15 &lt;a href=&quot;https://slashdot.org/story/22/04/03/2039219/intel-beats-amd-and-nvidia-with-arc-gpus-full-av1-support&quot;&gt;AV1
  16 hardware encoding support from Intel&lt;/a&gt;, I decided to look into
  17 the state of AV1 on Linux today.  AV1 is a
  18 &lt;a href=&quot;https://web.archive.org/web/20160618103850/http://www.digistan.org/open-standard:definition&quot;&gt;free
  19 and open standard&lt;/a&gt; as defined by Digistan without any royalty
  20 payment requirement, unlike its much used competitor encoding
  21 H.264.  While looking, I came across an 5 year
  22 &lt;a href=&quot;https://askubuntu.com/questions/1061908/how-to-encode-and-playback-video-with-the-av1-codec-on-bionic-beaver-18-04&quot;&gt;old
  23 question on askubuntu.com&lt;/a&gt; which in turn inspired me to check out
  24 how things are in Debian Stable regarding AV1.  The test file listed
  25 in the question (askubuntu_test_aom.mp4) did not exist any more, so I
  26 tracked down a different set of test files on
  27 &lt;a href=&quot;https://av1.webmfiles.org/&quot;&gt;av1.webmfiles.org&lt;/a&gt; to test them
  28 with the various video tools I had installed on my machine.  I was
  29 happy to discover that AV1 decoding and playback worked with almost
  30 every tool I tested:
  31
  32 &lt;table align=&quot;center&quot;&gt;
  33 &lt;tr&gt;&lt;td&gt;mediainfo&lt;/td&gt;       &lt;td&gt;ok&lt;/td&gt;&lt;/tr&gt;
  34 &lt;tr&gt;&lt;td&gt;dragonplayer&lt;/td&gt;    &lt;td&gt;ok&lt;/td&gt;&lt;/tr&gt;
  35 &lt;tr&gt;&lt;td&gt;ffmpeg / ffplay&lt;/td&gt; &lt;td&gt;ok&lt;/td&gt;&lt;/tr&gt;
  36 &lt;tr&gt;&lt;td&gt;gnome-mplayer&lt;/td&gt;   &lt;td&gt;fail&lt;/td&gt;&lt;/tr&gt;
  37 &lt;tr&gt;&lt;td&gt;mplayer&lt;/td&gt;       &lt;td&gt;ok&lt;/td&gt;&lt;/tr&gt;
  38 &lt;tr&gt;&lt;td&gt;mpv&lt;/td&gt;           &lt;td&gt;ok&lt;/td&gt;&lt;/tr&gt;
  39 &lt;tr&gt;&lt;td&gt;parole&lt;/td&gt;        &lt;td&gt;ok&lt;/td&gt;&lt;/tr&gt;
  40 &lt;tr&gt;&lt;td&gt;vlc&lt;/td&gt;           &lt;td&gt;ok&lt;/td&gt;&lt;/tr&gt;
  41 &lt;tr&gt;&lt;td&gt;firefox&lt;/td&gt;         &lt;td&gt;ok&lt;/td&gt;&lt;/tr&gt;
  42 &lt;tr&gt;&lt;td&gt;chromium&lt;/td&gt;        &lt;td&gt;ok&lt;/td&gt;&lt;/tr&gt;
  43 &lt;/table&gt;
  44
  45 &lt;p&gt;AV1 encoding is available in Debian Stable from the aom-tools
  46 version 1.0.0.errata1-3 package, using the aomenc tool.  The encoding
  47 using the package in Debian Stable is quite slow, with the frame rate
  48 for my 10 second test video at around 0.25 fps.  My 10 second video
  49 test took 16 minutes and 11 seconds on my test machine.&lt;/p&gt;
  50
  51 &lt;p&gt;I tested by first running ffmpeg and then aomenc using the recipe
  52 provided by the askubuntu recipe above.  I had to remove the
  53 &#39;--row-mt=1&#39; option, as it was not supported in my 1.0.0 version.  The
  54 encoding only used a single thread, according to &lt;tt&gt;top&lt;/tt&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;
  55
  56 &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
  57 ffmpeg -i some-old-video.ogv -t 10 -pix_fmt yuv420p video.y4m
  58 aomenc --fps=24/1 -u 0 --codec=av1 --target-bitrate=1000 \
  59   --lag-in-frames=25 --auto-alt-ref=1 -t 24 --cpu-used=8 \
  60   --tile-columns=2 --tile-rows=2 -o output.webm video.y4m
  61 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
  62
  63 &lt;p&gt;As version 1.0.0 currently have several
  64 &lt;a href=&quot;https://security-tracker.debian.org/tracker/source-package/aom&quot;&gt;unsolved
  65 security issues in Debian Stable&lt;/a&gt;, and to see if the recent
  66 backport &lt;a href=&quot;https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/aom&quot;&gt;provided in
  67 Debian&lt;/a&gt; is any quicker, I ran &lt;tt&gt;apt -t bullseye-backports install
  68 aom-tools&lt;/tt&gt; to fetch the backported version and re-encoded the
  69 video using the latest version.  This time the &#39;--row-mt=1&#39; option
  70 worked, and the encoding was done in 46 seconds with a frame rate of
  71 around 5.22 fps.  This time it seem to be using all my four cores to
  72 encode.  Encoding speed is still too low for streaming and real time,
  73 which would require frame rates above 25 fps, but might be good enough
  74 for offline encoding.&lt;/p&gt;
  75
  76 &lt;p&gt;I am very happy to see AV1 playback working so well with the
  77 default tools in Debian Stable.  I hope the encoding situation improve
  78 too, allowing even a slow old computer like my 10 year old laptop to
  79 be used for encoding.&lt;/p&gt;
  80
  81 &lt;p&gt;As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
  82 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
  83 &lt;b&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&quot;&gt;15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/b&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;
  84 </description>
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