>We're probably not going to see AV1 implementations on the same level as x264 for at least a few years.
True, on that note, over at the Doom9 forums, the x265 spokesperson there said that they will consider making a AV1 encoder should there be a market.
Given the massive amount of support gathered for AV1 from web and hardware giants, and how it's a royalty free codec and thus in a great position to be the next generation 'de facto' video standard on the web, I'd wager there is a good market for a third party encoder from excellent developers like those behind x265.
>the Amiga 500 was probably the last great value product Commodore ever shipped
Agreed, the Amiga 1200 was too little too late, I remember when I first tried programming on the PC coming from Amiga, segmented memory and 16 colors, I thought no way am I ever gonna use this!
Next time I gave it a try there were dos extenders giving you a flat memory model as well as vga 256 color mode-x where each byte corresponded to a pixel on screen, which performed so much faster than the Amiga's blitter with bitplanes that it was suddenly very clear that it was all over for Commodore.
You probably mean mode 13h - 320x200x256 colour. Mode X is actually similar in some ways to the Amiga's bitplanes because it uses a planar memory arrangement. This is actually quite useful for fast drawing of pixels because in Mode X for example you can draw four pixels at once with one write.
> Mode X is actually similar in some ways to the Amiga's bitplanes because it uses a planar memory arrangement.
Mode X does not separate bitplanes. With Mode X, you don't need to write to 8 memory addresses to completely change a single pixel. (In the worst case, you needed one slow "out" and one fast "mov" instruction, if you wanted completely random access. However, no one ever did this, because you could simply draw every 4th pixel once for each bank, requiring just 3 (or 4) bank switches per frame.)
Mode X is nothing like Amiga bitplanes.
Also in Mode X each byte does correspond to a pixel on screen, it's just banked in 4 banks.
Mode X it interleaves framebuffer pixels into four banks. Top-left pixel at coordinates 0, 0 is in bank 0, next right is in bank 1, etc. until pixel at coordinates 4, 0 is again in bank 0.
You could also write same pixel to all banks at once (or in any combination).
On Amiga, bitplanes worked very differently. They were basically layered "2-color" bitmaps, one bit corresponds always to one pixel. 1 to 6 bitplanes (or 1-8 for AGA) could be combined to form 2^1 to 2^8 colors. So for example for 256-color display, you actually had to set eight bitplane pointers.
This type of bitplane arrangement made setting a single pixel very slow. You had to rotate desired color value bits and mask & set corresponding pixel in 8 different memory addresses...
Interesting stuff, although not a fan of the lossy recompressing, there are good open source lossless jpeg compressors like packjpg, lepton, giving ~22% compression, and a yet to be released one from the guy who made webp/brotli.
I can understand why someone does not like GPL, but calling a license which says you have to pass on the same rights you were given a 'fascist' license makes absolutely zero sense.
The issue with the GPL is, that it does not only requires to pass on the source any (modified) GPL component, but also any other program part which happens to be linked together with the GPL code, but is in no way derived from it. This is pretty violent towards code not strictly related to the GPL code - whether the strong term used is appropriate, is another question.
No, he has never been charged, he is wanted for questioning regarding an accusation of rape. Funny is that he was already questioned for that exact accusation BEFORE he left Sweden, then he was told to return for further questioning.
Also the first prosecutor immediately dropped it, then another prosecutor decided to re-open it, which is very unusual.
As for the actual rape accusation: first they had sex, then the woman says she fell asleep and awoke from him entering her, she asked if he was wearing anything (protection) and he said 'only you'. She stated that she was too tired to argue so they had sex.
Next day they joked about him having to pay her student loans should she get pregnant, and naming the kid 'Afghanistan'. He was to go on a meeting in Stockholm so she gave him a ride down to the train station on her bike, and then paid his ticket since he didn't have any swedish currency. Later after talking with friends, she realized that she had been subjected to a crime and went to the police station.
Frankly, the fact that the case was a bit vague and woolly and was initially dropped then reopened after an appeal from the accusers' lawyer, at which point Assange avoided charges by moving jurisdictions is a point in favour of the argument that Assange is considerably more likely to be trying to avoid an awkward trial than the victim of some massive government conspiracy against him.
Ahh, I had forgotten about that, that was so unexpected to be almost surreal.
Also the statement by Ines Uusmann (swedish minister of communications at the time) that 'internet is just a fad' is another 'classic' in swedish politics.
That was a headline written by the journalist, and not a statement she actually made. The interview is linked from her wikipedia article, and concerns that she thinks people will "spend less time" to "mindlessly surf" the Internet, i.e. that it will be overtaken by large businesses. You could probably argue that either way, but it's interesting to see that even contemporary history is written like the saying goes.
>That was a headline written by the journalist, and not a statement she actually made.
Well, she said the heading wasn't an exact quote, but also not a misrepresentation. From an interview in 2016 she admits that while the headline was 'click-baity' it was not unreasonable given what she had said in the interview, also stating:
'My colleagues were upset over it being a misquote, but that was not really the case.'
They joined AOM as a top level (governing) member, why on earth would they do that unless they are going to support the codec on their software/hardware ?
Outside of the office walls in Cupertino, who knows?
What does it cost to join as a governing member? Money? Apple has an unbelievably big pile of it. Spending it relieves their tax burden, so why not buy the most expensive level of membership?
Cynically, maybe they want to influence it so that it sucks, so while Apple does support it, Apple's going to have their own proprietary code, so Apple videos on Apple gear looks great. Everyone else gets the AOM code which, for some reason, everyone else's looks (and sounds) ever so slightly worse.
They could influence the codec so it works better on Apple hardware, so they get an advantage while designing the GPU that will go inside the iPhone XI or XII.
They could use this to see what the codec will support, and then decide not to support it out of spite, just like the iPhone X does't have USB-C, even though their laptop team has discovered that technology.
Point is, why knows? Yes, it is reasonable to think that Apple joining AOM means they'll put AOM codecs on their devices, but unless you work at Apple at the executive level, it's pure conjecture (and even then, executives are allowed to change their minds).
But why would they join if they're not going to support (as in use) the codec ?
They joined AOM at the highest level, which means they get a seat on the board of directors, I can't see any reason why they would do this unless they have decided to use it on their products.
I am only guessing, from what I know of Apple. So dont take my word as concrete information.
Apple uses Opus too, I think IETF announced it as a RFC standard. ( If my memory serve me correct )
But Apple only support the usage of Opus in limited ways.
So why would Apple not use it? If we forget about the patents and royalty fees for the moment. AV1 isn't necessarily better then HEVC from Apple's prospective.
HEVC is actually a standard, and has been for many years. There are many difference implementation of HEVC encoder and decoder, all adhering to this standard and conformance. Even Apple has their own implementation, there are Open Sources like x265, and many other commercial solution as well. AV1 isn't a standard, ( yet ) and there is one and only one implementation. Now before any geeks starting arguing about software benefits of implementation as standard over written standard, you need to think of this not as a pieces of software ( While it certainly is ), but a tools for professionals. Those who do TVs, and movies, etc all wanted something different and they want choices.
Google, or On2 to be precise; continuing its tradition of over hyping its codec. AV1 at its start was no where near 30% better then HEVC. And since they claim AV1 is now another 30% better then their initial version, you would have expect it to be 1.3 x 1.3 better then HEVC. But truth to be told AV1 when tested by panel of expert provide tangible better results then HEVC, at the cost of much slower encoding time. While that was done a while ago and AV1 has since improved a lot more, we shall wait and see when it finalized.
Everyone has been saying they will be forced to support AV1 because of Netflix and Youtube. Well that is only half correct because Netflix are already encoding in HEVC. And Netflix, has yet to provide their newer results of HEVC vs AV1. My guess is that they are waiting for AV1 to finalize. VMAF is a lot better then all other PSNR or SSIM, but it is still not perfect.
There are zero Full hardware AV1 decoder ( There may be partial Hardware decode that could be enabled with update, but you be the judge how many hardware manufacture is going to enable that then to sell you something new ) , but there are billions of devices capable of decoding HEVC already.
So apart from being royalty free, AV1 doesn't have a lot of advantage to it. The question is, for most business, will using AV1 saves me more money in the long term then using HEVC.
Apple joining on board, with No Press Release from AOM, and only Cnet manage to pick up, suggest this may be an Intentional leak. Or one way of Apple saying, HEVC Groups, you either do as I say and lower your fees, allow free software decode implementation ( One of the group already allows that ), or you know what? You can hold on to your patents for as long as you want and you wont earn a single dent in the billion of iOS devices in the future.
>HEVC is actually a standard, and has been for many years.
Once the AV1 bitstream is frozen, it will also be a 'standard', only this will be royalty free.
>there are Open Sources like x265, and many other commercial solution as well.
Nothing prevents x265 devs from making xAV1 (or whatever AV1 will end up being called), their spokesperson over at Doom9 has already said that they will go where the market goes in terms of encoder development, they are also very pissed in regards to the HEVC licensing debacle.
>we shall wait and see when it finalized.
Indeed, the bitstream is (supposed) to be finalized this month, after that happens we will finally see optimization take place (basically rewriting all hot spots into handwritten assembly) and thus be able to assess the quality claims and just how much slower it will be.
>Well that is only half correct because Netflix are already encoding in HEVC.
Netflix was one of the first companies to join AOM to develop a royalty free codec, it seems clear their intentions is to replace HEVC with AV1 once wide hardware support arrives.
>There are zero Full hardware AV1 decoder
There can't be until the bitstream has been frozen, from what I've read the first hardware supporting AV1 will be 12-18 months after said bitstream freeze.
Throughout the development of AV1, there's been constant consulting with hardware developers and they have had a large say in how AV1 works, the hardware companies that are part of AOM are:
Intel, AMD, ARM, Broadcom, NVidia, Realtek and now recently Apple
>So apart from being royalty free, AV1 doesn't have a lot of advantage to it.
If the estimates are correct, ~30% better compression is a HUGE advantage, another advantage from the point of the companies in AOM is that developing a codec themselves means it will fulfill their needs much better.
Google was going this route ever since they purchased On2, but now it really has reached critical mass with their third generation codec (VP10) being the base for AV1 which has made practically all the big tech companies come together and solve their codec needs using it.
>Apple joining on board, with No Press Release from AOM
I think Apple didn't want to ruffle any feathers with MPEGLA and the other HEVC licensees, Apple picking up HEVC support across their products was seen as a good sign for HEVC, the same Apple joining all the other tech giants in AOM backing AV1 is quite the opposite. Thus they join with no fanfare. Pure speculation of course.
They won't remove support for HEVC/HEIF for quite some time, but they will support AV1 alongside them, why else would they join AOM at the top level (governing member) ?
This means AV1 will be the de facto next generation codec standard on the web as it will be supported by all browsers and all mobile devices, something HEVC never will.
True, on that note, over at the Doom9 forums, the x265 spokesperson there said that they will consider making a AV1 encoder should there be a market.
Given the massive amount of support gathered for AV1 from web and hardware giants, and how it's a royalty free codec and thus in a great position to be the next generation 'de facto' video standard on the web, I'd wager there is a good market for a third party encoder from excellent developers like those behind x265.