When can I get 1080/1440 AV1 encoding as an option to stream with in OBS? Id like to do 1080 at 120 fps using AOM AV1 by google. They are using it on youtube now and twitch will be switching to it as well phasing out all x264 in the next few years. Is there an alpha or beta I can test please?
AV1 Encoding with AOM AV1 by Google
- Thread starter Loldarian
- Start date
Isnt this a realtime test of Google's new encoder? https://openbenchmarking.org/test/pts/aom-av1&eval=35e691109d828c05659b471c818c662b8607f3c5#metrics
I wasn't aware there was a realtime mode for it now, it looks like it hits quality pretty hard though. Hardware HEVC beats it and has no system impact whereas realtime AV1 pretty much requires a dedicated system for 1080p60. I also doubt there are any services capable of ingesting it currently. Once hardware and platform support is better we'll probably consider it.
I saw Dr. Yueshi Shen who oversees Twitch’s transcoder team in this video and it got me excited to try it. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K1Fzm7nINjM&t=909s&ab_channel=Mozilla
koala
Active Member
Although OBS Studio is freeware with no company backing it, it became one of the leading streaming clients. It became a standard and is the source of quite some forks. So be a leader and start to implement AV1 support as soon as technically possible.
(Without a hardware encoder probably not possible, of course)
An availability within OBS creates demand by streamers who in turn will ask streaming providers to support it as well. If everyone only points to everyone else: "but he over there isn't supporting it anyway", nobody will ever start implementing it.
Twitch is expirementing with it and they actually do deliver av1 to the enduser already for some tests, youtube is also in the av1 game via hls, but i don't think they both currently expose a ingest point for average joe to do test against with av1. But for both of them it is no big effort to go live with it when demand is there because backend wise they already have done the work. So if OBS would support it, they would probably move to public with their stuff too.
SkeletonBow
Member
In order for OBS to usefully implement AV1 encoding in the program there first needs to be either a software encoder that is capable of encoding AV1 in realtime with high enough quality to be usable, or hardware encoders and support for using them. No company out there is waiting for OBS to add support before they unlock the ability to ingest AV1. It is all about having a codec available first that is capable of realtime encoding and at a usable quality level on hardware that people are using.
From what I've seen, there is steady progress being made toward that happening in the near future by the various software video encoder projects out there but it does not really exist yet in a practial form usable for anyone. AMD, Intel, and NVIDIA's latest generation of GPUs all support AV1 decode but none of them support AV1 encode and there are to the best of my knowledge no publicly available hardware AV1 encoders yet in the mainstream consumer market. So essentially where things are right now is that realtime AV1 hardware or software video encoding is just not possible yet, but it is close.
There are rumours online and most tech people that cover this sort of stuff all believe that the next generation GPU hardware from all 3 major vendors AMD, Intel, and NVIDIA are likely to all have hardware AV1 encoder support. Given the time frame in which it is estimated that their next generation hardware is rumoured to be released this seems like a reasonable assumption to make. Intel is likely to release their video products sometime in the first half of 2022, and AMD and NVIDIA in the 2nd half of 2022 if rumours are to believed.
In addition in the same timeframe new CPUs are being released by both AMD and Intel which will push the limits of processing power that much further and contribute positively to the performance of software encoding of AV1 as well. I suspect the various AV1 software encoder projects themselves will continue to make performance improvements over the next year and a half as well.
Given all of this, I hypothesize that we will see either a software encoder or hardware encoder option materialize before the end of 2022 which is feasible and practical for use at least on high end CPUs, or worst case when the next generation of GPUs come out. Once such a practical option is publicly available and potentially worthwhile, someone is sure to be motivated even without prompting or prodding by users to investigate adding support for AV1 encode to OBS I'm sure. Even if there are still no live streaming services that support it on ingest, there will be people with high end hardware that would like to do local recordings in realtime if it is technically possible to do so, so there will be incentive for someone to do the work.
But to the best of my knowledge right now there is no encoder that is usable in realtime with usable results so there's neither no incentive for someone to work on it right now, and nobody going to be using it if they did. :) In all reality OBS will have support for it by the time it is usable anyway however, even without prompting by pitchforks. :)
From what I've seen, there is steady progress being made toward that happening in the near future by the various software video encoder projects out there but it does not really exist yet in a practial form usable for anyone. AMD, Intel, and NVIDIA's latest generation of GPUs all support AV1 decode but none of them support AV1 encode and there are to the best of my knowledge no publicly available hardware AV1 encoders yet in the mainstream consumer market. So essentially where things are right now is that realtime AV1 hardware or software video encoding is just not possible yet, but it is close.
There are rumours online and most tech people that cover this sort of stuff all believe that the next generation GPU hardware from all 3 major vendors AMD, Intel, and NVIDIA are likely to all have hardware AV1 encoder support. Given the time frame in which it is estimated that their next generation hardware is rumoured to be released this seems like a reasonable assumption to make. Intel is likely to release their video products sometime in the first half of 2022, and AMD and NVIDIA in the 2nd half of 2022 if rumours are to believed.
In addition in the same timeframe new CPUs are being released by both AMD and Intel which will push the limits of processing power that much further and contribute positively to the performance of software encoding of AV1 as well. I suspect the various AV1 software encoder projects themselves will continue to make performance improvements over the next year and a half as well.
Given all of this, I hypothesize that we will see either a software encoder or hardware encoder option materialize before the end of 2022 which is feasible and practical for use at least on high end CPUs, or worst case when the next generation of GPUs come out. Once such a practical option is publicly available and potentially worthwhile, someone is sure to be motivated even without prompting or prodding by users to investigate adding support for AV1 encode to OBS I'm sure. Even if there are still no live streaming services that support it on ingest, there will be people with high end hardware that would like to do local recordings in realtime if it is technically possible to do so, so there will be incentive for someone to do the work.
But to the best of my knowledge right now there is no encoder that is usable in realtime with usable results so there's neither no incentive for someone to work on it right now, and nobody going to be using it if they did. :) In all reality OBS will have support for it by the time it is usable anyway however, even without prompting by pitchforks. :)
I disagree with many points of you @SkeletonBow because they are outdated.
You can record av1 with aom already in realtime with better quality than x264 very slow. With streamfx you can also do that with obs for recording but you can't stream it because for unknown reason to me streaming in OBS is hardcoded to h264.
There is no work done for hardware encoding av1 in the linux kernel, so I don't believe we will see from Intel for their next gen GPUs hardware AV1 encoding.
None of the rumors for lovelace mentions av1 hardware encoding afaik so.
AMD lol no
So sum it up: AV1 is viable already now in software if you are on a mainstream or better CPU with fast RAM and we are stuck with software AV1 until atleast 2024 it seems maybe even 2026.
Regarding ingesting AV1, that is already supported by YouTube via HLS and other plattforms did their tests with av1 already and are in alpha stage with some users (currently with a ffmpeg instance between OBS and their plattform because of OBS limitation to h264).
You can record av1 with aom already in realtime with better quality than x264 very slow. With streamfx you can also do that with obs for recording but you can't stream it because for unknown reason to me streaming in OBS is hardcoded to h264.
There is no work done for hardware encoding av1 in the linux kernel, so I don't believe we will see from Intel for their next gen GPUs hardware AV1 encoding.
None of the rumors for lovelace mentions av1 hardware encoding afaik so.
AMD lol no
So sum it up: AV1 is viable already now in software if you are on a mainstream or better CPU with fast RAM and we are stuck with software AV1 until atleast 2024 it seems maybe even 2026.
Regarding ingesting AV1, that is already supported by YouTube via HLS and other plattforms did their tests with av1 already and are in alpha stage with some users (currently with a ffmpeg instance between OBS and their plattform because of OBS limitation to h264).
SkeletonBow
Member
Sure, things do change all the time and it's hard to keep 100% up to date... I've seen recent commits in OBS related to AV1 so this is promising, although I didn't look into the details much yet.
I've heard repeated frequently in the OBS Discord and elsewhere that none of the video streaming platforms support AV1 on ingest publicly, so there's was no way to use it with them anyway. Obviously that's not permanent and I see you've suggested below that there might be some level of support starting to happen now which is good to see. I'm definitely looking forward to seeing as much as possible support it in the future for sure.
There are a lot of features that are likely not leaked nor known outside of the respective hardware companies next generation GPU products at this stage so I wouldn't assume because there are no leaks of it that there wont be AV1 encoding support in next gen from AMD, nvidia and Intel. We probably wont know until they get released unless there are more substantial leaks out there between now and then.
It'll be a massive dissapointment if any of the 3 vendors does NOT have AV1 encode in their next products, at least for anyone planning on spending $1000+ for high end GPUs, with everything transitioning to AV1 over the next few years.