AV1 Encoding Support
AV1 encoding support should be a priority add to the website. AV1 encoding is a big improvement in visual quality to streams over CPU and GPU encoding options. Discord already added it, and I believe YouTube has it as well, it's very surprising to me that Twitch hasn't added this and there isn't even an ETA on it being added yet.
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Nightcrawla commented
@SpartanDraco your post was honestly very very very closed minded, which is ironic given that you're tired of such people. It's obvious you picked apart my post to create yours. It's also obvious you didnt even try to properly read what I've posted or even understand what I was at all saying. Let me clarify some of your statements for you.
"VP9 by the way is the equivalent of AV1 youtube"
-VP9 is the competitor/equivalent to H.265(HEVC) not AV1."that's why they don't use AV1 first because they have google and its VP9"
-VP9 was created by Google to have the quality and efficiency of H.265 without the licensing fees of H.265 and I hope you know that Google is part of the Multi-Organization collaboration developing AV1 to again keep the codec open source and free of licensing and to be the next codec to take over h.264, because its painfully obvious you didn't know, so you're welcome."my mobile plays native AV1, my old 2012 mobile does it by software"
-Just because YOUR shiny new phone can decode AV1 natively doesn't mean that the majority of people suddenly can do what you can. Sites like Twitch, Youtube, Kick, Facebook etc have to make sure that EVERYONE possible can view their videos seamlessly without the use of third party software and this includes having support for all devices new and a few years older. In order to do this effectively these sites need to be able, for now, transcode streams. Transcoding takes time, money and hardware, to which the CEO of Twitch has already stated they currently don't have the capacity to do that for everyone due to the servers being a few years old already and the amount of time it takes to transcode an AV1 ingest is much higher and more expensive than H.264. News Flash, the majority of earth's population doesn't have the newest and greatest available at their disposal. And Twitch/YT/Kick/FB etc have to cater to the majority, hence the reason its taking Twitch so long to implement. Even @S_Class_DaNewb did the work for you and posted below what video has the CEO talking about it and a timestamp! Yet you couldn't take the time to inform yourself before posting.Twitch is nowhere near the size of Youtube and also uses a different protocol, so naturally it's taking them longer. Is it unfortunate? Sure is, the key here is that we all (including myself) have to be patient for this to roll out. My post was more for the people **** posting Twitch for not having AV1 RIGHT NOW and how "cost saving it is" It isn't cost saving right now for the sites because they need to buy the hardware to save the money later and pass it along to the end user. Look I think we can all agree Twitch has done some very questionable things even recently, but people shouldn't be impatiently **** posting Twitch about not having AV1 right now just because youtube gave the streamer the ability to do it already. I think what's happening is that this thread is already so old and we still have yet to see any Twitch Staff even comment on it, that the people **** posting are aggravated for the no communication. Which is very understandable, I mean didn't Twitch say themselves that they created this "User Voice Forums" to better communicate with the community, and they clearly have ignored this thread as a whole.
AGAIN: Even though Youtube has implemented the ability for a streamer to stream in AV1, youtube still transcodes the livestream to an older codec (VP9 or even worse AVC for 1080p and under). While thats great for us the streamer who's able to stream AV1 and can run a high quality stream at a lower bitrate on our end (That's our bandwidth/cost savings for the streamer only) you still fail to realize you yourself had to spend money to save money,(You bought a 1000 dollar graphic card in order to stream AV1) it doesn't negate the fact the people who are watching the transcoded stream, are not seeing an AV1 6mbps stream natively, they are watching your 6mbps AV1 stream transcoded to VP9 at more than double the bitrate. So there right now is no cost savings yet for the end user/viewer at this moment in time.
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Det_Conan_Kudo commented
I would like to be able to use AV1 so I can stream with a lower bitrate. My upload bandwidth is constrained so being able to cut the bitrate in half and maintaining the same quality would be a huge boon.
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SpartanDraco commented
pretty tired of closed minded people, if tomorrow I can stream at 3000 bits instead of 6000 and it looks the same or better, I will do it, I don't need more, there are many streamers that have to use 7000/8000 because otherwise they get pixelated, in my case I have to use 7000 because the 7900xtx dies a bit in fast motion, if you give me better quality for less, I will do it, I don't need more, if you give me better quality for less, I will do it., of course I will use less, why the **** do I need to use 6000 if it looks the same or better at 4000?the only person who thinks like that, is the possessive and egocentric, I use AV1 on youtube and I make videos at 2k with 10 megabytes per second, 10000 bitrate, games like forza, battlefield, etc, no pixelation, before for the same thing I needed 30/40 megabytes in 264 at 1080p and still pixelated, think that AV1 will not save or generate money, is someone who does not see the future and only thinks the now, but neither take advantage of it or enjoy it, that's called selfishness, VP9 by the way is the equivalent of AV1 youtube, that's why they don't use AV1 first because they have google and its VP9, twitch is still with a codec older than me, my mobile plays native AV1, my old 2012 mobile does it by software, enough excuses, imagine a world where someone living in a village with limited internet, he can stream because he got AV1 and he streams at 3000 and it looks like it used to at 6000, and well, he's a big hit, he's starting to be the new rubius, ibai, auronplay, vegeta, PewDiePie, xqc, etc, they move money, but they couldn't because?, because if they made stream they were petaba them to 6000 so that it was seen "decent", and now they can to 3000 and it is seen equal or better, come on man, that we are not in the century 12
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Nightcrawla commented
As much as I would love for twitch to add AV1 asap and wished it was here yesterday, you guys have to understand that most devices to this day still can't decode AV1 easily (phones, TV's, tablets etc) The CEO of twitch even said their old servers aren't equipped with being able to transcode AV1 easily either at the moment and are looking to be able to do it clientside, ie your web browser being able to decode an AV1 livestream. For example Look at Youtube. While yes we can stream to Youtube in AV1 they still transcode the LIVE stream using either AVC or VP9 (depending on your resolution). It's not a true AV1 to AV1 livestream, not yet. For those of you saying it's going to save tons of money. No, it will not, not right away at least. In fact it's going to cost them more to implement everything they need to, to be AV1 ready. Let us be real here as well, for the ones today who are streaming at the recommended 6k bitrate, you know dang well noone will be lowering that to be able to stream a higher quality feed using AV1 compared to h264 at that 6k bitrate, the only ones who will be using a lower bitrate are the ones who truely can't stream at 6k bitrate to twitch and the ones who just downloaded OBS with no idea what settings to change and leaving the default OBS bitrate at 2.5k. So please for the love of everything AV1, stop spewing nonsense about "saving money and better user experiences" when clearly, you're not seeing the whole picture and the current state we are at when it comes to devices being able to decode an actual AV1 LIVEstream. Keyword LIVE. Again not even Youtube "livestreams" in AV1 to the end user, I can stream to youtube at 1440p at 6k bitrate which is great for me, but since Youtube transcodes my AV1 ingested livestream to VP9, the end user is still using 12mbps+ to watch my 6mbps AV1 livestream to keep the quality. They only serve AV1 videos on select highly traffic'd videos that have been uploaded, not currently running LIVEstreams.
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FromUndaChz commented
Why wouldn't they implement a royalty free codec that both saves them money on bandwidth but also improves the experience of both users and content creators? Seems like a win win but they're dragging their feet and talking about other codecs nobody cares about.
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werdwerdus commented
@blisten85 bro the early 2000s video streaming was RealPlayer and you were lucky to see 100p at 10fps and 100kbps, let's at least be real. 720p@60fps 6mbps h.264 is several orders of magnitude improvement
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blixten85 commented
Yeah please, hurry up about it. The quality to stream is absolute garbage, especially on FPS games. I don't know if there is any difference for affiliate but for a regular scrub like me i still want to stream in best quality possible and watch in best quality possible.
The world feels so stuck in the 1990.
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S_Class_DaNewb commented
This was brought up on stream with Dan Clancy on Harris' stream (Senpai Gaming) about 1 hour and 20 minutes in. From the time of this post it was 2-3 days ago.
There was brief talks about how expensive it is to ingest data, but mainly transcoding. AV1 transcoding is more expensive than h.264 in compute time. Something that is in the works is client side transcoding, which would offload the strain on their older servers, and this strategy would support AV1.
Clancy said there is no current timeline, thought of mentioning some of their plans at Twitchcon but opted against it.
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FilJoga commented
they could add av1 support encode/decode for twitch turbo users, as it is, its not worth it the price for just add free on streams.
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KiraRedpaw commented
AV1 encoding would help those using AMD 7000 GPUs. AMDs Encoding engine is still horrible.
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Bluntasarus commented
we need AV1 encoding. Why would you let people dual stream but not have AV1 encoding?
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Zenairis commented
I've been asking for AV1 support myself. The difference in stream quality is night and day. I hope that they adopt it soon.
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cptRomano commented
And so the topic continues, I really think it will take a while before they put anything out about AV1, if so far we haven't had anything and we have already had large ones implementing this for other cases with discord and YouTube, I think it will take a while longer here, especially because , the focus here will always be large content producers, that is, these people have dedicated machines just for streaming, they generally use capture cards and things started to have decent 4k support only in the last few months.
Twitch is focused on 1080p and 720p, people only consume this content and most of the time from people who have a dedicated computer for that. So they didn't have to invest in it until it was really necessary.
There is Amazon behind it, which is a leader in Infrastructure to do anything related to this, if they were interested they would have already done something related. And as some people have already said here, people don't yet have devices to consume Av1, anything that was done would mean decoding it to another decoder which would generate more processing in the cloud. And that.
I really wanted Av1 soon, but it will take a while in my opinion. Or let's go to YouTube and watch it there. Which won't happen because people who transmit content still prefer to use things here, which I think is valid, because it's a platform dedicated to that, right?
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AirplizzleTV commented
I would like to see Av1 on twirch
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werdwerdus commented
Often times I can't watch a Twitch stream on Mobile because the streamer is using way too high of a bitrate and they don't have quality options available, so instead of being able to watch I just have to leave. If they could use half or maybe 2/3 the bitrate or whatever, then I might be able to actually watch. Maybe HEVC would be a better stepping stone since it's standard and pretty much all devices can decode it directly now.
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ChasePK commented
Irl streamers aren’t going to be able to use AV1 mobile hardware can’t encode AV1, only a few of them even support AV1 decode to even watch it. And it’s not that I just think that most won’t push max quality go look at av1 steams on YouTube. Almost all of them are 1440p and 4K streams so the trend will follow the same on twitch. Again I want AV1 but it’s not gonna be a cost save for twitch on anything other than VODs and Clips. And livestream cost saving is going to be so negligible that it isn’t even gonna make a dent in their cost to deliver, and an ROI period on something like an entire overhaul of their encode/decode hardware would be YEARS to recoup.
Then factor in that majority of users on any hardware older the last 2 gen, plus mobile, and TVs, don’t support native AV1 decode. So just like YouTube they’d have to re-encode the stream on their hardware to a more compatible codec for those users to even be able to watch the stream.
Again they should add it because we deserve to be able to have the same quality as other platforms but the cost saving argument isn’t valid.
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TVDL2000 commented
Just because you dont think less than max will be used, does not mean that that is true. I actually see it allot. Especially people on mobile phone tether bad internet or not so good computer
Think of IRL streamers, using mobile phones and the likes. Tldr, plenty of peeps dont stream at max bitrate
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ChasePK commented
Yes I understand it’s more efficient, but when on twitch do you see anyone using less than the maximum bitrate cap. Unless they enforce specific bitrates based on resolution it’s not going to change anything. People stream 720p30 at 6000kbs because everyone will just use the maximum whenever given the chance. I understand the math and efficiency gains of AV1, I use it for my home video server to save on storage. But I also am not gonna pretend like the second they add it everyone is going to just lower their bitrate on their own to 2.5k they’re gonna bump their stream quality as high as possible with the max bitrate.
Just call it for what it is instead of trying to gaslight circumstances that won’t happen, they should upgrade hardware to give twitch a competitive edge, let us stream higher quality streams instead of decade old codecs especially when competitors are allowing it, don’t beat around the bush their engineers know people won’t use it to save streaming costs people will just just up to higher res streams just like it’s happening on YouTube.
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SpartanDraco commented
I'm not going to explain it to you and even less to someone who has a closed mentality to temporary video on demand, like youtube, twitch is a stream platform, and with AV1 it will allow 3000kb to be seen well at 1080p and use 6000kb for example for 2k, and someone in latin america for example could see that stream at 1080p that before could not, if you are not able to understand that, I'm not going to answer you anymore, I made clear in my previous comment the summary, less bandwidth needed to have quality, is less maintenance cost, if you don't understand that 2+2 is 4, it's not my problem.
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ChasePK commented
@spartandraco how would it bring more profit. People are still gonna stream at the max bitrate cap, delivering the data is what costs, so unless they added av1 and then lowered the bitrate cap to reflect AV1 efficiency it wouldn’t save any money people are still gonna stream at 6k but just push a higher quality than 6k allowed on nvenc or x264. It could save cost in vod storage and clip storage but that’s marginal overhead compared to IVS