Intel, Netflix to Deliver AV1 Scalable Codec to Power Next-Gen Compression Tech for Visual Workloads

What’s New: At The National Association of Broadcasters Show (NAB Show), Intel and Netflix announced a new high-performance video codec that is available as open source and royalty-free to content creators, developers and service providers. Scalable Video Technology for AV1 (SVT-AV1) offers performance and scalability in video processing.

“The SVT-AV1 codec offers both high performance and efficiency, and compared to today’s most popular codec (H.264 AVC), SVT-AV1 can help service providers save up to half their bandwidth, delivering leading-edge user experiences that can be quickly and cost-effectively delivered at a global scale. This codec makes it possible for services ranging from video on demand to live broadcast of 4Kp60/10-bit content on Intel Xeon Scalable processors, including the recently launched 2nd Generation Intel Xeon Scalable processor.”

-- Lynn Comp, vice president of the Network Platforms Group and general manager of the Visual Cloud Division, Intel

Where to Hear about It: Join Intel’s NAB keynote featuring Comp at 10:45 to 11:45 a.m. PDT Monday, April 8, on keynote stage N4 at the Las Vegas Convention Center.

Why It Matters: Modernization of video software codecs for increased efficiency will help deliver rich user experiences and reach global scale, accelerating time to market and lowering costs for developers and service providers. SVT-AV1 is a software-based scalable codec offering the best tradeoffs between performance, latency and visual quality when working with visual cloud workloads. SVT-AV1 performance advantages are based on the SVT architecture, which is a cohesive and highly-optimized codec architecture that already has delivered multiple generations of codecs, including SVT-HEVC, SVT-VP9 and SVT-AV1. The new SVT-AV1 codec is unique in that it allows encoders to scale their performance levels based on the quality and latency requirements of the target applications — ranging from highest quality video on demand (VOD) to livestreaming use cases. The high-quality encoding and decoding in SVT-AV1 will enable developers working with visual cloud workloads to get them to market faster. The codec is optimized for video encoding on Intel Xeon Scalable processors.

What Netflix Says: “The SVT-AV1 collaboration with Intel brings an alternative AV1 solution to the open-source community, enabling more rapid AV1 algorithm development and spurring innovation for next-generation video-compression technology,” said David Ronca, director of Encoding Technologies, Netflix.

Even More News: In addition, Intel launched the Open Visual Cloud, an open-source project that includes a set of use case-optimized reference pipelines for visual workloads. These developer-ready pipelines are based on open-source media, artificial intelligence (AI) and graphics software ingredients. They support the most popular open-source frameworks that developers are familiar with. SVT, the OpenVINO™ Toolkit and the Intel Rendering Framework are all part of the Open Visual Cloud, bringing highly optimized open source encode/decode, inference and graphics together as an interoperable reference for services innovation. The first two pipelines enable services for content delivery network (CDN) transcode VOD streaming and intelligent ad insertion.

Intel will demonstrate cloud graphics and immersive media pipelines in development at NAB. Additional reference pipelines will be released on a quarterly basis.

How You Access It: The SVT-AV1 codec is available under a permissive BSD+Patent license, which will make it easy to adopt and commercialize. Developers can access SVT-AV1 at 01.org/OpenVisualCloud/svt. The Open Visual Cloud reference pipelines and building blocks for encode/decode, inference and render can be found on 01.org/OpenVisualCloud.