When discussing a codec in general, it’s appropriate to use the generic name.

For example, Cisco is tuning its AV1 codec for Webex - its videoconferencing system - and claims that its implementation operates “within a similar CPU footprint to AVC/H.264.” As you’ll see below, my testing of four other AV1 codecs showed a CPU footprint of 15-30 times x264 for encoding video on demand. Similarly, there are at least five current versions of the AV1 codec from vendors such as the Alliance for Open Media, Cisco, Intel/Netflix, and Visionular.Īs you would expect, different implementations from different vendors have different performance characteristics. Multiple codec developers, however, create versions of that codec, usually with discrete names - such as x264, which is an implementation of AVC/H.264, and x265, which is an implementation of H.265/HEVC. Each codec is defined by a specification - such as HEVC/H.265 and AV1. In this article, I’ll provide a status update for streaming codecs, discuss the new MPEG codecs, identify factors that will control their adoption, and make some predictions regarding 2021 and beyond.īefore getting started, let’s clarify some terms. This year saw the launch of two standards-based codecs (with another due soon) from the Moving Pictures Experts Group (MPEG), the first hardware support for the Alliance for Open Media’s AV1 codec, and continued deployment of HEVC/H.265. By any measure, 2020 was a hectic year for video codecs or the compression technologies that drive streaming video.

Hevc video codec pack