dav2d is the fastest AV2 decoder on all platforms :)
Targeted to be small, portable and very fast.
If you're out of the loop like me:
AV2 is the next-generation video coding specification from the Alliance for Open Media (AOMedia). Building on the foundation of AV1, AV2 is engineered to provide superior compression efficiency, enabling high-quality video delivery at significantly lower bitrates. It is optimized for the evolving demands of streaming, broadcasting, and real-time video conferencing.
Dav1d was the surprisingly fast assembly implementation of AV1 decoding. Even for something in hand-coded platform-specific-assembly I think the general impression was that they'd done amazing work to really chase down out every last bit of potential performance.
It didn't initially exist when AV1 was first rolled oit and its arrival was a step change in powering adoption on devices without hardware decoding.
Dav2d is likely to play a similar role, but it exists from the start and can build on the work of dav1d, so should have an even bigger effect.
In a weird reverse chicken and egg scenario, having really good software decode that can be deployed will spur on hardware development and adoption.
tensor
Not on topic, but wow the internet has very quickly devolved into: click -> "making sure you're not a bot", click -> "making sure you're a human", click -> "COOKIES COOKIES COOKIES", click -> "cloudflare something something"
show comments
infogulch
AV2 video codec delivers 30% lower bitrate than AV1, final spec due in late 2025 (videocardz.com) | Oct 2025 | 277 points | 223 comments | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45547537
show comments
Telaneo
Glorious. Really looking forward to seeing how much better than AV1 it actually turns out to be. It's a shame it'll take a while before we'll have a decent encoder (it took an annoyingly long time until SVT-AV1 was usable).
amitbidlan
Mostly ASM for performance critical paths is a pattern that never gets old. The VideoLAN team did the same with dav1d and it paid off. Curious how much of dav2d ends up staying C as AV2 matures.
abhishek03113
Some dude at videolan be like, I've have a cool name idea
pkos98
off topic, but related to the recent github alternative discussion:
Wow, this gitlab instance looked so much cleaner/simpler and less clunky than my past experiences! Also loaded really fast on first page load as well as subsequent actions
risho
is there any understanding of how big of an improvment av2 will be over av1?
show comments
snvzz
With the first RVA23 boards shipping this month, I find it a mistake to still focus on legacy ISAs like x86 or ARM rather than what will be dominant by the time AV2 is deployed.
0x0
Just recently noticed this got posted to deb-multimedia, although I think there is a typo in the package description....
... it says "fast and small AV1 video stream decoder"
... should probably be "AV2" ?
shmerl
Nice.
What's the current state of of Dolby trying too attack AV1 ecosystem (Snapchat more specifically)? I hope there is an organized fight back by AOM against these trolls.
sylware
I would even remove the C code and lower the usage of the assembler pre-processor to a basic C pre-processor.
Happy, AV2 decoding already here.
:)
arkensaw
maybe not great naming. Sounds very similar to the rapper D4vd, who was just arrested for murdering a 14 year old girl
We must not continue to develop media codecs in memory unsafe languages. Small, auditable sections can opt-out perhaps, but choosing default-unsafe for this type of software is close to professional negligence.
Project description:
If you're out of the loop like me: - from https://av2.aomedia.org/A little extra context:
Dav1d was the surprisingly fast assembly implementation of AV1 decoding. Even for something in hand-coded platform-specific-assembly I think the general impression was that they'd done amazing work to really chase down out every last bit of potential performance.
It didn't initially exist when AV1 was first rolled oit and its arrival was a step change in powering adoption on devices without hardware decoding.
Dav2d is likely to play a similar role, but it exists from the start and can build on the work of dav1d, so should have an even bigger effect.
In a weird reverse chicken and egg scenario, having really good software decode that can be deployed will spur on hardware development and adoption.
Not on topic, but wow the internet has very quickly devolved into: click -> "making sure you're not a bot", click -> "making sure you're a human", click -> "COOKIES COOKIES COOKIES", click -> "cloudflare something something"
AV2 video codec delivers 30% lower bitrate than AV1, final spec due in late 2025 (videocardz.com) | Oct 2025 | 277 points | 223 comments | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45547537
Glorious. Really looking forward to seeing how much better than AV1 it actually turns out to be. It's a shame it'll take a while before we'll have a decent encoder (it took an annoyingly long time until SVT-AV1 was usable).
Mostly ASM for performance critical paths is a pattern that never gets old. The VideoLAN team did the same with dav1d and it paid off. Curious how much of dav2d ends up staying C as AV2 matures.
Some dude at videolan be like, I've have a cool name idea
off topic, but related to the recent github alternative discussion:
Wow, this gitlab instance looked so much cleaner/simpler and less clunky than my past experiences! Also loaded really fast on first page load as well as subsequent actions
is there any understanding of how big of an improvment av2 will be over av1?
With the first RVA23 boards shipping this month, I find it a mistake to still focus on legacy ISAs like x86 or ARM rather than what will be dominant by the time AV2 is deployed.
Just recently noticed this got posted to deb-multimedia, although I think there is a typo in the package description....
https://www.deb-multimedia.org/dists/unstable/main/binary-am...
... it says "fast and small AV1 video stream decoder"
... should probably be "AV2" ?
Nice.
What's the current state of of Dolby trying too attack AV1 ecosystem (Snapchat more specifically)? I hope there is an organized fight back by AOM against these trolls.
I would even remove the C code and lower the usage of the assembler pre-processor to a basic C pre-processor.
Happy, AV2 decoding already here.
:)
maybe not great naming. Sounds very similar to the rapper D4vd, who was just arrested for murdering a 14 year old girl
I wonder if the author is a Dave2D fan?
https://www.youtube.com/@Dave2D
We must not continue to develop media codecs in memory unsafe languages. Small, auditable sections can opt-out perhaps, but choosing default-unsafe for this type of software is close to professional negligence.